Oneonta

Hartwick College’s Faculty Lecture Series, Fall 2026

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This fall, the Faculty Development Committee and the Office of Academic Affairs at Hartwick College will present three speakers in the annual Faculty Lecture Series.

All talks (unless noted) take place at during the common hour: 12:20–1:20 p.m. in Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall at Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

Joseph Von Stengel, “AI-Empowered Creativity,” Friday, September 11, 2026.

Laurel Elder, “Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Dobbs America,” Friday, October 9, 2026 (book launch for Not Going Back: Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-“Dobbs” America, co-authored with Steven Greene and Mary-Kate Lizotte).

For more information, visit the Faculty Lecture Series webpage.

(And this is my last year organizing the Faculty Lecture Series!)

“Art Is for Everybody: An Interview with Anna Kornbluh” in boundary 2

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I increasingly think that Anna Kornbluh is one of our most important critics, and so I was overwhelmingly delighted to be able to bring her to Hartwick College to deliver the 2024–25 Babcock Lecture during the 2024 Oneonta Literary Festival. I was also extremely honored that she agreed to sit down with me the next day to discuss her work and career. That interview has now been published as “Art Is for Everybody: An Interview with Anna Kornbluh” in boundary 2 (vol. 53, no. 2; the link to the interivew should work for three months.)


Here’s an abstract of the interview:

This interview with literary critic Anna Kornbluh was conducted on October 18, 2024, in conjunction with her delivery of the 2024–25 Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College. With her most recent book, Immediacy; or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism (2024), Kornbluh has established herself as one of the most insightful and important critics of contemporary culture. In this conversation, she reflects on how she came to literary studies, the strangeness of realism, dialectical reading, and the role of style in literary criticism. Kornbluh also discusses political formalism and the value of institutions, the term neoliberalism, social media, the relationship between organizing and literary study, recent projects on climate counteraesthetics and middlebrow aesthetics, and the political realities of late 2024.

In further interview news, I have conducted and am currently transcribing and editing an interview with Paul A. Bové.

And for previous interviews: “An Interview with Jonathan Arac,” “Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.,” “Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,” and “Isn’t It a Beautiful Day? An Interview with J. Hillis Miller.”

“Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.” in boundary 2

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I am really happy that my interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.—the first of two interviews I conducted in conjunction with The Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College, which I organized as Cora A. Babcock Chair in English from 2022–25—is now out in print. “Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.,” has just been published in the November 2025 issue of boundary 2 (vol. 52, no. 4).

It was a busy weekend—in the course of only a few days, Tally flew to Oneonta from Texas, delivered a lecture, sat down for an interview, and then moderated the final Zoom panel celebrating Fredric Jameson’s ninetieth birthday from my home office (all while he was in the middle of editing Verso’s “Jameson at 90” [2025] blog series)—and so I am deeply thankful to Tally for taking the time to come to Hartwick and chat.

Here’s an abstract of the interview:

This interview with literary critic Robert T. Tally Jr. was conducted on April 26, 2024, in conjunction with his delivery of the 2023–24 Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College. Tally is one of the premier critics presently working in the field of spatial literary studies and has published over a dozen books and over one hundred articles and book chapters on US and world literature, critical theory, and the history of criticism. Reflecting broadly on the trajectory of his career, Tally discusses the gratitude that has accompanied his scholarly writing, his interests in spatial literary studies, his relationship with the teaching and work of Jonathan Arac, Paul A. Bové, and Fredric Jameson, and the role of theory at the present time.

The second interview conducted in conjunction with the 2025 Babcock Lecture, my interview with Anna Kornbluh, will appear in the May 2026 issue of boundary 2.

And for previous interviews: “An Interview with Jonathan Arac,” “Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,” and “Isn’t It a Beautiful Day? An Interview with J. Hillis Miller.”

Author Expo 2025 in Oneonta, New York

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I will have a table with my books for sale—2013–2017: Sonnets (LJMcD Communications, 2024) and perhaps one copy of The Rocking Chair (Blue Sketch, 2015)—at Author Expo 2025 in Oneonta, New York on Sunday, October 12 from 2:00–4:00 p.m. at the Foothills Performing Arts Center (24 Market St, Oneonta, NY 13820).

Author Expo 2025 is put on by the Writers Salon at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta and the Huntington Memorial Library.

Summer and Fall 2024 Links

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I was so busy this fall I fell behind on pretty much everything, so I’m making up for it with a big two-season link post, roughly mid-May until the end of 2024.


Nuclear and Environmental

The Editorial Board of The New York Times, “The President’s Arsenal.”

