Long Posts
Most of my tweets from #FanLIS
I’m planning to return and clean up formatting and add links to videos once they’re online, but for now, here’s a collection of everything I tweeted from the presentations at #FanLIS, handily compiled and tweeted for me by Noter Live.
introducing #FanLIS - fans are information workers par excellence
Leisure interests are important to study because they are what we choose to do and are no less important than any other aspect of our lives: work, health, etc.
Fan information work is a subset of fun information work.
How can we harness the passion fans have for solving the problems of LIS? Can we?
#FanLIS seeks to explore the liminal space where fandom, fan studies, and LIS interact and can hopefully learn from each other. What do we know? Where should we go next as a field of research?
They examined methods reported in Journal of Fandom Studies & Transformative Works and Cultures. Used computational analysis to scrape all keywords for both journals & inductively analyzed sample of 50 abstracts. Compared with a similar study in journalism.
20 most often occurring keywords tended to focus on research setting, media or media type, phenomenon investigated
Top theory keywords include gender, ethics, participatory culture, cultural theories, feminism, CRT, queer theory, and more. Significant overlap between theory keywords in fan studies & journalism but not in overall keywords.
Wide variety of methods employed in fan studies. Of those named specifically, ethnography is most frequent, then terms referring to specific methodological techniques (interviews, content analysis, etc). Only methodological perspective present aside from ethnography & its subtypes is case study
Dominant perspectives are sociology, culture, economics, language, history, technology
Most studies don't cite a specific theoretical perspective but many theories are used in the ones that do.
Abstract often lacked reference to specific research methodological approach. Ethnography & case studies. Discourse analysis & textual analysis dominant as well.
Conclusion: explicitly naming theoretical & methodological approaches in keywords & abstracts makes fan studies more visible to other disciplines. We should tag our research as carefully as we tag our fanfic.
Using IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) format for abstract increases likelihood of paper being read.
discussing project to explore possiblity of taking data generated by enthusiast communities and creating knowledge graph for researchers to use
Examples of visual media enthusiast data repositories include Visual Novel Database, AnimeClick, Anime Characters Database
Enthusiasts had positive response to project, wanted to cooperate to make data available with an intermediary who can bridge expertise between enthusiasts and researchers.
Used RDF format of Entity - Property - Value.
Each community has its own data model. Goal is to examine all of these, which vary according to domain (manga vs anime vs visual novel, etc) and create data model that can be used across domains.
Custom web front end allows researcher to retrieve data. Human-readable labels appear instead of actual data which makes exploration easy.
Can identify identical entities mentioned in multiple enthusiast data sources. Goal is to combine them into single entity.
All data is linked to original enthusiast source, enabling researchers to verify info and even interact with enthusiasts.
Want to maintain specific source ontologies rather than trying to impose a particular perspective on enthusiast data.
Share Alike requirement in CC licenses present a challenge. (I'd love to hear more about this. Would applying a CC license to the knowledge graph handle this?)
Project website: https://jvmg.iuk.hdm-stuttgart.de/
Using lenses from fan studies and platform studies to look at the rise and fall? and preservation of Twitch Plays Pokemon.
Twitch Plays Pokemon is a crowd-sourced set of commands being sent to control Pokemon Red. Fans created a narrative/meta-text around the game on other platforms.
Twitch Plays Pokemon moved on to other games after Pokemon Red and inspired Twitch Plays Street Fighter and Twitch Plays Dark Souls. Big decrease in participation for Twitch Plays Pokemon over time.
RQs: What are the affordances that allowed the TPP community to emerge? How did the fans act as archivists?
Qual research including looking at user-generated content, observation of stream and chat, and interview with anonymous streamer who established TPP.
Brum's affordances of produser communities present in TPP: open participation, unfinished, meritocracy & heterarchy, communal property. (Did I miss one? Regardless, this reminds me a LOT of Gee's affinity spaces.)
argues that lack of holding to accepted Twitch standards and choosing to improvise contributed to decrease of participation.
Fans served as volunteer curators, while official channel administrators mostly focus on technical content and don't engage much with metanarrative.
Conclusions - this is a hungry culture, not originally designed for expansion, small passionate group of fans remains, visiting past gameplay & nostalgia factor brings community together/revitalizes.
What if we used fannish platforms to publish scholarship?
Brainstorming doc at https://docs.google.com/document/d/19PbNM8WwUVR8J4PDkm2w0Y9cLHa6sVoRt02ivgGdj9A/edit#heading=h.ihz2vfxozzxq
The open access workflow and results are v. similar to for-profit workflow and results. "We recreate a mirror image of for-profit scholarly publishing."
We're constantly trying to prove that open access can be high quality. (What if we actually reimagine scholarly publishing? What if we make something so different it doesn't invite comparison?)
Fan publishing and academic publishing have enough in common that fan publishing can help us reimagine scholarly publishing.
Talking about affect and its centrality to fanfiction. (Making me think of my #NSFEITM work with @marijel_melo and @theartofmarch and I'm wondering how widely affect is present in LIS research in general.)
talking about fanfiction and info seeking behaviors of young adult readers
suggests that methods for fanfiction info seeking can illuminate creation of library services & support
RQs: How do YA find fanfic to read? How do they find fiction to read? How do those methods differ between each other? Are there differences between experienced fanfic readers and new fanfic readers?
Pilot study with YA ages 18 - 23. Semistructured interviews. 90% of participants began engaging with fanfic & online fandom in high school.
50% found fanfic via serendipity (Tumblr, Google, etc) and 40% via friends. (This connects with the importance of friends in my research on cosplay information literacy.)
AO3 is clear winner for fanfic reading among participants. Apparently podfic has migrated to YouTube?
None of participants went to librarians for book recs. (Oh my heart is breaking!)
On Adventure Time: "As you can see, the show makes total sense." AHAHAHAHAHAHA
Using analytic autoethnography. Sometimes gets flack from others who perceive autoethnography as not being rigorous.
importance of roles and hierarchies in determining how to include/cite sources in wiki articles; how to
Talking about individual as library & librarian and individual as archive & archivist
In a time of collapse (like now), we need to think about how people will preserve media and visual culture. The people doing this work are more likely to be pirates than institutional actors.
Critics & legal opponents of archives are not framed as individuals, but are instead described as communities, collectives, and corporations.
Oof the rhetoric of using libraries as stealing if you're not too poor to buy books. Yikes.
Individuals feel responsibility for cultural preservation and distrust institutions to do it; systematic disinvestment in public preservation institutions fuels this.
Academic libraries should learn from pirates' and fans' examples. Reject exploitative pricing models.
Fans should take their fandom and love really seriously and think about whether they can be archivists or want to be archivists.
