This summer my research collided with one of my favorite TV shows, The Bear, in which talented, sexy, and emotionally tortured chef Carmy returns home to Chicago to run a sandwich shop with his family and (eventually) chosen-family staff. In the much watched and highly rated second season this June, the team closes the shop,… Read more →
Tag: Academia
Why Are So Many Fellowships Residential?
It’s fellowship application season for academics. A time when we all beat the bushes of the internet, trying to find as many opportunities as possible to get time away from teaching to research or write. We pursue these opportunities diligently every year. We do so because we know our chances of actually receiving a fellowship… Read more →
Cite My Name, Cite My Name
A couple years back, I was co-teaching a graduate course on gender history at the University of Edinburgh. I was advising an MA student on historiographical literature, and I asked her if she used Google Scholar to locate scholarly references. She didn’t, so I demonstrated how to use the search tool. As an example, I… Read more →
Clara Immerwahr: Science’s Tragic and Surprisingly Modern Heroine
A woman is in an unhappy marriage. After much stress and hard work, and a healthy dose of sexism in her lab, she’s also awarded a doctorate in chemistry. After having graduated with Latin honors, the woman’s graduate research is on the solubility of different chemicals, including mercury, copper, and other important metals commonly used… Read more →
Fight Cancer like a Feminist
On May 2, 2018, I was coming out of anesthesia from an emergency appendectomy when I learned I might have cancer. After an excruciating five days in the hospital, my surgeon confirmed that I had moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma but was unsure as to the type of cancer. While it may sound cliché, my life quite… Read more →
On the Craft of Editing, Our Teachers, and Leaving Academia
Generations of history graduate students at the College of William & Mary have stories to tell about Gil Kelly. The longtime managing editor of the books program at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (OI), Gil was one of those unforgettable individuals. Throughout his career and long past the advent of Microsoft… Read more →
Dorothy Bruce Weske: Academia and Motherhood in the Mid-Twentieth Century
In 1934, in her mid-thirties and single, Dorothy Bruce defended her dissertation at Radcliffe College on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Convocations, a name given to a category of English church councils. In 1937, her work, Convocation of the Clergy: A Study of its Antecedents and its Rise with Special Emphasis upon its Growth and Activities in… Read more →
UCLA Allows Sexual Harassment
A sexual harassment case is currently rocking UCLA. Professor Gabriel Piterberg, a professor of Middle Eastern history, has been accused of harassing two female graduate students repeatedly beginning in 2008, with behavior that to me appears to be sexual assault. In 2013, the women went to Pamela Thomason, the Title IX authority at UCLA, who… Read more →
Parenting in Academia: New Mom + Nursing + Academic Conference = Weekend in Hell
Anyone who is a mom and an academic has one of these stories of academic travel from hell. I can say with a fair amount of certainty, though, that my story of traveling to a conference as a new, nursing mom is the worst. Unfortunately. My daughter was just two months old, not sleeping for… Read more →
Faculty Mothers: Continuing the Conversation
By Rachel Epp Buller
Listening ear. Moral support. Advisor. Counselor. Professor. Mother?
I’m in the midst of reading Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family, by Kelly Ward and Lisa Wolf-Wendel–both of whom are well-published professors of educational leadership.[1] Ward and Wolf-Wendel aren’t the first authors to address this topic; other notable contributions to the conversation include Mama, Ph.D. (and the subsequent Papa, Ph.D.), Parenting and Professing, The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties While You Mentor, Nurture, Teach, and Serve, and Academic Motherhood in a Post-Second Wave Context.