Back in HASTAC's distant past, when I was its most prolific blogger, I reserved the right to write one blog a month that was completely unrelated to digitality, cognition, new media, or anything. Since we original HASTAC'ers have been joined by the marvelous HASTAC Scholars (they inspire me every day!), I've tried to be more disciplined. But today I have to stray from topic to review E. M. Broner's The Red Squad, the most marvelous, original, feisty, political, comical, serious, delightful activist academic novel in memory. The novel is youthful, sprightly, fresh, and, according to Wikipedia, its author was born in 1927. Take that, everyone! The Red Squad comes out in May. Order it now.

The main character and narrator, Anka, is now a professor at a university in Ohio. On her doorstep one day she finds a soggy manila envelope and, inside, a Freedom of Information file detailing the years when she inhabited the Bullpen at an urban Detroit university, ABD, writing her dissertation, an adjunct instructor, teaching writing along with a bunch of other ABD's finding their way into the profession of English. ... (Read the full review)

An octogenarian feminist channels her youth in this deft mystery.

This fast-paced new novel feels like the work of a young author brimming with energy, but is in fact written by an 82-year-old veteran feminist. Esther M. Broner flashes back and forth between “Now” and “Then” as she tells the tale of her protagonist, Anka. The flashbacks begin after the main character, Anka, a professor, receives a Freedom of Information file about her political activities, and motley crew of associates, in her heyday. ... (Read the full review)

Does history repeat itself, or would it be better described as a tape loop on which we play our solo? In The Red Squad by E.M. Broner, Anka Pappas receives an envelope of surveillance records of her antiwar activities during the Vietnam War. Suddenly we rewind to the late 1960s, but with the present day spliced in.

Anka experiences a series of flashbacks to the days when she and her ABD (all but dissertation) colleagues at a Detroit university shared an office that they called the Bullpen. In addition to working on their dissertations, they taught and worked for the underground, which transported conscientious objectors across the Canadian border. They celebrated dissertation completion, the music of the Haight and Motown, all the while laughing at their egregious students. ... (Read the full review)