đ Faridah ĂbĂkĂ©-ĂyĂmĂdĂ©'s ACE OF SPADES: Gossip Girl meets Get Out in a gripping debut thriller
ACE OF SPADES by Faridah ĂbĂkĂ©-ĂyĂmĂdĂ©
Chiamaka and Devon are both students at the prestigious Niveus Academy and total opposites. Devon is a nobody, a scholarship kid who spends all his time working on music composition, only noticed by his friend Jack. Chiamaka is the definition of Queen Bee, working hard to be noticed and celebrated. She is a brilliant science student with designs on Yale.
Chiamaka and Devon have three things in common, though: they are both prefects at their school this year, they are the only Black students at Niveus, and they are both victims of an anonymous texter calling themselves “Aces” and sharing Chi and Von’s secrets with the whole school.
â ïž: Author Faridah ĂbĂkĂ©-ĂyĂmĂdĂ© provided an extensive list of content warnings for the book on her website. Chief among them are racism and homophobia but this thriller is full of potential triggers so I definitely recommend reviewing the list before reading.
The promotional materials call this book “Gossip Girl meets Get Out” and that description is spot-on. If I get too specific I’ll spoil more than I’d like, but it has the anonymous gossip and deep secrets, especially around personal relationships, of Gossip Girl and the “Oh no seriously get out of there” of Get Out. Multiple times revelations made me gasp and think “OHHHH!” There is some exposition at the beginning to introduce you to the characters and the setting, but as soon as Aces’s first message comes out, the pacing picks up and things get and stay intense.
The book also reminds me of Veronica Mars, with its focus on intrigue, detailed depiction of class differences, and teenagers managing their own affairs without much adult interference.
I definitely recommend this to readers who love gossip, mystery, or thrillers. Author ĂbĂkĂ©-ĂyĂmĂdĂ© says she has “has dreamt of writing books about black kids saving (or destroying) the world all her life” (lack of capitalization in the bio on her website). She has succeeded beautifully here.
Pre-order ACE OF SPADES now, out June 1 in the US and June 10 in the UK. ĂbĂkĂ©-ĂyĂmĂdĂ© offers some pre-order incentives on her website, so be sure to check those out!
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan for the e-ARC of this book!
â ïžâ€ïžâŁïžâŠïž
[A phone displaying the US cover of ACE OF SPADES sits on top of scattered playing cards.]

Prepping to launch my consulting career đ©ââđŒ
Hello again, internet. I just finished writing the last thing I had to write for my assistantship. I’m taking a break and not hustling hustling for the next month or so. But I am planning to launch as an independent researcher and consultant in mid-June, and in case anyone else is interested in what that life is like, I thought I’d share some of my prospective work.
I really appreciate transparency such as when Dr. Katie Linder and Dr. Sara Langworthy talk about their income streams on the Make Your Way podcast, Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal talks about hers in her book The Freelance Academic, and Dr. Kelly J. Baker talks about hers on her blog. Because I haven’t launched yet, I can’t tell you how much money I’m making. But I can tell you what kind of clients I’m courting.
Here are some possibilities I have in the works:
- doing some curatorial work for my blogging host platform
- working with a small start-up to promote qualitative research and qualitative data analysis software
- editing theses and dissertations either through my own networking or as part of another organization’s network (both, if I can swing it)
- writing curriculum materials for Open Educational Resources
- working as an independent researcher again through both my own networking and as an affiliate of a consulting company
In addition to whatever paid work I get, I have a dream of also continuing to do my own research and maybe doing some creative writing (either creative non-fiction or YA fantasy), but we’ll see how much time and energy I have.
CS101: Week One
I’m auditing Stanford’s CS101 on EdX because while I love Harvard’s CS50x I think I need some back to basics stuff. (All of this recommended by the great FreeCodeCamp article, How to Hack Together Your Own CS Degree Online for Free.)
I’ll be jotting down some notes and reminders to myself here, adding future posts for this course as replies to this one.
If you’re a developer you’re going to be like “Wow, I know that already.” Yeah. It’s a 101 class, y’all.
Data Types
- numbers
- strings - text between quotation marks, e.g., “Dr. Kimberly Hirsh”
Some Javascript stuff
- // comes before a comment; a comment is not run
Spoiler font on my website
I’m playing with CSS to get spoiler-text hidden unless selected on my website. Let’s see if it works! I’m putting double pipes around it so people browsing in dark mode know where to highlight.
|| This is a spoiler. ||
Could I create a more elaborate solution to this problem? YES! But I’m not really interested in doing so.
On languishing, being dormant, and lying in wait.
Adam Grant’s article Thereâs a Name for the Blah Youâre Feeling: Itâs Called Languishing has been floating around different places I spend time online and Austin Kleon wrote a great response, I’m not languishing, I’m dormant.
On Kleon’s Instagram post about this, a commenter quoted Aaron Burr’s line in the Hamilton song “Wait for It”: “I am not standing still, I am lying in wait.” This was my first thought on seeing Kleon’s post about this, as well.
The definition Kleon shares of “languish” and the more clinical/sociological definition Grant cites focus on ill-feeling. Kleon says that because languishing is antithetical to flourishing and he’s not attempting to flourish, he’s not languishing.
I’m definitely in a downtime stage of life, having just pushed through what I call a “Chariot moment,” based on the Tarot card The Chariot, which is my fave and also all about the hustle. I’m in more of a Hermit place right now. I even just had a conversation with W. about possibly spending most of the month of May in PhD recovery, only applying for jobs that are AWESOME, waiting to pursue freelance gigs until I start to feel a bit better.
To me, languishing implies unused potential. I have a bunch of art supplies languishing in a closet in my house. Grant sort of hints at this meaning, but the dictionary definition and Kleon’s response certainly don’t consider it.
So I’m not languishing.
Another commenter on Kleon’s Instagram post suggested that the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times is a good read for thinking through this. I just borrowed the eBook from my local library and if I enjoy it, I’ll probably buy a hardcover copy. (One of the biggest changes in my life since the start of the pandemic is that I buy way more new hardcover books and I almost always buy them from one of my local bookstores.)
I’m lying in wait. If a great opportunity comes along, I’ll pounce on it. But like a cat, I’m conserving my energy.
And like a plant, I’m not ready to come up yet.
Feel free to apply other metaphors to the same ideas.

Notes and highlights from Katie Rose Guest Pryal's THE FREELANCE ACADEMIC đ

I’ve read Katie Rose Guest Pryal’s The Freelance Academic twice now. It’s a great book. I’ve taken notes on it and highlighted all over the place but I feel like I haven’t internalized the notes. So I thought I’d blog some notes, highlights, and marginalia. This blog post is no substitute for reading the book, so if this information seems useful, be sure to check it out!
The Freelance Academic Manifesto
Originally posted on Dr. Pryal’s blog.
- Get paid for your work.
- Live in a place you love with people you love.
