Top left: Prof. Melani McAlister is attempting to work at home with a cat who is having none of it.
Top middle: Prof. Libby Anker's current workspace. When she's not watching Tiger Kings, she'sreading some topical American Studies books: Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe and Revolutionary Love by Michael Lerner.
Top right: A photo from a recent Quarantine walk Prof. Amber Musser took in NYC.
Middle left: a photo of a meal Prof. Elaine Peña's hosts, Rakan and Fadia, left outside her door. Prof. Peña feels fortunate that they are rooting for her and preparing her healing foods. It’s hard enough to be alone when sick and in quarantine and extra hard without a kitchen. They are amazing.
Middle: These are Pastelles — meat filled hand pies. Its a recipe from island of Rhodes imported by the Sephardic Jews of Montgomery, Alabama. Prof. Jamie Cohen-Cole learned how to make these from his grandfather, Nace. Nace's father was a founder of the community in Montgomery.
Middle right: Ron, Bruno, and Prof. Dara Orenstein are alternating between sports sagas and '70s / '80s classics for Movie Night. (Alas, no zombies.) Their most recent selection was Reds (1981), a movie Dara remembers sobbing over when she was around Bruno's age (6th grade). Bruno loved it! More for the soap opera between Warren Beatty's character and Diane Keaton's character, but, still. Now he has some vague appreciation of what it means to note that the IWW has lately regrouped to battle the Empire of Starbucks!
Bottom left: Prof. Tom Guglielmo's kids write letters each morning to family and friends. This was Miya's from last Friday, transcribed by her mom.
Bottom middle: Prof. Nicole Ivy is finding comfort in the collective forms of being together on social media. The macabre onomatopoeia of the @EndlessScreaming Twitter account, a bot with Edvard Munch as an avatar, expresses how I feel. The mutual aid work highlighted by @PrisonCulture offers a place to put that angst.
Bottom right: Prof. David Bjelajac's longtime partner (39 years)/ spouse (10 years), Lou Dellaguzzo, is launching his first novel, Always There by Leaving. It's not a good time to do a book launch, especially for small independent publishers like Beautiful Dreamer Press. However, for us, it's still cause for celebration and it mitigates our anxiety about everything else. Here's a link to The Publishing Triangle: the association of LGBTQ people in publishing.
