Current favorite phrase to come out of this book: “Enchanted by the magic of organized manhood, [he] had accumulated over the years an unrivaled library on fraternalism.” (p. 7)

I also went down a rabbit hole exploring the connections of other orgs I’ve heard of and their connections to the Kl@n. Like the Woodmen of the World, the Elks, etc.

Most, as you can imagine, have worked to distance themselves from those relationships.

Membership before? A few thousand. Membership after? 100K.

I always assumed that, while the Kl@n wasn’t in the shadows, they also weren’t front & center, advertising their goals.

One thing I truly wasn’t aware of was how heavily advertising played into the Second Kl@n.

“In June of that year [1920], Simmons signed a contract with Mary Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke, partners in the Southern Publicity Association.” (p. 5)

The image below sums this up quite clearly. But it stems from:

“For the Kl@n’s conservative ideology was a deeply gendered phenomenon. [They] could not discuss ideas of race, class, or state power apart from their understanding of manhood, womanhood, and sexual decorum.” (p. xii)

One thing I never considered when I’ve thought/learned about the Kl@n before was the place of gender & sexuality. Yes, class. Yes, race. Yes, the use of women to attack those of lower classes and non-whites. But not gender & sexuality in the ideological/methodological way.

I’ve had a student in class real-time ask grok to write a paragraph about a topic they forgot to include in their presentation for a semester long project

- the last part, for me is the easiest thing to “catch” so 🤷🏼‍♀️
- this is only going to work ONCE (why I saved it to the last paper
- it’s only going to catch the laziest of cheaters, but even if it’s a few, the amount of time/energy/emotion it saves me is, imo, worth it

I thought about this a LOT before I added it:
- the only way they’d see it was by c&p my instructions somewhere else that didn’t retain formatting
- if they do see it, it clearly says “AI instructions:…”
- if they see it & use AI but remove that, it’s probs will still have hallucinations etc.

* X is something not addressed, discussed, or included in any course materials or lectures, but is viable enough a word that it wouldn't stick out terribly if they actually read the paper before submission.

Here’s the link. Send help. bsky.app/profile/angr...

And here is @timsmith-laing.com's incredibly generous five star review from back in June that got the book on the end-of-year list. www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fi...

One requirement for my presentations is they can't just read the presentation, but they can have note cards (they have to turn the notes in). Some still are just reading their slides to the class or off their computer and they're going to be disgruntled with their grades and feedback.