Elizabeth Kolbert, “When the Arctic Melts” and “Why Hurricane Milton Is a Sign of the New Abnormal.”

Damian Carrington, “Earth’s ‘Vital Signs’ Show Humanity’s Future in Balance, Say Climate Experts” and “‘No Sign’ of Promised Fossil Fuel Transition as Emissions Hit New High.”

Patrick Greenfield, “Trees and Land Absorbed Almost no CO2 Last Year. Is Nature’s Carbon Sink Failing?”

Kathleen Kingsbury, W.J. Hennigan, and Spencer Cohen, “The Last Survivors [of Hiroshima] Speak. It’s Time to Listen.”

Megan Specia and Lynsey Chutel, “Nobel Updates: Peace Prize Is Awarded to Japanese Group of Atomic Bomb Survivors.”

Christopher Kempf, “Disaster Triumphant.”

David E. Sanger, “Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat.”

William Langewiesche, “The Secret Pentagon War Game That ​Offers a Stark​ Warning for Our Times.”

W. J. Hennigan, “The Price.”

Damian Carrington, “Hopeless and Broken: Why the World’s Top Climate Scientists Are in Despair.”

Continue reading →

Hartwick College’s Faculty Lecture Series, Spring 2025

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This spring, the Faculty Development Committee and the Office of Academic Affairs at Hartwick College will present three speakers in the annual Faculty Lecture Series.

All talks take place at during the common hour: 12:20–1:20 p.m. in Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall at Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

Mark Wolff, “Did a Computer Write This? The Ethics of Reading in an Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Friday, February 7, 2025.

Karl Seeley, “Food First! Reconceptualizing Economic Growth in Light of Climate Change,” Friday, March 7, 2025.

Weiwei Zhang, “Harnessing Materiality: Building Cultural Resonance in the Digital Age,” Friday, April 11, 2025.

For more information, visit the Faculty Lecture Series webpage.

Reading at CANO’s Writers Salon

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I recently published a book, 2013–2017: Sonnets (LJMcD Communications, 2024), the first in an ongoing sonnet sequence. I have written the next book in the sequence, 2018–2024: Sonnets, and I’ve started the third, 2024–20XX: Sonnets, and I will be reading poems from these two most recent projects at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO)’s Writers Salon at the Wilber Mansion on 11 Ford Ave. I promise a poem about the election (writing it right now).

“2022.11,” “2023.01,” “2023.11,” “2023.12,” “2023.13,” and “2023.14” in Pamenar Online Magazine

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I am thrilled to have poems in Pamenar Online Magazine again! Check out: “2022.11,” “2023.01,” “2023.11,” “2023.12,” “2023.13,” and “2023.14.” Thanks to Ghazal Mosadeq for her support and the amazing journal and press she and her team have put together.

If you’re in Oneonta and want to hear some more poems from the manuscript these come from, stop by CANO’s Writers Salon on November 21. I’ll also be reading from 2013–2017: Sonnets on Wednesday, September 25 for Hartwick College’s Visiting Writers Series.

The 2024–25 Babcock Lecture: Anna Kornbluh, “Historical Fictions, Heist Flicks, and other Climate Genres for a Burning World”

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Kornbluh, Anna--HeadshotI am delighted to yet again announce that on Thursday, October 17 at 7:00 p.m. in Anderson Theater at Hartwick College, distinguished critic Anna Kornbluh will be delivering the 2024–25 Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College, which will be titled: “Historical Fictions, Heist Flicks, and other Climate Genres for a Burning World.” Kornbluh’s lecture will be followed by a reading by eminent poet and feminist critic Rachel Blau DuPlessis and is part of the Oneonta Literary Festival.


Historical Fictions, Heist Flicks, and other Climate Genres for a Burning World

In the urgent emergency of climate crisis, is there any time for art? This talk considers some of the pressures on literature and culture at present, exploring the prevailing ways that artists, authors, and critics are conceiving artistic ties to the environment, and proposing some alternative ties with the help of popular genres like historical fiction and heist films.


Anna Kornbluh is professor of English and a member of the United Faculty bargaining team at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where her research and teaching focus on the novel, film, and critical theory. She is the author of Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Realist Form (Fordham University Press, 2014), Marxist Film Theory and “Fight Club” (Bloomsbury, 2019), The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space, and Immediacy, or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism, which was recently published by Verso. She has edited special issues for b2o: an online journal, Criticism, Mediations, and Syndicate, and is a frequent guest on The American Vandal and other podcasts. She is the founder of the V21 Collective and InterCcECT (Inter Chicago Circle for Experimental Critical Theory) and is the Director of Graduate Studies at UIC.