This is the twelfth entry in my Links in the Time of Coronavirus series (?), marking a year since the beginning of the pandemic. And whether it was because the semester started again and I’m teaching three classes (and so I have had less time to “surf the internet” [i.e., despairingly look at my phone because there’s nothing else to do]) or because the first full month of the Biden administration was just, um, less filled with news, or whether we’ve reached a holding pattern with regard to the pandemic—just waiting for the number of vaccinated people to increase—there are fewer links here than at probably any point in the last twelve months. As such, I thought I’d start with a section that is usually down the page a bit. Less timely, perhaps, but there were lots of interesting things published over the past month:

Theory and Criticism

Kelly Horan, “More Heart, Less Darkness,” review of Love’s Shadow, by Paul A. Bové.

boundary 2 Editorial Collective, “Does Attention to Language Matter Anymore? Philology, Translation, Criticism.”

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, “On Cosmopolitanism and the Love of Literature: Revisiting Harold Bloom through His Final Books.”

Gerry Canavan, “Science Fiction and Utopia in the Anthropocene.”

Mark McGurl, “Unspeakable Conventionality: The Perversity of the Kindle.”

Jane Hu, “Said by Said.”

David Kurnick, “Queer Theory and Literary Criticism’s Melodramas.”

Martin Hägglund, “Marx, Hegel, and the Critique of Religion: A Response.”

Étienne Balibar, “Politics and Science: One Vocation or Two?”

Len Gutkin, “We’re Off to the Method Wars.”

Anirudh Sridhar, Mir Ali Hosseini, and Derek Attridge, eds., The Work of Reading: Literary Criticism in the Twenty-First Century.

Hannah Walser, “Literary Scholars Should Argue Better.”

Maximillian Alvarez, “Cornel West: ‘My Ridiculous Situation at Harvard.'”

Meera S. Nair and Andy Z. Wang, “Cornel West To Depart Harvard, Return To Union Theological Seminary.”

Andrew Albanese, “New Report Explores ‘Engagement’ with Books, Digital Media.”

And Mary Zaborskis, “Quizzical: Which Academic Press Are You?”

Coronavirus

Emily Cochrane, “Divided Senate Passes Biden’s Pandemic Aid Plan.”

Melissa Healy, “California’s Coronavirus Strain Looks Increasingly Dangerous: ‘The Devil Is Already Here.'”

Michael Astor, “The Last Living Man of the Juma People in Brazil Has Died from Covid-19.”

Politics and Economics

Rachel L. Swarns, “Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales.”

Robert D. McFadden and Michael M. Grynbaum, “Rush Limbaugh Dies at 70; Turned Talk Radio into a Right-Wing Attack Machine.”

Aaron Katersky, “Lawsuit Accuses Donald Trump, Giuliani and Others of Conspiring to Incite Capitol Riot.”

Julian Berger, “Biden assures US Allies He Will Reverse Trump’s Policies and Legacy.”

Al Jazeera, “US Capitol Police Investigating Thirty-Five Officers for Roles in Riot.”

Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui, “Where Have All the Houses Gone?”

Nuclear and Environmental

John Schwartz, “Achoo! Climate Change Lengthening Pollen Season in US, Study Shows.”

Hyperarchival

Bonnie Riva Ras, “Turkish Garbage Collectors Open a Library from Books Rescued from the Trash.”

Cal Newport, “E-mail Is Making Us Miserable.”

Literature and Culture

The New Yorker Radio Hour, “Patricia Lockwood Talks with Katy Waldman.”

Howard Fishman, “David Lynch’s Industrious Pandemic.”

Edward Delman, “Afghanistan’s Buddhas Rise Again.”

Matt Seybold, “The Political Economy of Chappelle’s Redemption Songs.”

Kayla Cobb, “HBO Max’s Persona Will Make You Rethink Personality Tests.”

Noah Berlatsky, “The Poignant Story WandaVision Lost on Its Way to the End.”

Scott Reyburn, “JPG File Sells for $69 Million, as ‘NFT Mania’ Gathers Pace.”

And Mike Ives, “A Drone Went Bowling. Hollywood Noticed.”

Music

Joe Coscarelli, “Daft Punk Announces Breakup after 28 Years.”

Video Games

Christopher Breu and Christian Haines, eds., “History’s Arcades.”

Luke Plunkett, “Vice City and Grand Theft Auto III‘s Source Code Has Been Reverse-Engineered.”

Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction

Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Poetic Realism.

Ankhi Mukherjee, “A Labyrinth for Our Time.”

Maria Kuznetsova, “One Small Thing.”

Tobey Ward, “Mother Pass.”

Mike Good, “Roethke Meets Father John Misty.”

Big Other, “Announcing the Finalists for the 2020 Big Other Book Award for Poetry!”

Humanities and Higher Education

Jeroen Bouterse, “‘A Good Way Of Knowing Things’: Eric Hayot’s Defense Of The Humanities.”

L. D. Burnett, “What a Public-Information Act Request Revealed about My College President.”

Michael Vasquez, “Fired for Tweeting? A Professor Says She Was Cut Loose in Retaliation.”

Sandra Steingraber, “Commentary: A Farewell to Ithaca College after Eighteen Years.”

Eric Kelderman, “The California State System Made a Big Bet for Fall. It Paid Off in Enrollment.”

Rebecca S. Natow, “Why Haven’t More Colleges Closed?”

Beckie Supiano, “The Scholar with the Skeleton Key.”

Parenting

Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine, “We Expect 300,000 Fewer Births Than Usual This Year.”

Oneonta

Jack Stripling, “For Town and Gown, a Pandemic Pressure Test.”