Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar
@jmakr.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of English at the University of Kentucky
Dec 2: rocked the baby / wrote a page / finished a chapter #acadecawriteathon
December 2, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Dec 2: rocked the baby / wrote a page / finished a chapter #acadecawriteathon
Reposted by Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar
This is the importance of buying the books we write and teach from university presses. The same administrations that don’t care about the humanities would be just as happy to have academic publishing handled by these companies. We can save our own publishing ecosystem- but we have to do it.
"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."
November 18, 2025 at 12:52 PM
This is the importance of buying the books we write and teach from university presses. The same administrations that don’t care about the humanities would be just as happy to have academic publishing handled by these companies. We can save our own publishing ecosystem- but we have to do it.
Hi folks! Are you at a Canadian or Danish university? I will be traveling between Dec 8 and Jan 7 to Denmark, and between Jan 8 and Jan 20 to Toronto. And I am on research leave next semester.
November 11, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Hi folks! Are you at a Canadian or Danish university? I will be traveling between Dec 8 and Jan 7 to Denmark, and between Jan 8 and Jan 20 to Toronto. And I am on research leave next semester.
Reposted by Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar
TOMORROW! Join HELU's Contingency Task Force on Zoom for a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast screening of ADJUNCT & a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Ron Najor! Saturday, October 25 at 2:30 ET / 1:30 CT / 12:30 MT / 11:30 PT. Register at bit.ly/watch_adjunct
October 24, 2025 at 4:09 PM
TOMORROW! Join HELU's Contingency Task Force on Zoom for a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast screening of ADJUNCT & a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Ron Najor! Saturday, October 25 at 2:30 ET / 1:30 CT / 12:30 MT / 11:30 PT. Register at bit.ly/watch_adjunct
Academia is where you learn to commodify knowledge, argument, and yourself as you write a dissertation that despairs over the commodification of everything.
September 9, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Academia is where you learn to commodify knowledge, argument, and yourself as you write a dissertation that despairs over the commodification of everything.
Academia is where you find robust structures for the development of job materials at the same time that you find zero jobs in your field.
September 9, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Academia is where you find robust structures for the development of job materials at the same time that you find zero jobs in your field.
Good news is that there is no need to workshop your cover letter when there are no jobs and no universities.
August 27, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Good news is that there is no need to workshop your cover letter when there are no jobs and no universities.
When your toddler is experiencing a developmentally appropriate interest in four-wheeled vehicles, but you tend to take a dark view on things.
July 26, 2025 at 1:56 PM
When your toddler is experiencing a developmentally appropriate interest in four-wheeled vehicles, but you tend to take a dark view on things.
A major philosopher says yes to a 1.5 hour discussion with a group of critical theory enthusiasts: good things happen sometimes.
July 26, 2025 at 1:53 PM
A major philosopher says yes to a 1.5 hour discussion with a group of critical theory enthusiasts: good things happen sometimes.
Loving the badass opening of the ACLA newsletter by the current President, Karyn Ball.
July 16, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Loving the badass opening of the ACLA newsletter by the current President, Karyn Ball.
Something unworked in us but all-determining, a terrible negativity. (Freud on melancholia.)
July 16, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Something unworked in us but all-determining, a terrible negativity. (Freud on melancholia.)
Returning to Bluesky, with hesitation.
July 9, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Returning to Bluesky, with hesitation.
I get whole body hives when I hear robots read to me.
March 31, 2025 at 12:57 PM
I get whole body hives when I hear robots read to me.
Harder and harder, darker and darker.
March 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Harder and harder, darker and darker.
When a colony is founded, wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, 'among [the] earliest practical necessities [is] to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.'
Hawthorne, early theorist of the settler-carceral-state?
Hawthorne, early theorist of the settler-carceral-state?
March 1, 2025 at 8:39 PM
When a colony is founded, wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, 'among [the] earliest practical necessities [is] to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.'
Hawthorne, early theorist of the settler-carceral-state?
Hawthorne, early theorist of the settler-carceral-state?
[Adorno's] Negative Dialectics gives us another way of characterizing the dialectical process.
February 27, 2025 at 4:49 PM
[Adorno's] Negative Dialectics gives us another way of characterizing the dialectical process.
For the duration of this frozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which they are not themselves but stand for other things.
February 20, 2025 at 7:53 PM
For the duration of this frozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which they are not themselves but stand for other things.
Reposted by Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar
Another giant of cinema departs. Souleymane Cissé is best known for Yeelen (1987), which is a pretty magnificent film, but Baara (1978) is an absolute favourite. If one is interested in factory labour on screen, then one must, at some point, watch Baara and be awed.
February 20, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Another giant of cinema departs. Souleymane Cissé is best known for Yeelen (1987), which is a pretty magnificent film, but Baara (1978) is an absolute favourite. If one is interested in factory labour on screen, then one must, at some point, watch Baara and be awed.
I am deeply pleased to be facilitating a discussion on "Crisis, Temporality, and the Novel" at the upcoming Society of Novel Studies conference! Check out this line-up of stars. 1/2
February 15, 2025 at 2:57 PM
I am deeply pleased to be facilitating a discussion on "Crisis, Temporality, and the Novel" at the upcoming Society of Novel Studies conference! Check out this line-up of stars. 1/2
temporalities of the value-form
January 22, 2025 at 2:10 PM
temporalities of the value-form
Autofiction, the oddest possible antipode to the contemporary prevalence of historical fiction.
January 18, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Autofiction, the oddest possible antipode to the contemporary prevalence of historical fiction.