- When you find yourself being lured back to your department for a temporary gig, remember: Theyâre never going to let you in the club.
- Stop applying to academic jobs.
- Remember that you are not alone.
Things to Do
- Read books “about how higher education has changed and how how people have dealt with these changing conditions.” p. 13
- “…read everything you can about how to start making money for the hard work you do.” p. 14
- “Take a course on how to pitch ideas to writerâs markets that pay, either through online courses or by hiring a successful freelancer friend to teach you.” p.18
- “…hire an academic career coach, who specializes in helping people transition out of the academy.” p. 18
- Finish outstanding academic commitments such as papers.
- Write your goodbye letter.
- Figure out what you’re good at by making a list of your superpowers.
- Make a list of things you’re an expert in.
- Add topics you might want to write about.
- “…figure out who would be interested in reading what you have to say in these areas.” p. 138
- Some ideas: trade magazines, in-house blogging or copywriting.
- Make a list of at least 10 story ideas so you can choose 1 to pitch.
- After you’ve pitched and written one article, pitch a series.
- Learn about running a business.
- “Find out what the going rates are in the private sector for what you do. Think about the rates that you should be charging, and start charging those rates. And remember, when you set your rates, you have to add 30%.” p. 123
- Pay yourself a steady paycheck.
- Standardize the services you offer.
- Technology
- data storage (hard drive/cloud)
- laptop
- email signature
- Library access
- Find out if you can use your university library with something like a community membership.
- Online presence
- Update social media profiles
- Get a Facebook business page.
- Get testimonials from clients and put them on your website and social media profiles.
- Business cards
- Business structure
- Consider incorporating.
- “Hire an academic career coach.” p. 18
- Professionalize yourself as a non-academic.
- “Get your research out there, just as it is.” (p. 42)
- Make your research publicly accessible on your own website and on “open-access repositories that are indexed on Google.” p. 39
- “Create an internet presence.” (p. 43)
- Learn “about website design, coding, and hosting.” p. 24
- Change your website from a CV to an online portfolio.
- “Buy the URL (web address) that is your name.” (p. 43)
- Create one page for your education and experience.
- Create another page for your publications.
- Link your publications to your repository page.
- Add a blog.
- Share your blog posts on social media.
- Blog about important things.
- Establish your areas of expertise on your blog.
- When blogging, âBe honest and always link it to the larger trends and structural issues.â p. 32 (quoting Lee Skallerup Bessette)
- “Put a bullet point on your website about your experience with grant writing or professional writing.” p. 117
- Make connections on Twitter and Instagram. Network and share your scholarship.
- “Share your ideas – widely.” p. 44
- “…put yourself in a position to engage publicly with your research.” p. 39
- Figure out which publishing venues “are interested in which genres.” p. 44
- “Take a course on how to pitch ideas to writerâs markets that pay, either through online courses or by hiring a successful freelancer friend to teach you.” p. 18
- “Read the magazines you want to write for. Learn who the editors are by reading their work.” p. 45
- “Start pitching articles in your area of expertise that are ‘pegged’ (tied) to current events.” p. 45
- “Reach out to your freelance academic colleagues and ask for help” coming up with creative solutions to problems. Also ask your coach. p. 51
- “Build a community, whether online or off, of others who are trying to do work similar to yours.” p. 80
- “…always have a clean, up-to-date rĂ©sumĂ© ready as a safety net.” p. 174
Things to Read
- To Write or Not to Write, Kelly J. Baker
- Should Academics Write for Free?, Sarah Kendzior
- Hanging Up on a Calling, Rebecca Schuman
- Love and Other Secondhand Emotions, Jacqui Shine
- On Graduate School and “Love,” William Pannapacker
- The No Baby Penalty, Elizabeth Keenan
- The Responsibility of Adjunct Intellectuals, Corey Robin
- What’s the Point of Academic Publishing?, Sarah Kendzior
- Thesis Hatement, Rebecca Schuman
- Sexism Ed, Kelly J. Baker
- Why Everybody Loses When Someone Leaves Academe, Erin Bartram
- Instead of Gaslighting Adjuncts, We Could Help Them, Annemarie PĂ©rez
- Donât Fear the RĂ©sumĂ©, Rachel Leventhal-Weiner
- The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy Norman Mailer, James Baldwin
- Student Arrested after Crawling into a Duct to Steal an Exam, Christopher Mele
- Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William Ury
- What is BATNA? How to Find Your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, Guhan Subramanian
- Academic Waste, Kelly J. Baker
- How the University Works, Marc Bousquet
- Build a Career Worth Having, Nathaniel Koloc
- Why Freelancers Need a Nonpayment Law, Sara Horowitz
- How to Craft a Pitch, Kelly J. Baker
- Recommended Reading and Resources starting on p. 175
People, organizations, and resources to look up
- Kelly J. Baker
- Jennifer Polk
- Beyond the Professoriate
- Rebecca Schuman
- Sarah Kendzior
- Elizabeth Keenan
- Erin Bartram
- Rachel Leventhal-Weiner
- Editorial Freelance Association (publishes The Freelancer newsletter)
- The Freelancer’s Union
- Who Pays Writers?
Highlights
My Dissertation Acknowledgments
It’s probably going to be a little while before I get my full dissertation up online, so I thought I’d go ahead and post my acknowledgments here.
Immediately after the graduation ceremony at which I received my MSLS in 2011, I told my advisor that I would probably be back for the PhD sometime. Six years ago, I made good on that promise. Since I started the Masterâs program in 2009, Sandra has been a constant mentor, colleague, and friend. Thank you so much, for more than I have the words to say.
I would like to thank my committee for their guidance and reflections from our first meeting to discuss the topics for my comprehensive examination package until today. Your support, especially as I navigated completing a dissertation during a global pandemic, has been invaluable. Casey, your advice and friendship has made this road so much easier than it would have been otherwise. Crystle, your work quite literally inspired this work and Iâm grateful to have had you on my committee offering the unique insights from your own research. Heather and Brian, your ideas and questions have strengthened this work significantly. Thank you all. Thank you to my participants for sharing your experiences and insight with me. I canât wait to see what youâre wearing when we can all go to cons again! Thank you also to the cosplayers who attended the November 2018 Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds concert at the DPAC. You sparked the idea that led to this dissertation.
I am grateful to the UNC Graduate School, SILS, IMLS, and the NSF for supporting me financially for six years and enabling me to work on incredible research with amazing colleagues like Dr. Maggie Melo and Laura March.
Iâm thankful for my improv friends, who made sure I had fun during the first year and a half of this thing and served as guinea pigs for some of my earliest research.
