Joshua Barsczewski

@joshuabarsczewski

Muhlenberg College. Assistant Prof of English Literatures and Creative Writing. Writing Program Director. Writing Center Director. Director of the Center for Ethics

185 Siguiendo304 Seguidores1079 Publicaciones

Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y joshuabarsczewski.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 13d

Like, look at this. The US needs more of this

A display case with almost 20 different types of elaborate layer cakes

Two slices of cake on styrofoam plates, one dulce de leche flavored and one Oreo flavored. Both are layer cakes with thick layers of brigadeiro-consistency filling

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 16d

Should've won Best Picture just for this dress. (Also lowkey one of the best novel-to-film adaptations ever.)

Atonement. Keira Knightley in a beautiful floor-length green gown, smoking a cigarette

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 17d

This summer I’m rereading old faves. This book by Michael Cunningham is one of the first “adult” books I read as a teenager. It’s still stunning, but reading about characters in the 80s/90s is filling me with so much rage. They still had some optimism that that world was becoming a better place. 😭

Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 18d

Feeling sappy today, but these are pictures of me with some truly brilliant undergrads from Muhlenberg's Writing Center presenting at CCCC in 2025. One of the highlights of my career. I chose CCCC to take them because in my experience, it's a conference that's extremely friendly towards newcomers.

Four attendees at a conference standing in front of the Conference's poster: 2025 CCCC Baltimore, entitled "Computer Love." The attendees are one bald professor and three young undergrads, all wearing lanyards.

A conference panel where one speaker, an undergraduate, is holding the microphone while the other three panelists look at her.

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 22d

The important questions

Tweet from @blueliasd saying “now that the straights got the odyssey directed by christopher nolan when do the gays finally get the song of achilles film adaptation directed by luca guadagnino?”

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 23d

Brazilians celebrating Spain’s win

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· 23d

In Brazil right now and the way not a single person here is supporting Argentina is hilarious 😂

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jul 12

TIL that some sheetz that cater to truck drivers have the really good exfoliating soap so they can get oil off their hands. If you need a cheap spa day, you could do worse…

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jul 10

Road trip essentials

A bag of Corn Nuts, Mexican Street Corn flavor

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jul 6

This particular tweet was in response to the amazing essay "Man Crossing an Ice Field" by Laura Glen Louis, but here's my booklist for fall! Staying mostly canonical this year since it's a new class. ,

Dillard, Annie. An American Childhood, 0060915188
Karr, Mary. The Art of Memoir. 9780062223074
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, 0679721886
Tolentino, Jia, ed. The Best American Essays 2025, 9780063351592
Westover, Tara. Educated, 9780399590528

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jun 22

I understand the bureaucratic reasons why, but seeing a job in my field advertised for 1 to 2 dollars an hour is really something 🙃

First Year Writing Adjunct Instructor
Seton Hill University
Job details

$1 - $2 an hour
Temporary, Part-time, Non-tenure
Day shift
1 Seton Hill Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jun 22

Sheepstealer #HouseOfTheDragon

A cartoon duck carrying a blade with the phrase “I choose violence” underneath

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jun 21

Happy Father’s Day, y’all!

Rhaenyra Targaryen from House of the Dragon

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jun 18

This shit had 12-year-old me HOOKED

Murder in Small Town X, a tv reality show. Contestants facing camera in a coastal town,
Looking serious
I

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jun 14

Everything Trump touches dies

Tweet from Gianmarco Soresi saying “lol that only game we lost was when Trump came” in reference to the Knicks

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Jun 11

Rewatching House of the Dragon and Criston Cole has got to be simultaneously the hottest and the most punchable character in TV history. Can’t stand his beautiful traitorous ass

Fabian Frankel as Ser Criston Cole in HBO’s House of the Dragon

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· May 30

Breaking: The Magical Mr. Mistoffelees has declined an invitation to perform at Freedom 250

Still of Mr Mistofelees from the original Broadway cast. A man dressed as a cat

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· May 2

If you hear someone sobbing, it’s me after saying goodbye to our graduating Writing Center tutors! 26 graduating (out of a total staff of 55). Class or 2026 was the group where I feel like I started to hit my stride as a professor and WC director, so saying goodbye to them is especially hard

A group of approximately 33-34 students plus one bald professor posing in front of a red curtain.

A group of approximately 22 students plus one bald professor posing in front of a red curtain.

A group of approximately 33-34 students plus one bald professor posing in front of a red curtain. Silly faces

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Apr 29

Me when a student asked me if I ever heard of Sufjan Stevens because he’s “really good.”

Aslan from Chronicles of Narnia saying “Do cite cite the deep magic to me Witch. I was there when it was written.”

