Nathan K. Hensley

Nathan K. Hensley

@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse (Chicago, 2025) • The Barbara Johnson Collective (Northwestern, 2026) Fresno, Silver Spring • https://www.nathankhensley.net/ • he/him/his • Everything here in personal capacity only

5.7K followers2.8K following4.8K posts

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

whenever the checks come from the Anthropic lawsuit, maybe we all can pool the settlement money so our students can finally afford to print out PDFs, to go along with their three separate university-provided AI “enterprise accounts”

Nathan K. Hensley reposted

The Associated Press
@apnews.com

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

bit.lySerbia’s strongman leader Vucic concedes defeat to student-led movement in seismic political shiftThe long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

Nathan K. Hensley reposted

Sarah Brouillette
@sarahbrouillette.bsky.social

Replying to @nathankhensley.bsky.social

I touch on this just a little in a chapter but, it's what I'm doing now! re. the use of AI in the intensification and deskilling of publishing work (including writing) happy to share work in draft (email me) ... I have an article forthcoming sometime in the new year

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

An honestly new problem for the study of ideology & culture is the doom loop whereby job-demolishing AI engines also generate the “entertaining” i.e. psychically demolishing content for the permanent underclass created by them in the first place. We need a Raymond Williams for the era of slop?

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Nathan K. Hensley reposted

Nathan Elliott
@shakespeareswims.bsky.social

Worth taking a look at for a lot of reasons

Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Thanks so much to student journalist Brendan Fijol, who allowed what was supposed to be a fluff piece on a new faculty book to instead highlight the catastrophic state of academic labor at GU & beyond, and the coordinated attacks on thought since 2020. + @devingarofalo.bsky.social

thehoya.comEnglish Professor Coedits Book Celebrating Literary Critic, Intellectual FreedomA new book coedited by Georgetown University English professor Nathan Hensley addresses freedom of thought amid a period of falling appreciation for academics.
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

“Casualized knowledge workers of the world unite!” — not a bad slogan actually

Kasia@scullingmonkey.bsky.social

I read this realising I have become a “casualized knowledge worker” What a succinct way of describing this

Nathan K. Hensley reposted

Sonja Drimmer
@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Thanks so much to student journalist Brendan Fijol, who allowed what was supposed to be a fluff piece on a new faculty book to instead highlight the catastrophic state of academic labor at GU & beyond, and the coordinated attacks on thought since 2020. + @devingarofalo.bsky.social

thehoya.comEnglish Professor Coedits Book Celebrating Literary Critic, Intellectual FreedomA new book coedited by Georgetown University English professor Nathan Hensley addresses freedom of thought amid a period of falling appreciation for academics.

Nathan K. Hensley reposted

Eleanor Courtemanche
@ecourtem.bsky.social

This article is incredible: it’s so rare to see any media cover a new book in the humanities not just as new knowledge 😮 but as a contribution to an urgent public debate about the material conditions of knowledge 😮😮

Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Thanks so much to student journalist Brendan Fijol, who allowed what was supposed to be a fluff piece on a new faculty book to instead highlight the catastrophic state of academic labor at GU & beyond, and the coordinated attacks on thought since 2020. + @devingarofalo.bsky.social

thehoya.comEnglish Professor Coedits Book Celebrating Literary Critic, Intellectual FreedomA new book coedited by Georgetown University English professor Nathan Hensley addresses freedom of thought amid a period of falling appreciation for academics.
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Thanks so much to student journalist Brendan Fijol, who allowed what was supposed to be a fluff piece on a new faculty book to instead highlight the catastrophic state of academic labor at GU & beyond, and the coordinated attacks on thought since 2020. + @devingarofalo.bsky.social

thehoya.comEnglish Professor Coedits Book Celebrating Literary Critic, Intellectual FreedomA new book coedited by Georgetown University English professor Nathan Hensley addresses freedom of thought amid a period of falling appreciation for academics.
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Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

And Victoria Chen, a now-PhD-student who copyedited the book as a senior, was able to describe the poverty of instrumental thought & explain the alternatives Johnson’s work helps model— positions rarely articulated in student publications,+ 💖💥

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

And finally please look at Devin’s ( @devingarofalo.bsky.social) amazing quote here, and how it got these superb student journalists to look up a few of the stats — such as that full professors at GU make someting like 4-5x our adjunct colleagues— which now appear in GU’s paper of record. / end 💖💥🙏

