Clean Slate
Published on Chronicle Vitae on February 3, 2015.
There was my journey from primary sources to a dissertation and from dissertation to manuscript. A ragged and torn poster from 2005 declared that I was once an “emerging scholar.” The poster’s condition felt like a strange symbol of early hope and promise that had been degraded by painful reality. I didn’t dwell on it long as I began to look, really look, at the accumulated papers of my academic life. These artifacts told a story, one that I now know the ending to.