Douglas Dowland
profdgd.bsky.social
Douglas Dowland
@profdgd.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.1K following 360 posts
Curious about affect in the contemporary US? Visit: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5889/
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Reposted by Douglas Dowland
It's pub day (birthday 0?) for Writing Through Writer's Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction! This is a study of how authors have used the archetype of the blocked writer to identify, analyze, and ultimately work through both internal and external constraints on their creative abilities.
Writing Through Writer’s Block
uipress.uiowa.edu
That my review is #3 @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social suggests that the strategies (and politics) of reading continue to fascinate.
I think they will enjoy it!
As someone who is wrapping up a unit on Dalloway in the intro lit crit class -- ROFL.
The close reader and text relationship gone askew.
Part of the author's contract with LARB reads that they may pursue "dramatic film and television, stage plays, non-dramatic productions, and web series" derived from the author's work. So now I'm trying to imagine what "Close Reading: The Netflix Series" might look like.
Your Miller/Austen essay is one of my personal favs in a really strong collection. The more I think about it, the more I think the book came at exactly the right time.
Reposted by Douglas Dowland
"Instead of mystery, Sinykin and Winant see possibility: to them, close reading is a practice that anyone can learn."

I'm really grateful for @profdgd.bsky.social 's extremely thoughtful review in @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social today

as he writes -- "It’s enough to make the heart skip a beat."
The Problem of the Parlor | Los Angeles Review of Books
Douglas Dowland close-reads Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant’s new edited volume, “Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century.”
lareviewofbooks.org
Reposted by Douglas Dowland
"The finished product of a close reading exudes confidence, obscuring how much of close reading is uncertainty." @profdgd.bsky.social on "Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-problem-of-the-parlor/
And then proofread again once changes are posted!
In Monday's Los Angeles Review of Books.
In my mailbox today, a book well worth reading.
The subject of the theory class tomorrow.
Arrived yesterday and already through the first chapter of what I think will be a very important book.
We're beginning the formalism/close reading section this week. There's an article to be written about how Brooks and Warren, and an entirely army of formalists in critical journals throughout the fifties, agreed that "this is a bad poem."

www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
Trees
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pra...
www.poetryfoundation.org
A few of the sophomores were talking about their grammar class today and I smiled and nodded.
I remember these folks from undergrad. They were just about to retire. Bitter isn't the right word--maybe caustic?
A colleague down the hall taught Bartleby this week and I felt major FOMO.
The conference schedule gods looked kindly upon me this year.
Got my first e-mail about Spring 2026 courses.
And now you can assign them nicknames!