I am so grateful for the families and teachers I met at Nido Coworking + Childcare. You are still my village. I want to thank my parents for instilling a love of learning in me and my siblings for enduring my pedanticism. I am grateful to all of them, as well as to my in-laws, for staying with Michael so I could attend class and write. Thank you extra to Laurie, who cared for Michael during the writing stage. Without your help, I would not be graduating in 2021.
Thank you to Michael, my big kid miraculous earth angel, for making me smile, filling my heart with so much joy I often think it will explode, and for being a living reason and reminder to do things besides school. And thank you to Will, who not only made sure I had shelter and food during this whole process, but also introduced me to the world of Final Fantasy and the beautiful music of Nobuo Uematsu, without which we never would have attended the concert that inspired me to choose this dissertation topic. I was able to do this whole PhD thing because I had you to catch all the balls I dropped, to remind me that we would get through it together when I was sure I couldnât do it, and to make me laugh.
Stocking the flow of my garden in the stream đ»
I’ve been wanting to clean up my blog at least since I migrated from WordPress to Micro.blog, maybe longer. But at over 1000 entries and more all the time, it felt too daunting. Then I read John Johnston’s post, Gardening in the Stream, in which he described using an “On This Day” feature to surface old posts and then go back to the posts from a given day in previous years and clean those up. I love this idea. It’s manageable and if I miss a day, it’ll be only a year before I have another chance to look at it. I’m using Jonathan LaCour’s On This Day snippet for Micro.blog to get this going.
It reminds of me of Austin Kleon’s writing about stock and flow, referencing Robin Sloan’s writing about stock and flow. My hope is that by circulating old flow back into new flow, I’ll discover some things I can turn into stock, clean up, and link in places that make them easier to discover.
THE NEVERS as Disability Metaphor âż đș
This post contains slight spoilers for The Nevers.
I just watched the first episode of The Nevers. Yes, it was created, written, and directed by Joss Whedon. Yes, I am appalled and heartbroken by the way he treated his colleagues on Buffy, Angel, and Justice League. That’s about all I have the heart to say about it. I’d like to talk about The Nevers now which, of course, can’t be completely separated from him, but also kind of is its own thing. As Austin Kleon says, “Art Monsters are not necessary or glamorous and they are not to be condoned, pardoned, or emulated” (Keep Going, p. 124) but also “bad people can make good art.” I haven’t decided if The Nevers seems like good art to me, but I can’t deny that a lot of JW’s other art has been central to my life for the past almost 22 years. So. I want to talk about this art, acknowledging the bad behavior of its creator.
I’m going to talk about The Nevers now, like I said.
Over at The Ringer, Alison Herman describes the protagonists of The Nevers as “Victorian Lady X-Men,” and this is not wrong.
Specifically, you’ve got a bunch of persecuted superpowered people living in a facility sponsored by a rich person who used a wheelchair.
Let’s talk for a minute about Lavinia Bidlow (played by “I am very British. I don’t say Hard Rs” Olivia Williams). Lavinia Bidlow uses a wheelchair. As far as I can tell, she herself is not one of The Touched (aka superpowered people) and has no turn (aka superpower). But she is extremely devoted to making sure that The Touched have a home and are safe and thus she sponsors the “orphanage” where many of them live and work. (There are rogue Touched and unaffiliated Touched, too. Like… Like mutants. In X-Men.)
So. Lavinia Bidlow, using a wheelchair presumably due to a disability, feels a great deal of sympathy and/or empathy for The Touched.
People often refer to The Touched as “afflicted.”
Mrs. Amalia True, head rounder-upper of Touched-who-need-protection, precog lady (not to be confused with Doyle/Cordelia’s power on Angel, which IIRC was more clairvoyance than precognition but usually conveniently early clairvoyance that often allowed time to save the person they saw) and skilled fighter, responds to Ominous Fancyman Lord Massen in this conversation:
Massen: I take it then that you are yourselves among the afflicted.
True: Touched, yes. We don’t consider ourselves afflicted.
Massen: Perhaps some women are more fortunate in the nature of their ailment than others.
True: That’s true, but more suffer from society’s perception than their own debilitation.
This set off little bells in my head, as it sounds very much to me like a TV superhero’s quick explanation of the social model of disability. From that moment I started watching this as if it were a supremely unsubtle metaphor for disability. I’m not sure if it works, but I do find it an interesting lens.
There’s also Maladie, who is the most prominent rogue Touched, is a serial killer, and certainly appears to live with a mental illness. (It is a perfectly valid criticism when Natalie Zutter at Tor.com says her dialogue “feels like it was collected from Drusillaâs cutting-room-floor musings.”) We see Maladie about to be carted off to an asylum in the flashbacks to the day when the Touched got their powers. And of course, “touched” has been used as a rather unkind euphemism for having mental illness.
I have invisible disabilities including autoimmune disease that is sometimes debilitating, migraines, depression, and anxiety. Lord Massen would call me more fortunate and there are certainly many forms of ableism I don’t face. But when I struggle to work through a migraine or have trouble going downstairs to the kitchen from my bedroom because all of my joints hurt, I wonder if there is a place in this world for me. So near the end of the episode, when strawberry-blonde Irish science nerd Penance Adair (your Willow/Kaylee stand-in and thus my fave) describes a feeling “that I’m here. I belong here… all of us that’s Touched, we’re woven into the fabric of the world and we’re meant to be as we are,” my heart swells and I think, “YES, I want to feel that way!” (I do, sometimes, but I want to feel it more.)
Does this all add up to a solid disability metaphor? Not yet, and it’s very possible what we’ll see here is a kind of “fantastic ableism” akin to the fantastic racism X-Men and other stories are critiqued for. But I’m watching with this lens now and I’m interested to see what I find.
I haven’t found anybody else approaching The Nevers this way, but if you have, I’d love to hear about it! I’d especially love a perspective from someone with more visible disabilities.

It's spring and my dissertation is submitted! Let's do all the things!
It feels like submitting my dissertation has freed up an immense amount of space in my head and heart to start thinking about other things. Iâm so excited about so many possibilities right now. I bought a bunch of sewing supplies, but my sewing machine thwarted me. It needs a thorough cleaning and oiling, and then I can try sewing again.
Iâm back on the Artistâs Way train, doing âmorningâ pages that are really afternoon pages because the only quiet I can get is during childcare time, and thatâs in the afternoon. (I could switch this to morning but it would disrupt some standing meetings I have, so Iâm leaving it as-is for now.)
Iâm reading John Scalziâs Youâre Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop and it has me feeling energized about writing.
Iâm reading Jess Zimmermanâs Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology and itâs phenomenal. I only annotate textbooks, so all my notes from this are commonplace-book style in my Bullet Journal and there are so many of them. Pages and pages.
