Jay Shelat
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jshelat1.bsky.social
Jay Shelat
@jshelat1.bsky.social
3.1K followers 830 following 1.4K posts
PhD. Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College. Contemporary Literature. Writing a book about the War on Terror and domesticity. I know hundreds of Bollywood songs by heart. he/him. Views are my own.

https://www.jayshelat.com
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jshelat1.bsky.social
Hellooooo! Happy Break! I graded papers while watching housewives
November 26, 2025 at 2:24 AM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Action shot of me giving a quick talk today about the Nobel Prize for Literature! Considered this year’s winner László Krasznahorkai, whether this prize even matters, and why reading global and teanslated literature matters. Lovely time!

Leg crossed, arm out is my signature pose it seems!
November 19, 2025 at 11:51 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Sometimes “the ways in which” is more specific and better than “how”
November 16, 2025 at 4:09 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
From me and mine to you and yours, Happy, Happy Diwali, friends! 🪔❤️
October 20, 2025 at 12:28 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
NEW PYNCHON NOVEL DROPPED TODAY!
October 8, 2025 at 1:39 AM
jshelat1.bsky.social
You could be reading Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq for @mid-theory.bsky.social’s book club! We’re meeting THIS THURSDAY to chat about the book. You don’t have to read the whole thing to attend the meeting!

Sign up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
October 6, 2025 at 1:59 AM
jshelat1.bsky.social
This weekend I went to the wonderful Calder Gardens in Philly and was so inspired by the gravitas and delicacy of his work. Came to campus today and found out we have a Calder piece hanging in the administrative building!
September 29, 2025 at 5:54 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Spent the weekend in NYC with my best friends from college. A wonderful time that included taking them to their first gay bar and drag show, a candlelight concert, eating every dessert possible at the Feast of San Gennaro, and hanging out in Dumbo until 2 am.
A night view of the Manhattan skyline from Dumbo, Brooklyn
September 21, 2025 at 6:48 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Sign up for the MTC reading group for Banu Mushtaq’s 2025 International Booker Prize winning collection HEART LAMP! We’re meeting this Thursday, Sept 18! It’ll be a great time—even if you don’t do the reading :)

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
September 17, 2025 at 12:21 AM
jshelat1.bsky.social
I really like R.F. Kuang’s fantasies. Her realist novel Yellowface is fine, but I thought Babel is great and her Poppy War trilogy is some of the best fantasy writing I’ve ever read. So I’m stoked to read Katabasis!
September 7, 2025 at 10:29 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Not to brag but I made my therapist belly laugh 30 seconds into our session 😌😏
September 5, 2025 at 4:16 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Loving Helen Oyeyemi’s newest novel A NEW NEW ME. I’m an Oyeyemi evangelist because of her ability to play with form, but this newest book goes to new heights with its polyphonic (yet at the same time monophonic) voice. Seven personalities, one person—one for each day of the week. Her funniest too!
September 3, 2025 at 2:37 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
RAN FIVE MILES FOR THE FIRST TIME! This was one of my main summer goals. I’m so stoked!
September 1, 2025 at 3:41 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Oh hey I’m in this collection! Thanks to Loic and Chris for being fantastic editors!
August 31, 2025 at 10:05 AM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Happy First Day of School! It’s my 10th year teaching!
August 25, 2025 at 4:57 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan
August 12, 2025 at 3:33 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Parents are posting vids on TikTok of themselves crying after dropping their kids off at college and this comment from a professor is pissing me off:“College professor here telling you we got your babies. ❤️”

Professors aren’t babysitters! Students in college are not babies!
August 10, 2025 at 4:08 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Today, @mid-theory.bsky.social finished their summer reading group for Alexis Wright’s magisterial novel Praiseworthy. I’m so heartened to have read this alongside smart friends and colleagues!

We love big books and we cannot lie!
August 7, 2025 at 12:11 AM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Family wedding stuff this weekend and people in their 20s keep calling me Jay Uncle unironically 😮‍💨
August 2, 2025 at 10:11 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
I submitted my book Domestic Denial: Terror, Race, and Home in Literature After 9/11 for peer review today! It's under contract with @uminnpress.bsky.social. I'm super stoked that this whole process is chugging along!
July 31, 2025 at 7:19 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Finished my Fall syllabi! I'm teaching Literary Methods, Banned Books, and Political Poetry. Despite everything being bad, I'm excited to teach this semester.
Three stacks of books: Top stack: Poems from Guantanamo, Curb by Divya Victor, Whereas by Layli Long Soldier, and Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith Bottom left stack: Passing by Nella Larsen, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Angels in America by Tony Kushner Bottom right stack: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Maus I by Art Spiegelman Course Description of Methods in Lit: This course will introduce you to literary studies, the art of analyzing literature. Throughout the semester, we will focus on three literary forms: poetry, fiction, and drama. You will learn not only the vocabulary necessary for effective and mature literary analysis, but you will also learn how to apply that vocabulary to interpretations of texts. To close read is to finely examine a work for its compositional elements and, in turn, how those elements work together. Therefore, you will read a wide range of authors to expose you to the variations possible within any given literary form. The skills you learn in this course will aid you throughout your education as English majors and beyond; the analytical and writing skills gained in this class will prove valuable in any field. The rigorous (but manageable) reading load will train you to read for original, exciting, and mature interpretations. You are encouraged to make bold connections and voice your opinion and confusions openly and enthusiastically. Active learning is key to this class. Course description for Banned Books: Since their invention, books have been burned, banned, and barred. A fear of ideological resistance and political furor sit at the heart of these systematic and systemic attempts to restrict literature. In Escambia County, Florida, alone 1,600 individual books have been banned. On what basis? This class introduces us to the legal, cultural, social, and political ramifications of such book banning. How do they come to be? What do they mean for our understanding of society and ourselves? In which ways do bans shape literary tastes and marketplaces? And, finally, how can we read politically? That is, how can we read with questions of power at the forefront of our inquires? We will read not only some of the most banned books in the nation but also the legal justifications for those bans. Through class-based discussion, informal writing, and a Banned Books Week project that will be presented to the Ursinus College community, student will understand the politics of this incendiary form of restricting truth and experience. Course description for Political Poetry: Since the advent of the written word, poetry has been political. From the Mahabharat and The Iliad to Walt Whitman and TikTok and Instapoetry, verse has critiqued systems of powers and offered an answer to the way things are. This course considers how contemporary poetry captures the present political moment. Specifically examining poets of color writing in the twenty-first century, we will investigate how form speaks to political ideology and action and critique how poetry threatens infrastructures of power relating to race, gender, and sexuality. In this way, the poetry we study will not only be rigorous in theme and content, but it will also underscore the political make-up of the contemporary age, both in America and around the world. Topics of discussion include police brutality, imperialism, gendered violence, and homophobia.
July 30, 2025 at 6:49 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
I start working on my syllabi tomorrow, so till then I’m reading poolside
July 27, 2025 at 7:03 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
Image licensing and permissions is the bane of my existence.

I’ve been running around back and forth between my bank and house trying to figure out how to wire transfer two different licensing orgs for ONE image in the intro of my book
July 25, 2025 at 7:19 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
I didn’t realize that today is Jane Austen’s death anniversary until after I got ready, and I just so happened to wear my Persuasion 1814 Summer Tour shirt.
July 18, 2025 at 9:43 PM
jshelat1.bsky.social
The statement from the Coldplay cheating guy is KILLING ME. The last line😭😭😭
July 17, 2025 at 10:54 PM