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Laura Vrana

@callmevrana.bsky.social

520 followers 310 following 210 posts

Scholar of African American poetry (author of https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814215753.html); Univ of South AL Associate Professor; former Emory FCHI Poetics Fellow & Rutgers postdoc. Opinions mine. She/her/hers.

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · Nov 17

While the timing of the release (last Friday 11.8) felt inauspicious and ongoing events overshadowed it, I'm nonetheless delighted to share that my monograph is now published through OSU! Please consider reading! I'd love to talk to you/your students about it! ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...

Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition

Surveys how developments in American literary institutions since 1980 have shaped—and been shaped by—Black women poets, showing how seeming gestures of inclusion can co-opt or constrain the work.

ohiostatepress.org

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 1d

Hi all: the lovely, hospitable English dept at my home institution (University of South Alabama) is about to begin a search for a TT Assistant or Associate Professor of English with a specialization in
Rhetoric and Composition, starting August 15, 2026. I'll have job ad soon, but please spread word!

Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 2d

Watching the new doc about the prison system in my home state, The Alabama Solution. (Can't help but think about Orisanmi Burton's book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt too.) Watch. Learn. Get activated about the horrors of America's "justice" system.

Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 3d

Highly recommend Eunsong Kim's book The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property, which I'm currently reading!

Reposted by Laura Vrana

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 11d

I think we’re really going to have to do a lot more of this. A massive deprogramming so that people can read more than ten words at a time without anxiety.

www.thetimes.com/uk/education...?

Universities teaching literature students how to cope with long novels

Critics blame GCSE English for deterring teenagers from the subject, describing the literature syllabus as boring and repetitive

www.thetimes.com

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 11d

So glad I've been teaching Thylias Moss's Slave Moth in my 400-/500-level class! They're doing so much with it!

Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 15d

Weird request, but: anybody have recommendations of best OSU Press books they've read recently? (I get some complimentary books from them as a result of reviewing a book proposal and want to pick wisely!)

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Reposted by Laura Vrana

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 17d

George Hardy, last of the Tuskegee Airmen's World War II combat pilots, dies at 100

Hardy, a lieutenant colonel, became the youngest Tuskegee fighter pilot at 19, and was among the first Black military pilots in the United States.

www.nbcnews.com

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Alicia Andrzejewski (she/her) @aliciaandrz.bsky.social · 22d

if pregnant people can’t manage their pain there will actually be adverse effects on unborn children. we need to be happy & healthy during pregnancy to grow happy & healthy babies.

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · Sep 11

As with everything, it seems, returning to all in-class writing to avoid AI usage for my general education literature survey is resulting in my having to put in a TON more grading time. The results are (so far) worth it, but it's just depleting how all these things require more of us as profs...

Reposted by Laura Vrana

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · Sep 3

Next they'll be rewriting textbooks to say Japanese American internment camps were delightful summer resorts.

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · Sep 2

Currently finishing up Tara A. Bynum's exceptional Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America - heavily recommend...!!

Reposted by Laura Vrana

Annette Yoshiko Reed @annetteyreed.bsky.social · Aug 27

“Chicago has long helped to keep alive tiny fields & esoteric areas of humanistic study... Without the univ’s support, & the continued training of grad students who can keep these bodies of kn going, entire spheres of human learning might eventually blink out.” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

If the University of Chicago Won’t Defend the Humanities, Who Will?

Why it matters that the University of Chicago is pausing admissions to doctoral programs in literature, philosophy, the arts, and languages

www.theatlantic.com

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Anthony Reed @blackpoetics.bsky.social · Aug 28

"If history is properly a narrative of the collective tropism of masses of people, then our recent history is the tale of a populace mesmerized by ever more technically elaborate and intellectually vacuous entertainments designed to distract them from their deepening poverty."

- Lorenzo Thomas

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · Aug 27

I've never read anything at all like the debut poetry collection Joy Is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney. My new colleague handed it to me, and sh** have I been gobsmacked. How did I not know about this extraordinary poet?!?! Highly recommend.

Reposted by Laura Vrana

The Believer @thebeliever.net · Aug 26

“What happens to my nervous system when I read a book for an hour is that I become one with that book, and for that hour I’m not engaging with all the issues and problems outside in the world. That, too, is a real gift.”

— @likaluca.bsky.social
www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...

An Interview with Lisa Lucas - Believer Magazine

The first time I met Lisa Lucas was around 2012, through mutual publishing friends, in the early days after my arrival in New York City. While I was a wide-eyed foreigner trying to cobble together a n...

www.thebeliever.net

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · Aug 25

Doing strictly and exclusively in-class writing for my gen ed literature survey this semester (abandoning years' worth of doing short written responses as homework, because...yknow...AI) - and the first batch of 15-minute, on-the-spot written work today was mostly pretty decent! Delightful!

Reposted by Laura Vrana

tamara nopper @tamaranopper.bsky.social · Aug 24

All around us are examples of people trying to do what they can, including experimenting or getting involved for the first time, to politically resist what's happening. I'm inspired.

Again, as Octavia E. Butler said, “We don’t have to wait for anything at all. What we have to do is start.”

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · Aug 24

Similarly, the AI boom has forced teachers who actually care about student learning to radically reconfigure their classes in order to disincentivize students from using the cheating machines they now have easy access to and which systemically undermine student learning. No one asked for this.

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Reposted by Laura Vrana

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · Aug 24

It's my experience (from 25 yrs of teaching) that "learning management" tools like Canvas do nothing to facilitate student learning & make my job MORE, not less, time consuming. That additional time I put in contributes zero to improving the student experience. But Canvas gets our money regardless.

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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · Aug 24

On the one hand, the world is on fire and everything sucks, but on the other hand, at least I get to start teaching Kindred tomorrow in my blended 400-/500-level English course!

Reposted by Laura Vrana

Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · Aug 22

cooking the world so our students can turn in papers that say “delve” and “rich tapestry”

Dr. Damien P. Williams Wants A Better Sociotechnical Paradigm @wolvendamien.bsky.social · Aug 22

Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year.

Y'all this isn't sustainable.

La. regulators approve Entergy power plants for Meta’s AI data center

Louisiana Public Service Commissioners voted four to one to approve Entergy’s three new gas plants to power Meta’s largest-ever data center.

www.kplctv.com

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Reposted by Laura Vrana

Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · Aug 19

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Aug 19

Good thing no one uses Microsoft Excel for anything related to legal, regulatory or compliance business functions

www.theverge.com/news/761338/...

Microsoft Excel adds Copilot Al to help ...
theverge.com
The Verget-4.1-mini Al model | 5
successor to the LABS.GENERATIVEAI function Microsoft started experimenting
with in 2023.
Microsoft notes that you can combine its new Al function with other Excel functions, including IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA, or WRAPROWS. The company adds that information sent through Excel's COPILOT function is "never" used for AI training, as "the input remains confidential and is used solely to generate your requested output."
The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can't access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT "can
give incorrect responses."
Copy Share Select all Web search Dictionary
...

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Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · Aug 16

The pretexts for these paramilitary takeovers don’t matter

They’re lies

Don’t buy into their narrative

They’re normalizing military takeovers

That should be the opposing narrative, not crime rates which let them steer the conversation

WE should steer it
What they’re doing is unacceptable
Period

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 15

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

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Reposted by Laura Vrana

Sam @searchingforsam.bsky.social · Aug 15

Once again screaming about AI, but now focusing on the environmental impacts. Specifically, who is most hurt by such impacts? And who suffers the most in the academic structures that are set up now? And who stands to benefit the most in either situation? These things aren't coincidences.

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