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Thanks so much to student journalist Brendan Fijol, who allowed what was supposed to be a fluff piece on a new faculty book to instead highlight the catastrophic state of academic labor at GU & beyond, and the coordinated attacks on thought since 2020. + @devingarofalo.bsky.social

thehoya.comEnglish Professor Coedits Book Celebrating Literary Critic, Intellectual FreedomA new book coedited by Georgetown University English professor Nathan Hensley addresses freedom of thought amid a period of falling appreciation for academics.
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

OMG yes? And the fact that ideologically co-opted outlets like the Chronicle *continue to try to make this point controversial* highlights how far we’ve been Overton-windowed into entertaining practices that are, in the humanities anyway, antithetical to the entire concept of scholarship

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Nathan K. Hensley reposted

Jeremy Littau
@jeremylittau.com

This is staggering. Even in the social media startup era of the early Aughts, nobody had losses anywhere close to this as they tried to work their way to profitability.

reuters.comAnthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026, WSJ reportsAnthropic reported a net loss of more than $80 billion in the first half of the year and signaled it could spend as much as $750 billion in ​the coming years to secure more computing capacity, the Wal...
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

i made the equivalent of the GDP of bolivia disappear — am i a genius businessman and/or visionary now

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com

Exclusive: Anthropic's draft IPO filing reveals red-hot growth, massive computing costs and an $80 billion net loss. Here are the highlights. on.wsj.com/4z2t6TR

on.wsj.comExclusive | Anthropic S-1 Shows Red-Hot Growth, Risks and Massive Computing CostsIn a new draft prospectus viewed by the Journal, the AI giant disclosed an $80 billion net loss for the first half of 2026 and a long list of risk factors.
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

i am proud to announce that my lemonade stand lost $5,678.05 last month and is, therefore, the most successful lemonade stand in history!! This record proves that my stand will soon make all existing lemonade stands, if not the concept of lemonade stands itself, obsolete. My lemonade is poisonous

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

YES! everyone I know feels this. maybe we need a name for this strange new affect of simultaneously negative and (deeply) positive aesthetic response particular to the slop era— where you love something profoundly precisely *because* it is janky

Jon Hegglund@jonhegglund.bsky.social

I am strangely overjoyed to see papers with the roughness and imperfection that is the natural habitat of actual human writing

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

“I’ve come to realize that business schools don’t just reflect our economic system — they actively manufacture its priorities and normalize its harms, training the future leaders who will design and defend the structures driving our overlapping global crises.” 💥💥💥

Naomi Oreskes@naomioreskes.bsky.social

Today’s must read. I love every word of this: I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down.Students come in with noble intentions and leave with flawed expertise.
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

I came across the eBay site for Milwaukee/Chicago Goodwill, and among many other mundane listings they have the most unusual pictures of G.I. Joe figurines — I think it is art of some kind. 1/2

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

Whoever made these pictures and posted them, for an incredibly obscure online auction — never knowing that they would be viewed at all, never mind appreciated — was definitely trying something, and I salute them

Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

"The recommendations are asking the university to review several ... socio-cultural degrees, including those studying African, African American, Jewish, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Women’s studies."

Adam Shprintzen@veghistory.bsky.social

All of this sucks and congratulations we are creating 19th century systems where only the wealthy elite can study the subjects that make us human and critical thinkers.

thetimes-tribune.comPenn State recommends closing 47 degree programsA year after trustees approved the closure of several Penn State campuses across the commonwealth, more consolidation efforts are underway.
Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social

“What I sought to do in this essay … was to examine how literature approached a theoretical impasse that political theory simply ignored.” Emma is being far too modest here & this is a fantastic précis of an essay that shows how apprenticeship demolished the entire inner logic of contract theory 💥

Emma Davenport@emmadavenport.bsky.social

Want to read about me embarrassing myself? The Victorian Studies blog's got you covered! Come for the admission of total incompetence, stay for the open-access full article! 😱🫠😅 iupress.org/connect/blog... @victstudies.bsky.social

iupress.orgVictorian Studies 68.2: History’s Embarrassments - Indiana University PressEmma Davenport (Emory University) Read Davenport’s essay, “Gifting Contract: The Persistence of Caribbean Apprenticeship in Wilkie Collins's Armadale,”