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
Welcome back!
Summer is not yet over, and we’re not quite open for business yet. But we’re behind the scenes getting ready for the new season with a brand-new menu of writers, fresh ideas, and sparkling conversation. Keep an eye out. We’ll be turning our “Closed” sign to “Open” on Tuesday, September 3. (Writers new and old
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
Empathy and Education Revisited: Fight or Flight
This week, we look back at Vicky Cheng‘s December 2016 post on engaging with students in the classroom. Vicky will be back next week with more on teaching and writing. “A good teacher will lead the horse to water; an excellent teacher will make the horse thirsty first.” — Mario Cortes Inside the academic classroom,
![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
Learning Writing By Teaching Writing
Generally, there are few things that unite teachers more than a mutual aversion to grading. For some, the marking up of assignments and assigning of earned grades may be a mere annoyance; for others, the unavoidable nature of subjectivity inherent to that process, plus the amount of feedback necessary, multiplied by the time consumed makes