Iâve got a stack of books about mending on hold at the library. Iâm really thrilled at the thought of mending things. My kidâs favorite clothes get holes in them. Iâve got some leggings and pajama pants that could use a good mend. But mostly I love how this feels like a personal step toward sustainable living. Of course we should hold institutions and businesses accountable for their role in promoting sustainability, but thatâs not a good reason to not even think about it myself. One day Iâll be able to go in thrift stores again without worrying and I really hope that by then I can start to see the things I find for their possibilities rather than just what they already are. I can dye things! Cut them up! Refashion them! Woohoo! Psyched to get this stack on Saturday and I expect Iâll write more about these things as I read them. (Iâve got a few web links about this, too; maybe Iâll put together a little guide.)
Iâm thinking about writing a post or page that is essentially a digital care package for new parents: my favorite books, online resources, and tips related to parenting. You learn so much in the first few years (and more later I trust, but Iâm only half way through year 5 so I can only talk about the first 4 and a half years or so). It seems a shame to just sit on that knowledge, or to only pass it on to people in little bits and pieces. Wouldnât it be cool to just point people to a webpage? I think it would.
Come to think of it, I know little bits about all kinds of stuff. Maybe I should write a BUNCH of guides. One about cupcakery. One about producing community theater or local comedy. What else?
Helping people is kind of my favorite thing.
Iâve now taken an hour and a half of childcare time as runway time, so I suppose I should get down to work.
Anyway, welcome spring! LETâS DO ALL THE THINGS!
Trusting my (book blogging) intuition
Fourteen years ago, I started a book blog - or, as I called it at the time, a reading journal. I jumped in and started writing without any worries about doing it “right.” (For one thing, 2007 was early days with respect to book blogging.) Over time I became part of the kidlit book blogging community.
I slowed down on book blogging long ago, but now I want to ramp up the bookishness of my personal blog. So I did what you do, I googled “book blog.” For months I’ve been reading book blogging introductory articles and posts.
Most of the advice hasn’t sat with me quite right.
I don’t want to book blog like anybody else.
I want to book blog like me.
It turns out 2007 Kimberly has a lot of wisdom when it comes to book blogging. I’ve started looking at my old posts to see how they might be models for how I write about books in the future.
I’m already feeling better about book blogging. I’m excited to get back into it.
The pandemic is making my brain not.
Dissertating during a pandemic is not easy. Maintaining concentration is a real challenge. Before the pandemic, my chronic illness allowed me about 2 good hours a day to do creative work, and any other work time I allotted to more rote/administrative tasks.
Now I have the capacity for 1 task, regardless of whether it’s creative or administrative, and 1 meeting. That’s it. If I do those things, my brain insists it is time for sleep, Star Trek, or fiction reading. And often it can’t even handle fiction reading, so I then do this Star Trek/sleep combo.
I don’t sleep well at night. Even on nights when I don’t do a 3 am doomscroll and instead get a good chunk of sleep, I still wake up feeling like I could sleep for the rest of time if only my body would actually, you know, sleep. (I took Benadryl and slept until 10 am one weekend in recent memory and that was amazing but the rested feeling was 100% gone by the next day.)
I rarely have the energy to be “on” for my kid. We read, I remind him of all the possibilities he has (Clay! Legos! Blocks! Sandpaper letters! Pretend cooking! Real cooking! Coloring! Painting! Magnatiles! Action figures! A bunch of tiny animals!), he chooses one of those and plays independently while I crochet or try to read about either unschooling or Reader’s Advisory. We watch Sesame Street and Wild Kratts. Sometimes we play Animal Moves, in which I call out the names of random animals and he moves like them. (I use a random animal generator because I can’t even think of the names of more than probably 7 animals.)
I’m a person who likes to appear cheerful. I’m a person whose nature it is to care about things.
Right now, I want my dissertation to be done, I want to sleep, and I want to read fiction and then talk to people about what I’m reading and what they’re reading. I want to crochet but not to knit because knitting requires brain power since I keep having to re-learn it and my fingers are always slipping.
Sometimes I put on Bob Ross, if I have a migraine.
And I often have a migraine, waxing and waning in intensity.
I am living this pandemic on the absolute easiest setting, with a flexible schedule, two incomes even though mine is right at the cost of living for 1 person, the ability to pick food up curbside and do none of my own shopping, deeply discounted childcare from my mother-in-law, and the ability to communicate with friends and sometimes even visit outdoors with local family.
And I am exhausted.
I can’t imagine how hard this must be for people in worse circumstances than mine.
How are you holding up? Here's what's up with me.
How are you holding up? Are you holding up? I have a headache today. I really want to write about ideas: craft as healing, being a parent and being other things too, what we mean when we talk about information literacy. My brain though can’t gather all the floaty fragmentary bits of thoughts about these ideas that are whirring through my mind, so I guess I’ll write about them later.
I got my car inspected and its 60K maintenance done. It feels nice to have a car that should be in good shape for another 30K miles. The guy who helped me was the same guy who helped me the last time I took my car in, a year ago, and he recognized me, even with my mask on. He said he remembered my eyes.
So now I think I have memorable eyes.
Last night I had a desire to listen to Michael Crawford sing some distinctly un-Phantom of the Opera songs. I don’t know why. He always sounds ghostly to me, so it’s really funny to hear him do brassy songs in a ghost voice. It makes me happy. The most hilarious is probably The Power of Love, but that’s not on Spotify so last night I went with Any Dream Will Do. Hilarious! They should rename the show Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor DreamGHOST when Michael Crawford sings it.
Have you ever noticed that Michael Crawford doesn’t do a lot of Sondheim? He plays Hero in the movie of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum but on his solo albums there’s not much Sondheim. Maybe a little. (Only vaguely related, another role Crawford had in his early career was Cornelius in Hello, Dolly! and the story of how he got that job is hilarious.)
I’ve been thinking lately about how to be a theater person again, because I miss it and it was a huge part of my identity until the college theater scene kind of beat it out of me. (I made the mistake of aligning myself with the far too serious drama department kids instead of the more fun non-majors putting up their own shows.)
There’s a Theater & Drama Crash Course and it was nice looking through the titles of the videos to realize how much I remember from my BA in dramatic art. I might watch some of those videos and revisit that stuff.
Now is, of course, a terrible time to get back into theater; there’s not much live stuff going on and I’m not really in a position to do virtual shows because my kid could walk in at any minute.
But there are other angles I can approach it from; play reading, playwriting, watching recorded productions, theater history… We’ll see where I go with it.
Anyway, back to my first question.
How are you holding up?
Putting the person back in my personal website
I kind of want to put the person back in my personal website. Not that it isn’t personal - especially my short little notes. But I’ve been thinking about this like it was A Blog, not My Blog, and it’s not a great feeling. So I do have this sort of voice in my head for Important Blog PostsTM with titles like
“My kid isn’t going to be at my dissertation defense and that makes me sad”
or
“Transformations and transitions: How my thinking is changing.”
