Coming back from sabbatical in Fall 2025 means coming back to everyone talking about AI. It would be nice if I could say I spent a year not thinking about it. Instead I spent a year reading, with horror, all my teacher friends' texts and posts about dealing with a dizzying uptick in academic misconduct. …
Continue reading The Best Thing I’ve Heard about Generative AI
![British Library digitised image from page 191 of "Badauderies parisiennes. Les Rassemblements: physiologies de la rue [Edited with a] prologue par O. Uzanne, etc"](https://christianasalah.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/wedding-e1754079554104.png?w=472)
It's Sunday morning and I've been woken up early by my 4-year-old's loud singing in the next room. So naturally, I'm on the couch reading about the stigma against Victorian men marrying their brothers' widows. At this point, you may be thinking "that's an odd life choice" -- about the Victorian men, or about me …
Continue reading Who the Victorians Absolutely Would Not Marry
Lately, with all that's wrong in the world, I've been looking for the comfort of crime. All right, fine -- what I actually mean are detective shows and book series, where the comfort lies not in the crime but in the solving. It's a quick fix for seeing bad and messy untangled and set right. …
Continue reading Anatomy of a Murder Show: Diagnosing “My Life is Murder”
Because you can't think about sourdough starter and so many subscription services all the time: Here is a list of the things you can't get out of your mind when you teach Intro to Women's and Gender Studies during a global pandemic. You think about essential workers -- grocery employees, cleaners, nursing home and hospital …
Continue reading The Pandemic and the Patriarchy: a Grudge List
A few days after refusing a proposal from the man who would eventually become her husband, Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- turn-of-the-20th-century writer and social reformer -- wrote a document in her private diary that she titled “An Anchor to Windward.” It details her reasons for wishing to remain single. A little context: Walter Stetson proposed …
Continue reading “I Am Cool, Fearless, and Strong”: Reasons for Living Single
Daily More Erratic 