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Apr 22

Happy birthday to the late, great Louise Glück, the poet I’ve tuned to perhaps more than any other. If you only ever get to read one book of poetry, you might try Averno, imho her greatest (most people say Wild Iris but oh well). It includes, among other things, this tremendous opening:

You die when your spirit dies.
Otherwise, you live. You may not do a good job of it, but you go on -
something you have no choice about. When I tell this to my children
they pay no attention. The old people, they think - this is what they always do:
talk about things no one can see
to cover up all the brain cells they're losing.
They wink at each other; listen to the old one, talking about the spirit
because he can't remember anymore the word for chair.
It is terrible to be alone. I don't mean to live alone —
to be alone, where no one hears you.
I remember the word for chair.
I want to say — I'm just not interested anymore.

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Apr 19

Tweet from @DPD_ saying “Reese Witherspoon: AI will replace you unless you get on board

Sandra Bullock: AI will replace you unless you become its friend

Charlize Theron: AI will replace you unless you are a dancer(?)

Nicole Kidman: here’s how I decided to become a death doula”

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Apr 12

Just read this miraculous phrase and I will be aiming to work it into at least 2 conversations this week

“wisdom was chasing you but you were faster”

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Apr 2

@emiilywrld ‘s tweet saying “So you mean to tell me a shrimp fried this rice”

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Apr 1

I'm so excited for my fall classes: Gay Poetry and Reading/Writing Memoir! Two new preps the semester I apply for tenure is perhaps a foolish idea, but oh well. At least I'll get to read lots of gay shit

FYS 129: Gay Poetry: This course examines the intersection of gender, sexuality, and aesthetics by asking students to consider the relationship between personal identity and poetic form, between collective social movements and personal expression, and between the dueling political strategies of assimilation and revolution. This course will emphasize contemporary LGBTQ+ poetry, with a particular focus on work published in the decades following the 1969 Stonewall uprising—a moment often cited, though not without oversimplification, as a turning point in U.S. queer political life. Students who are uncomfortable reading poetry are especially encouraged to enroll, as this course will assume no prior experience with poetry and will teach methods of close reading that even the most poetry-averse among us can learn. We will use writing as a way to unlock meaning, with essays asking students to put published poetry into conversation with their own lives, other poets, and queer theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and José Esteban Muñoz. Much of our poetry reading will come from the poets highlighted in the recently-published anthology Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry After Stonewall by Stephanie Burt, but we will also take in-depth looks at the works of Richard Siken and Essex Hemphill.

ENG 282: Special Topic: Reading and Writing Memoir. This class explores memoir as a hybrid form, at once intimate and public, personal and theoretical, aesthetic and political. Students will read memoirs that specifically focus on the individual in tension with, or in resistance to, an often hostile social world, potentially including writers such as Mary Karr, Paul B. Preciado, Maggie Nelson, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Ames Hawkins. Through close reading and creative experimentation, students will examine how memoir's formal choices raise theoretical questions about voice, embodiment, identity, power, and memory. Writing assignments will emphasize reading to write and writing as a way of learning to read more critically and attentively. This course will count for Departmental Prose and Underrepresented requirements, and is a hybrid course that also counts for Creative Writing.

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Mar 25

Not exactly the same but the gays had to suffer through an entire season of RuPaul calling this definitively gold plunger the “Platinum Plunger”

Jinkx Monsoon holding a rhinestone encrusted gold plunger.

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Mar 18

Today in my job I get to prepare my thoughts and remarks for a panel discussion on Heated Rivalry 😂😂 academia is a hoot sometimes

Poster advertising an event on March 19th at Muhlenberg College called “Heated Rivalry: A Scholarly Discussion of Competition, Gender, and the Erotics of Rivalry.”

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Mar 13

One of the best parts of editing #Adequate has been seeing how writers take up the concept and talk about them in different contexts, for different audiences. Thanks to @oliviawood.bsky.social for organizing an event at CUNY Graduate Center with 3 New York-area contributors.

Olivia Wood, Amy Wan, and Crystal Broch Colombini on a panel, the university press website with information about Adequate: Rewriting the Logics of Success in Rhetoric and Composition in the background.

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Mar 7

It’s weird traveling now that my dog Rosie has passed. I used to feel so guilty for abandoning her because she was so devoted to me. The guilt ruined several trips.😂😂 Now, I’m free of that guilt…but I wish i wasn’t. Anyway, everyone hug your dogs. It’s magical. And look how beautiful my lady was

The most beautiful German Shepherd in the world, standing in a field with her one paw crossed over the other and a look of eagerness on her face. She’s wearing a red bow on her collar

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Mar 6

Some of the many contributors to Adequate met up at #4c26!

Lauren Bowen, Timothy Oleksiak, Seth Kahn, Stephanie Kerschbaum, Olivia Wood, and Laurie Pinkerton in a bar, holding copies of Adequate: Rewriting the Logics of Success in Rhetoric and Composition

Joshua Barsczewski@joshuabarsczewski· Mar 5

Fyi if you like some people I know forgot to pack toothpaste, the front desk at the Hilton has some courtesy packs #4c26