And these are interesting things that I do want to talk about, but I don’t need to use an authoritative voice to talk about them.
Back in December I set out to get back to a freer form of blogging and then December exploded on my face in a mess that is only now really beginning to be cleaned up.
I’m hoping to change that now.
What are you up to today? I went to a SILS virtual craft circle, which was great; I’m going to have two of those a week in my life now, on Thursdays and Fridays, and I think it’s very good.
I showed my kid the first ever episode of Sesame Street. (It’s on HBO Max.) Bob was so young in 1969, y’all! Of course, many people were - my parents were teens. It’s a really solid pilot; there are some good gags. I think it’s easy to forget how funny Sesame Street can be if you haven’t watched it in a while, but it’s really good. I’ve blogged before about how it makes a great comedy school, and that was true even in the pilot.
I’ve had a migraine that waxes and wanes for over a week now. It’s not good. I think it’s a hormonal thing.
There are too many books to read.
I think that’s enough stream of consciousness for now.
And now to finish, a GIF that features two of my imaginary friends: Kermit the Frog and Levar Burton.
I'm still grieving my grandmother and I don't feel like doing anything.
It’s been two weeks and a day since my grandmother died, and I don’t feel like doing anything.
When I posted about her death, I didn’t mention the three weeks of emotional trauma leading up to it. She was rushed to the hospital with symptoms of internal bleeding on 12/12, beginning a rollercoaster of her being unresponsive, showing small signs of consciousness, being taken off a ventilator and able to breathe on her own, being able to talk, showing signs of significant memory loss, and being moved to hospice. Throughout all of that, I played the role of the emotional support eldest daughter, with my mom calling me almost every day, sometimes twice a day, to update my sister and myself (on a three-way call) and talk through her feelings. She was unable to go to Florida to help; her brother had to manage the whole thing alone, and for a while was her only point of communication about my grandmother’s condition. She was often confused about my grandmother’s state. It was weeks of misery capped off by losing her mother.
And, I have to remind myself when I wonder why I feel so glum, losing my grandmother, who was very important to me even if I didn’t see or talk to her often.
I’d had big plans for the first couple of weeks of January, and I found myself unable to actually do any of them. I was finally beginning to feel like maybe next week (this week now? depends on if your week starts on Sunday or Monday) I could dig myself out of this funk enough to get some work done.
And then on Friday, my mom asked my sister and myself to look over her eulogy. It was beautiful, it needed no changes, and I hope that at the graveside service this afternoon, she gets to deliver it.
Ah, yes. The graveside service, taking place in Kodak, TN, where the coronavirus metrics show community transmission is about 4 times worse there than here. So I didn’t go.
I’ve been to three other funerals at that cemetery.
I hate that I’m not at this one, but I would hate getting sick more.
Communicating about my decision not to go was its own source of trauma.
So I probably shouldn’t be mystified by the fact that I don’t feel like doing anything.
I don’t want to write about research or pop culture or even books. I don’t really want to read. I don’t want to watch new things (though I did watch WandaVision).
All I want to do is watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and crochet. That’s it. One stitch at a time, building a beautiful lace shawl, as I sit with these friends who have been with me since I was six years old and watch them behave in all the ways I know they will.
I’ve been tormenting myself for at least a year with the thought of what comes next after I graduate. I was chugging along really nicely on my dissertation. I suspect I’ll be stalled out on it for another week or so. I hope it won’t impact my timeline too much.
I’ve been thinking that what comes next is probably creating my own consulting business. But I realized that as long as my child is home from school, I probably can’t drum up enough work to cover the cost of paying for extra care for him. So the most economically sound thing to do, then, is to set aside consulting work for later, and double down on momming now.
I talked to W. about this and he said,
“I would expect you to just think of yourself as an educator, then.”
This was a good identity perspective for a few reasons. One, it freed me from the idea that I would need to be a full-on homemaker, which I certainly won’t have the energy to do if I’m also educating M. (My mother-in-law has been caring for him in the afternoons at a rate that is beyond a bargain, but even that rate isn’t cheap enough if I’m bring in no income.)
His school has gone fully remote, so that he’s not the only kid or one of two who is remote, which is nice, but it actually requires more hands-on time for me than just letting him putter about the playroom all morning. It’s really good, though.
So. Fine. I’ll be a consultant without contracts. I’ll squeeze my me-time in around his schedule, crocheting while he unschools or reading after he goes to sleep.
And maybe in a week or two, I’ll feel like writing again. I hope so. But I think right now I need to give myself permission to be in this spot of doing nothing, because grief deserves time. And it’s okay to still be grieving my grandmother, who has been in my life for almost 40 years, after two weeks.
2020 Year-in-Review & 2021 Word of the First Quarter
I just re-read my 2019 Year-in-Review & 2020 Word of the Year blog post, published a little over a year ago. When I look at all the stuff I got done in 2019, all the places I went, all the people I spent time with, I am struck by how different 2020 has been. We all know it, but I’ve actually become inured to it. And then I read something like this. Cons. Travel. Flotation therapy. All things I haven’t done in 2020.
Because, you know, global pandemic.
But I still did some stuff in 2020!
- Pre-pandemic, I defended my dissertation proposal.
- I revised that proposal and submitted it for IRB review.
- I then changed my dissertation scope twice.
- I collected all the data for my dissertation.
- I analyzed all the data for my dissertation.
- I drafted my dissertation. (All of that was accomplished in 10 months, which is pretty impressive.)
- I conducted 3 interviews for my research assistantship.
- I analyzed 14 interview transcripts for my research assistantship.
- I managed having the house painted.
- I had plumbers out at least 3 times. (Probably need to get on a service plan.)
- I presented a virtual poster at Fan Studies Network North America.
- I learned about and tried different methods of stress relief.
- I planned a special private birthday video chat storytime for M’s birthday with his favorite storier, Mr. Jim.
- I managed virtual preschool/unschooling from mid-March to mid-December. (Cutting the kid & myself a break during his school’s break time.)
- I kept going.
My word of the year for 2020 was FULL, specifically filling my well and being my full self. I think I’ve succeeded brilliantly, so yay for that. I also wanted to read for pleasure, play video games, and pursue my core desired feelings of ease, creativity, and connection. I’ve done all that stuff, too! So even though 2020 changed a LOT of my plans, I still did what I hoped to do. That’s pretty cool.
One of the things I realized this year was that daily projects don’t suit me, for a variety of reasons. I need a little more flexibility. So I’m giving myself permission to do daily projects my way - which is to say, to focus on increasing how much I do the thing, rather than being sure I do it daily. So I read more poetry this year than ever before, but I didn’t read a poetry book a day every day in August. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
I’m also realizing that natural cycles are the best way for me, personally, to measure time. So I’m setting goals and planning in quarters instead, specifically Wheel-of-the-Year-style quarters. So from December 21 to March 21, my goal is to get my dissertation done and, ideally, defended. (The defense may be closer to the end of March, and that’s fine.) I don’t know what comes next after that, and that’s okay.
