Category: Living
Natural Hauntings: A Return to the Creaturely
“Humans,” art historian Glenn Peers contends, “have slipped into a modern faith in knowingness that thinks it exceeds the scale and complexity of our world…, blind[ing] us to other human possibilities.” The statement embodies the recent artworks of Pakistani multimedia artist Huma Bhabha in her 2024 exhibition entitled, “Welcome…to the one who came.” Primarily a
Transcending Boundaries: A Mother’s Work
Referencing his mother’s passing in 1992, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s “aim as an artist [was] to make a work that [was] so palpable and so dynamic and so incredibly felt that [his] Mom could literally walk off the surface of the canvas and back to life.”[1] The result was Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) from
A Painfully Honest Portrayal of Beauty
Tracey Emin, Like A Cloud of Blood, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 59 7/8 x 71 5/8 in. (152 x 182cm) The difficulty in comprehending Tracey Emin’s Like A Cloud of Blood (2022) is the paradox of witnessing a disappearing figure coming into being. In Emin’s painting, an incomplete and empty body lies isolated in curled
Begin (Again): The Art of Openings
How do you feel about epigraphs? My partner once said she hated them, at least in the context of academic writing. Why not just get straight to what you want to say? Many readers find them pretty easy to skip over (as I’m sure at least a couple of you did when approaching this blog post) and if used incorrectly they can easily become unnecessary filler, pretentious excess, or both…
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 4)
To conclude our series on humanities PhDs working full-time off the tenure track, we have Colleen Kennedy, who earned her English PhD from The Ohio State University in 2015. Her dissertation considered the role of odors, aromas, and other olfactory descriptors in early-modern literature. Today, she works in the publicity unit of the Shakespeare Theatre
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 3)
Welcome back to our series on humanities PhDs who are now working full-time off the tenure track! This week brings us Katherine Kidd, who earned her English PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. Her dissertation looked at depictions of queer and non-normative people in the working class and below the poverty line, and
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 2)
This week, we continue our series on humanities PhDs who are now working full-time off the tenure track. We interviewed former Broadly Textual Pub contributor Melissa Welshans, an alumna of the English PhD program at Syracuse University, where in 2017 she defended her dissertation on gender and sexuality in the institution of marriage in early-modern
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 1)
Picture this: You’re a PhD student. For whatever reason, you’ve decided to look for a career outside the academy, or at least off the tenure track. But while your PhD program gave you a lot of preparation for a tenure-track job, veering off this prepared path isn’t something you’ve been trained for. What do you
Passion, Burnout, and Liking What You Write
Write what you like. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. From Thomas Carlyle’s vision of the Victorian work ethic, otherwise known as the gospel of work, to the twenty-first century’s increasing focus on developing a comprehensive
![The "is this X?" meme. The male Asian anime character has a meteor superimposed over his face, and he gestures at an image of Earth. The meme is captioned "Is this [X]?" where [X] is an image of the eyes of the man from the commercial real estate meme.](https://i0.wp.com/broadlytextual.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/49265719_278284466202425_5489023532056707072_n.png?resize=790%2C550&ssl=1)
“It’s Lit!”: Memes, Linguistic Play, and Academic Terminology
As a first-generation immigrant who first grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese, which then became superseded by English as my entire family struggled to learn the ins and outs of this truly ridiculous language, reading student papers submitted by those wrestling with the language will always provoke a bit of extra compassion from me. Working toward