SA Smythe
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essaysmythe.bsky.social
SA Smythe
@essaysmythe.bsky.social
blk critical theorist + transmedia artist. ‘black studies & the archive’ assoc. professor
Pinned
🚨 Excited to launch Shared Horizons: The Politics & Poetics of Transnational Abolition, a living digital archive envisioned by @v_e_thompson & @essaysmythe. Learn & contribute to transnational groups dedicated to ongoing liberation struggles beyond borders www.sharedhorizons.org🌹💪🏾📖
Reposted by SA Smythe
Glad it resonated with you.

Previous Alchemy Lectures are no longer online, and this one will only be up another week, but I highly recommend checking out all three books from this wonderful lecture series (in US, from Duke Press).

And we can expect a book of this year's lectures in 2026. 🫶🏾📚
November 6, 2025 at 7:05 PM
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Happy birthday to our beloved @prisonculture.bsky.social, whose imaginings, intentions and invitations have accompanied countless of us on our journeys towards abolition.

She's fundraising for EVlovesNYC to help feed neighbors; pitch in along with me!

evloves.networkforgood.com/projects/224...
October 19, 2025 at 8:07 PM
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So so proud to share the latest pub from the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis: Sankofa Currents, vol. 2 - "Ngũgĩ’s Gourd." The issue reviews our recent collabs and future. Thrilled for what our team & community continue to build. Please read & share: bit.ly/CBPJournalF25 #BlackStudy #BlackPoiesis
October 7, 2025 at 1:57 AM
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I forgot to share my October newsletter here. prisonculture.substack.com/p/prisons-pr...
Prisons, Prose & Protest - #31
Rants, Musings and More
prisonculture.substack.com
October 9, 2025 at 1:17 AM
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Ya rab keep the people safe
October 9, 2025 at 1:59 AM
So so proud to share the latest pub from the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis: Sankofa Currents, vol. 2 - "Ngũgĩ’s Gourd." The issue reviews our recent collabs and future. Thrilled for what our team & community continue to build. Please read & share: bit.ly/CBPJournalF25 #BlackStudy #BlackPoiesis
October 7, 2025 at 1:57 AM
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✨The Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis is "sharpening our oyster knives," preparing our imaginations and relations, with new + ongoing programs in Black study & collective practice during the 2025–26 year. Details: linktr.ee/blackpoiesis & IG (@blackpoiesis).+ Come thru, reach out, stay tuned ✨
September 11, 2025 at 10:54 PM
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You don’t have to be serious all the time but you should understand serious things are happening everyday as a result of words.
September 13, 2025 at 10:17 AM
✨The Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis is "sharpening our oyster knives," preparing our imaginations and relations, with new + ongoing programs in Black study & collective practice during the 2025–26 year. Details: linktr.ee/blackpoiesis & IG (@blackpoiesis).+ Come thru, reach out, stay tuned ✨
September 11, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Make the Quiet Part Loud Again 2025
September 6, 2025 at 3:40 PM
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📖Just out from @dukepress.bsky.social>> Thinking across the U.S. and Europe BEYOND SANCTUARY critically examines liberal democratic policies of sanctuary and asylum and foregrounds migrant movements, those that demand a world beyond borders>> challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/2025/08/20/b...
Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion | Challenge Inequality
Book via Duke University Press co-edited by Ananya Roy and Veronika Zablotsky
challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu
August 22, 2025 at 11:36 PM
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Limited (Extended) Call for Contributions to Transnational Black Studies (Liverpool UP) by August 15th.

Please note wide-ranging areas on p.2 & share especially to non-Anglo / non-Western Black + Afro-Indigenous scholars, writers, etc. who you admire and have a lesson or a word for future scholars.
July 15, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Limited (Extended) Call for Contributions to Transnational Black Studies (Liverpool UP) by August 15th.

Please note wide-ranging areas on p.2 & share especially to non-Anglo / non-Western Black + Afro-Indigenous scholars, writers, etc. who you admire and have a lesson or a word for future scholars.
July 15, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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the Supreme Court is illegitimate. Period.
BREAKING: the Supreme Court *grants* the Trump administration's emergency plea in DHS v. D.V.D. to resume deporting non-citizens to third countries. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissent at length. The majority cites no reasons for granting the government's request.
June 23, 2025 at 8:37 PM
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June 13, 2025 at 5:59 PM
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I summarize here how DOD interprets the limits of federal troop authority in LA (as best as possible given the volumes on text on this topic), from restrictions on surveillance, interrogation, and other cop-like behavior, to exceptions for "extraordinary" emergencies and "private capacity" conduct.
Here’s What Federal Troops Can (and Can’t) Do While Deployed in LA
Pentagon rules sharply limit US Marines and National Guard activity in Los Angeles, prohibiting arrests, surveillance, and other customary police work.
www.wired.com
June 13, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reminder that the current configuration known as ICE officially founded in March 2003. If it were a person, it could’ve had its first (legal) drink just last year in the US. I have shoes older than ICE. We know that soles can’t be replaced if they no longer exist—or never did 🗑️ Have a good weekend.
June 14, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Gaza is close to hearts & actions worldwide. Solidarity @freedomflotilla.bsky.social & others from land + air show us Gaza & Palestinian lib. are physically close, too. What might the world hold in 7 days?

Freedom flotilla comrades are exceptional. They don’t need to be the exception. #EndtheSeige
June 9, 2025 at 4:44 AM
Nottoway’s Cousins (2025)
May 23, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Sometimes people say “this too shall pass” but they don’t specify it’ll pass like a kidney stone does.
May 23, 2025 at 12:14 AM
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Proximity to power has academia & the 4th estate in service to authoritarian empire. They distort our relationship & access to material resources, evidence, knowledge, and replace it with violence. Shoutout to students of the world—permitted to graduate or not, for calling us into global account.
May 13, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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May 13th 1985: Philly police bombed MOVE org + two city blocks. Tree (12) & Delisha (14) Africa’s remains still used in classes at UPenn & Princeton

Now: tanks, Cop Cities, ICE human traffic ops. Authoritarian violence starts w/ poor, Black, Indigenous, disabled folks—& expands if we refuse witness
May 13, 2025 at 2:47 PM
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there’s currently 22 items that are under $30, which can provide Gazans a few days worth of Internet. don’t miss Cynthia Dewi Oka's A Tinderbox in Three Acts or Lea Taranto’s A Drop in the Ocean, which were recently added :)

tinyurl.com/authors4esims

#ConnectingGaza
May 13, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Awoken to new deaths among bio fam + close kin every day this week. Global regimes & deathscapes thieve the scales of grief. What could hold genocides, ongoing pandemics, untold disappearances, sudden illness? It’s too much. Heavy to be a living ghost in an alienating city of strangers—
May 13, 2025 at 3:38 PM
May 13th 1985: Philly police bombed MOVE org + two city blocks. Tree (12) & Delisha (14) Africa’s remains still used in classes at UPenn & Princeton

Now: tanks, Cop Cities, ICE human traffic ops. Authoritarian violence starts w/ poor, Black, Indigenous, disabled folks—& expands if we refuse witness
May 13, 2025 at 2:47 PM