And I’m selecting a word of the quarter, which may turn into a word of the year but I often find that by mid-March, a new word has revealed itself. My word for the first quarter of 2020 is PLAY, which I’m using in its broadest possible sense. So I’m going to try learning to play some of the musical instruments I have around the house, playing more games, trying new art forms, and deliberately engaging in purposeless activity.
I hope you find a way to have fun, regardless of what 2021 brings.
Image Caption: This is what the best days at pandemic preschool look like for us: different kids on screen together, all pursuing work that lights them up. (M. is in the foreground and his classmates are actually hidden behind their work.)

đHumans Used to Sleep in Two Shifts, And Maybe We Should Start It Again
via @Miraz
Humans Used to Sleep in Two Shifts, And Maybe We Should Start It Again sciencealert.comArchiving...
đ How Literary Female Friendships Shaped the Fiction Market
This piece by Sarah Lonsdale describes the kind of literary friendship I fantasize about having. Who wants to be my literary bff?
How Literary Female Friendships Shaped the Fiction Market âč Literary Hub lithub.comRead: lithub.com
Highlights & Notes
Naomi Royde-Smith was an astute literary editor of the Saturday Westminster and brought Macaulay, an awkward âinnocent from the Camâ as she described herself, into her circle of friends, who seemed to Macaulay âto be more sparklingly alive than any in my home world.â
Please. Bring me into your literary circle.
Macaulay would often stay in her friendâs Knightsbridge home where they held soirĂ©es for authors and journalists to bolster each otherâs standing and forge mutually supportive networks.
We can host soirĂ©es. I’ll set up the video chat.
Tell me about your favorite literary friendships and relationships! I’m especially fond of the Shelleys, who wrote collaborative diaries. â„ïž
My Reading Year 2020
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, which has nothing to do with any gift-giving related holidays and everything to do with end-of-year media lists, especially end-of-year book lists. My favorite is the NPR Book Concierge, though I’m meaning to check out some others, too.
I thought I’d review my year in reading. I felt like I read a lot this year, but it turned out to be really different than I remembered. You can always check out my reading stuff in the Books category or on my Reading page, but here’s what I thought was worth highlighting.
I finished 10 fiction books this year, all of them novels. I got really into Dark Academia, so of course I read The Secret History. If We Were Villains, Bunny, and Ninth House are all in my TBR pile (literally, I have all three of them in the house right now). I also joined an Instagram reading group via my Dark Academia Insta (DAinsta?Dinsta?) and that led me to read or re-read some classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. I’m currently partway through The Historian, but it’s ambitious to think I’ll finish it this year.
Here are my favorite fiction books I read this year:
The Starless Sea: Erin Morganstern always creates the most immersive settings for her books. I kind of want to live in this one.
The Power: Naomi Alderman’s near-and-distant-future novel of women who can literally electrify other people blew my mind.
Legendborn: This one is a good read for anybody, but has special meaning if you’re familiar with UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus. It makes campus feel magic and reckons with the University’s history at the same time.
But my very favorite, thought about re-reading immediately, crow-it-to-everybody book that I read this year is Mexican Gothic. I love it so much but I can’t really bring myself to write a good review or synopsis. It is a classic Gothic novel, but moves the setting from Victorian England to 1950s Mexico. It still has an old English manse, mind you. It’s just an English house built in Mexico. It scratches every Gothic itch I have ever had, adds a new criticism of colonialism (refreshing in the world of Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden), and the revealed secret is fascinating and horrifying. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I read 12 non-fiction books this year. Of these, two really stood out for me: Kelly J. Baker’s Grace Period, which I’ve written about before, and Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight, which is such an important read. I knew it would be important; I didn’t know it would also be beautiful.
I participated in The Sealey Challenge and managed to read a poetry book or chapbook a day for the first couple of weeks in August. This was a great reminder that I actually quite like poetry. I read 16 poetry books; my favorites of these were Electric Arches, Wolf Daughter, and _[re]construction of the Necromancer_.
I’ve read about 25 comic book single issues this year (18 of those in the past couple of days!) and expect to read several more over the next 10 days. Most of these have been X-Men books, a combination of some classic Claremont stuff with my fave Kitty Pryde’s early appearances, and the recent Dawn of X interrelated series. I can’t pick a favorite.
Lastly, I’ve read a lot of picture books, chapter books, and comics for young readers with my kid. I haven’t been tracking this kind of reading much this year, though I hope to more next year. That said, I do have a couple of favorites to recommend: Interstellar Cinderella and the Narwhal and Jelly series. Interstellar Cinderella is basically about what it would be like if Cinderella were really Kaylee from Firefly with a really cute twist on happily ever after, and Narwhal and Jelly is basically a more oceanic and less pastoral Frog and Toad: Narwhal is THE UNICORN OF THE SEA! and Jelly is worried a lot.
I did read some fanfic this year, but not a lot. My favorites were both X-Men: First Class fics: Everything About It Is a Love Song and table for three. What can I say? I love Prof. X and Magneto, who are not unlike Frog and Toad in their own way.
And speaking of Frog and Toad, the best thing I read online this year was probably Jenny Egerdie’s Frog and Toad Are Self-Quarantined Friends. But you can see a lot more of what I read online (but not everything) in the Links category, if you’re interested.
What did you read this year? If it was a hard year for reading for you, what did you do instead?
My Most Memorable Christmas Presents from Childhood
I’m really on a break now - had my last business-ish meeting yesterday, no Zoom calls scheduled through the new year. So I’m going to write some holiday/end-of-year blog posts.
First up, inspired by this tweet, a list of my most memorable Christmas presents from childhood.
-
A tape recorder. When I was around 5, Santa left a beautiful red tape recorder under the tree for me. I hadn’t asked for it; I’m not sure I even knew such a thing existed. But it rapidly became my favorite thing. I took it to church for the Christmas morning to show off; I told people that it was just what I wanted even though I didn’t know I wanted it. For years I used that tape recorder to record imaginary radio shows or, as we would call them now, podcasts. I also used it to record my baby sister singing “La Bamba,” which was priceless.
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A globe. I loved that globe. I can’t tell you why. I just remember spinning it and touching the raised mountain ranges and feeling like some new knowledge had suddenly become accessible to me. I was 7 or 8 for this one.
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A telescope. I never quite got it working right, but this was like an exponential increase in the feeling I felt when I got the globe. I have been interested in astronomy ever since. Probably got this one when I was 9.
So there you have it, my most memorable Christmas gifts from childhood. Or, if you prefer, evidence that I have always been this nerdy and into learning.
