Writing specifically about merit and gender in academia, Linda A. Krefting, a professor of business at Texas Tech University, notes that stereotypes of women often “put competence and likeability in opposition.” What happens, then, is that competence appears as a problem for women, but not for men. Being too competent is coded as aggressive and […]
Gendering Brilliance Read More
I’ve been thinking about monsters. Not the zombies I usually research and write about, but the language of monsters that lurks in our everyday speech. The rhetoric of horror is so pervasive and so present. It comes to us when we have something to speak that seems unspeakable. It is deployed to justify violence and harm.
“Writers are always selling somebody out,” Joan Didion explains in the opening pages of Slouching Toward Bethlehem. These words clawed at me days after reading them in December. Now months later, the words still scratch at me when I begin to write. Didion’s words give me pause as I start new columns and projects. Do writers, implicitly or
On Writing and Selling Out Read More
This piece appeared at Chronicle Vitae on February 26, 2014. As my year off moves by slowly, I often wonder how I arrived at the situation I am in. Was there a pivotal moment that set me on this path? When did I begin to doubt that I would ever fit neatly within the academy?
The Impermanent Adjunct Read More
This post originally appeared at Chronicle Vitae on December 11th. When I decided to take a year away from academia, one of my goals was to avoid the job market. For six years, fall was a time of anticipation and dread as I waited to see what jobs would be available. How many jobs this
How to (Not) Avoid the Job Market Read More
This post is inspired by Rebecca Schuman’s post from a couple days ago. Go read it now. Also, check out the #NotARealAcademic on Twitter to see what other folks are saying. A few years ago, I was at a graduate conference presenting on a panel on post-graduate life. I was the “part-time” panelist, the one
Not a “real” academic Read More