I’ve been thinking a lot about how writing can make a difference in the world, and even more so about what academic writing has to do with it. Though barely a start, some of my own reflections and research on this topic are now available in the form of this Open Access (i.e. free) article on activism, Rivers Solomon, and the utopian work of salvage. The article is part of a special issue on ‘Post-Utopia in Speculative Fiction’, available through the MDPI Journal Humanities, which examines various histories and ways forward for utopia in contemporary SF/F.
Academia
The 7 Worst Academics in Popular Culture
A recent article on the Times Higher Education website marked the release of Barbara Tobolowsky’s new edited collection, Anti-intellectual Representations of American Colleges and Universities: Fictional Higher Education, by doing a short piece on how popular culture portrayals ‘devalue academia’, and the real work students and academics are actually doing. Since I’m deep in piles of academic work at … Read more
Why ‘Nineteenth Century Matters’ Mattered to Me
The PhD is a strange thing. You spend three years (or four, or seven, depending on where and how you’re working) fixated on a single topic. You read lots of things you don’t need to read, and explore many avenues that will turn out to be dead ends. Your time is largely yours to spend … Read more
The 5 Stages of Revision
About two months ago I had what will likely be the first of many experiences with negative feedback, something that is part and parcel of working in academia (or anywhere, really). I submitted an article to a book collection over the summer of 2014, and after giving it very little thought for the following nine months, it … Read more