Have a good weekend! I’ll be back next week with thoughts on some holiday movies and my year in books.

Dissertation Draft Finished + Pandemic Parenting and My Body
I sent off the introduction chapter for my dissertation to my advisor a few minutes ago. I also decided to do a total page and word count for the whole thing. And while I was doing that I made the mistake of reading the comments on the methods chapter. Which are good and helpful comments and not that dramatic, but IMPOSTOR SYNDROME, am I right?
Mostly what I’m dealing with is that both of the committee members who have looked at that chapter were like “This theoretical framework part needs it’s own chapter.” It won’t actually be creating a whole chapter from scratch, but it does feel a little like it will. And so my jerk brain is like, “Why didn’t you write that? Why haven’t you done that already? Why didn’t that occur to you? UGH. Your dissertation is frivolous, thin, unimportant, has nothing to contribute, and is basically just you dicking around. You’ll graduate probably because you have a kind committee but what subpar work.”
My brain doesn’t seem to know we’re in a pandemic.
Before I go on, here are the stats: in its current iteration, my dissertation is 155 pages and 31,084 words. I started data collection in April. I went from initiating data collection to a finished draft in 6 months, working on it for half-days, while caring for my child in the morning and writing in the afternoons.
This is no small achievement, regardless of the contribution my research makes to the field.
And I simultaneously worked on my assistantship, which involved designing a semistructured interview protocol, conducting 3 interviews, and coding 14 interviews.
I had planned to start my data collection earlier. I had planned to be writing close to full-time hours, because I had expected to get a dissertation fellowship, making this a non-service year. Things have gone very differently than I planned, and I have a first draft of my dissertation to show anyway.
I may kick off my revisions with a dissertation bootcamp Jan 11 - 15. We’ll see.
–
Something that only occurred to me yesterday, although of course it’s been going on the whole time I’ve been a mother, is that I hold my child’s emotions in my body. So when my kid sobs three or four times in one morning and throws a couple of tantrums, I can’t just hand him off to my mother-in-law and then sit down to work. My body just won’t allow it.
Giving myself permission to recognize the impact my kid’s emotions have on my body is something I sorely needed, and I really hope it will help me moving forward.
Okay. Gonna have lunch and then maybe go to Bean Traders to get some curbside pickup “I did it!” treats.
The Imagined Academia and How I Still Love It
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I’ve spent my whole life on campus. Before I even entered elementary school, my mother was enrolled at community college working on her associate’s degree and I would sometimes go to campus with her. (This is how I had my first taste of Raisin Nut Bran: it was in an orientation package she got.)
When I was 7, my parents enrolled at Florida State University, my mom to get a BA in Religion and my dad to get his MLIS. My dad got a job at Duke Law after graduation and my mom stayed at FSU working on a Master’s in Theology and my sister and I alternated living with them; when she finished her coursework, we all moved to NC, where my mom started a Master’s in Divinity at Duke. My dad was still working at Duke when I graduated from high school and moved to college; I did a one year MAT after college and then worked as an educator for 5 years before returning to get my MSLS, then worked another year as an educator and three years in higher ed outreach before returning to get my PhD.
I have a deep working knowledge of what education is really like.
And yet I still romanticize it.
As part of my foray into the aesthetic that is dark academia (which involves many fewer contingent laborers than you might expect), I have joined a readalong taking place on Instagram and Discord. We’re on our last book now, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Early in the book, a father narrates to his daughter his time as a grad student, spending hours locked in a university carrel writing about 17th century merchants in Amsterdam, sneaking in to hear the end of his advisor’s lectures to undergraduates, sitting in his advisor’s office…
And I swooned.
I wonder if it’s because only the first year of my PhD was really spent writing in carrels on campus? Because the rest of it has been in public libraries, cafes, and co-working spaces, places I could briefly slip away without a long bus ride while someone else was with my kid. (Commute to UNC: minimum 40 minutes. Commute to closest public library branch: 10 minutes. It only takes 10 minutes to drive to UNC, but it’s cost-prohibitive to park there more than once a week or so.)
I had this same wistfulness when I read A Discovery of Witches. What is it that I love so much about this life? And is it my love of this imagined academia and my understanding of how very imaginary it is part of what keeps me from pursuing the tenure track?
I wonder all of this, but really, what it comes down to, is this:
I love this imagined academia, and regardless of what academia really is, I love this imagined version anyway, and it brings me joy. So I will keep reading books and watching movies about tweed-clad scholars in their gothic architecture reading rooms, debating the finer points of Latin grammar (an activity I actually hated as an undergrad, an attitude that won me scorn from my Latin professors), spending time in cozy offices, and secretly learning that imaginary monsters are real. (The Sunnydale High School library is 100% Dark Academia; don’t @ me.)

I'm Jew-ish, but not Jewish.
I know Hanukkah is not a major religious holiday. But my connection with Jewish heritage and culture has never really been religiously driven. I am, according to the most recent AncestryDNA update, probably 43% of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. I believe it’s been 3 generations since anyone in my family was strongly connected to this heritage, but I’ve felt Jew-ish as long as I can remember.
And I want all the foods, y’all. All the Hanukkah foods.
I looked for other people with a similar experience to mine, and found this helpful blog post called “So You’ve Just Found Out You’re Jewish. What’s Next?”. I’ve always known about my Jewish heritage, but felt a bit stymied about connecting with it, so I appreciate this especially for its links to a lot of resources.
Including and especially The Nosher.
I think there will be some russet potatoes in an upcoming grocery order for me.
Also probably the ingredients for easy sufganiyot.
Making stuff is a vulnerable act.
The end of a PhD is a weird time, especially if you don’t have your eyes set on the tenure-track. (I recently decided that I probably won’t apply for what will likely be the only tenure-track job remotely related to my expertise for the foreseeable future, because my gut said no.)
For more than a year I’ve felt a desperate need to figure out what’s next. In January, I gave myself permission to wait until August to even think about it, but of course that’s not how brains work. In April, I realized that whatever expectations I have would likely be exploded by the pandemic. More and more, I started to feel like I wanted to set out and do my own thing, because I don’t believe that job security is a thing anymore.
So I want to do my own thing, though I’ll still look at jobs in the library and publishing fields. And research comms - both communicating to researchers and communicating about research.
When I try to figure out what my own thing is, there are many possible directions to go in, and I think I’m just going to try some of them.
In a Self-Employed PhD strategy session, one of my fellow participants asked me what I want.
I said I just want to rest.
But more and more what I want to do is read books and make stuff.
In our lab meeting today, I talked about how making stuff is a vulnerable act. I can’t remember exactly what I said. Maggie (or Dr. Melo if you don’t know her) was taking notes and I sure hope she captured some of it. But I’m going to keep thinking about that idea for a while, I think.