Gus McFadzean

Striking Napier lecturers protest job losses ahead of crunch talks - Deadline News STRIKING lecturers and staff members at Edinburgh Napier University gathered outside parliament in a bid to put pressure on the university.

www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2026/03/05/s...

A threaded observation on holding guns and/or having an enormous military at your disposal.

At my school, from age 16–18, I had to do a thing called CCF: the Combined Cadet Force. It was blatant military propaganda. We were trained in military practices with guns. Real guns. Astonishing in the UK.

A great review of Comics and Modernism, and a nice mention of my piece in that volume. My name is misspelled, but the praise of Jonathan Najarian’s editorial hand is entirely correct.

So, so excited to read 'Lines of Flight, Lines of Force: Thomas Pynchon and Star Wars' by the immensely talented Sam Thomas: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Reactionary Worldbuilding: From Speculative Imagination to Political Practice The first in-depth study of the dark side of worldbuilding, exploring the connection between speculative imagination and political practice.Speculative imagination brings to life an array of possible ...

It's available for pre-order!

one of the many good things about having read The Magic Mountain is that now whenever I have a fever, I can talk incessantly about The Magic Mountain

"It doesn’t matter whether the rate of global warming is increasing. It’ll never cease to amaze me that people don’t care that it’s happening at all. It should be the most alarming thing ever." - @davidho.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here

“One of the great weaknesses of our era is we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort, more like caregiving than it is like war.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m...

Capitalism's Long Spiral:World-Literature,Periodicity and the Neoliberal World-System Sharae Deckard YouTube video by World Literature Webinar Series

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feg_...
watch it!

Register to Attend: Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory, Duke University, April 10–12, 2026

Register for the Jameson Conference at Duke! April 10-12: "Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory." Link to the registration form here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

A good rundown of where we are now and what, if any, recourse there is.

A Modern Resurrection: The Return of Religious Horror Films If you were to ask horror fans to name a film they consider “religious horror,” most would likely name a movie from around fifty years ago—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), or The Omen (197...

In my latest for @bloody-disgusting.com I take a look at the new wave of religious horror and why it is happening now.

bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3...

Congratulations to Christopher T. Fan, whose book, ASIAN AMERICAN FICTION AFTER 1965, is an Honorable Mention for the 2026 Book Award in Literary Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. tinyurl.com/4bwnz8na @chrisfan.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social

I can't emphasize enough that the idea of a Paramount-WB merger producing 30-40 movies a year is an absurd fiction. First WB will become the "classy" label within Par (which is only about Rescue Rangers, Scream and existing IP). Then it will become the specialty or streaming label. Then it will die.

The Enclosures of Free Verse Throughout the twentieth century, scholars accepted that there was something called “traditional” poetic meter, and that free verse liberated poets from ...

In honor of the publication day of The Enclosures of Free Verse (uncpress.org/978146969306...), here's a little thread about what the book does and does not offer.

All serious historical novels are works of speculative fiction, even ones set in the ‘60s and ‘70s. These three are absolutely brilliant.

Electro-Capitalism Ours is the age of transition: from fossil capital to electricity capital. The future that emerges will be determined by the fierce struggles of the present.

"In the battle between fossil and electricity capital, there are good reasons to think the latter will win in the long run. Of course, in the long run, as JM Keynes said, we are all dead."

A b/w shot of Namwali Serpell with the text "Listen now!" overlaid

Namwali Serpell joins this week's #LARBRadioHour to talk about her latest book, "On Morrison"; how Toni Morrison is often misread; and why her books speak, as ever, to the present moment.

Listen now: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/namwali-serpell-on-morrison-interview-podcast/

Prince Andrew, photographed in a car leaving the police station after his arrest, looking like he was simultaneously hit with a tranquilizer dart and a shock to his testicles, with one red eyeball for good measure. Congratulations to Reuters's Phil Noble for getting this shot.

I laughed out loud. I'm sorry. This picture is going to defy my attempt at alt-text. I know I overuse this word but...astonishing.

Collection of Ghibli film soundtracks on vinyl

Turns out you can just have a sizeable record collection just with ghibli soundtrack, image records and orchestral covers. The non soundtracks have the best art of the lot.

God and the Unconscious | Los Angeles Review of Books Joan Copjec’s new book charts the conceptual affinities and historical convergences between psychoanalysis and Islamic philosophy.

"Copjec believes that Islamic mysticism and the concept of the imaginal world get something deeply right about reality, contingency, and the nature of the image."

Henry Clements on Joan Copjec’s “Cloud”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/joan-copjec-cloud-kiarostami-corbin-lacan-sufi-freud/

Very excited about the latest addition to the Horror Studies series. Huge congrats to @maireadcasey.bsky.social! #horrorstudies #horror @uniwalespress.bsky.social

Literary Nationalism Why don't Americans read more European fiction? Why don't Europeans?

Literary Nationalism
open.substack.com/pub/francopo...

What does the trade deficit in books look like?

Find your next read in this dataset of international bestsellers. In most situations when I say “I need the data,” I’m referring to gossip, and it’s less of a “need” than what some would call a “messy curiosity.” But recently, I came across a Substack post analyz…

"The world doesn’t have terrible taste, it seems."
— @jamesfolta.com writing about the @post45data.bsky.social's International Bestsellers data for
@literaryhub.bsky.social!

lithub.com/find-your-ne...

Movie description of the B horror move Death PhD. Gawdawful movie.

Now this is a movie plot!!! Someone understands grad school.

I'd like at add a few things to this. (1) humanists have not been able to convince any political party that curiosity-driven humanities research is a public good that should be funded using tax dollars. Republicans don't believe this, but neither do Democrats.

The Last Line Click on the article title to read more.

My article on the last line has just been published over at Critical Quarterly. I’d ❤️ to know what you think 🤔

doi.org/10.1111/criq...

Does humanities research matter anymore? (opinion) The rapid collapse in available research funding is one crisis in the humanities we aren’t talking enough about, Asheesh Kapur Siddique writes.

It's possible to do a non-reactionary critique of the current landscape of humanities research funding: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

High School English and the Making of American Readers Abstract. The high school English classroom is the most influential literary institution in the United States, and the most overlooked by literary scholars

A barn-burner essay from @manshel.bsky.social in the recent issue of ALH!!! “High School English and the Making of American Readers.” academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

I hope literary scholars are proud of the fresh, grounded stuff coming out lately. Big Fiction, Teaching Archive, now Manshel on high school English, McGrath forthcoming on literary agents ("Middlemen"). All the concrete aspects of literature-as-human-activity we used to ignore. +