Don't You Know Who I Am - *NOT*?
Will admit, did have a few DYKWIA moments at the recent conference, even though there is no particular reason why people who work on medieval/early modern stuff in my general areas should KWIA.
But a few recent events have given me to think about people Who Don't Know Who I Am Not - which is surely easily checkable by a fairly cursory glimpse of my website or academic blog.
Okay, I am inclined to assume that dodgy open-access 'academic' publishers who contact me, because of my allegedly massive cred and well-received publications in the fields of philosophy and biomedicine, in order to contribute to or be on the editorial board of their journals have some kind of bot on board that is like whatever algorithm link-exchange spammers use ('I see that you have the word "the" on your site! So do I! Let's exchange links!'). Because I have certainly published in one journal in which both history and philosophy appear in its title, and I have even published a few short pieces on historical subjects in Real Medical Journals.
But I still think it is weird that someone should suppose me to be an authority on a modernist writer who is the basis of a huge scholarly and even popular industry. Neither are the 2-3 other academics who share My Real Name.
But at least that was a school student. Recently I received a solicitation from an academic-type person to participate in a volume they were putting together on [area within my generally scholarly purlieu] - for the C18th. Hello: yes, I once co-authored a volume with Eminent Historian of C18th. Even without looking at the intro where we laid out how we'd divvied up the much longer duree of the work in question, does it not seem likely that the chapters relating to C18th would have been the work of the EH? (who I do concede is now alas deceased, so could not be solicited for contributions). Not to mention that a quick scan of my own works suggests I do not venture much before 1850 though I may perhaps occasionally extend my range for reviews.
And let us draw a discreet blind over meedja researchers... I nearly ended up on a programme about Dickens basically giving out ideas that were probably not even new and fresh when I was doing EngLit as an undergraduate ('Uriah Heep! totally a wanker, no?')
***
But turning to happier things, o, Michel Faber, how right you are (again):
[A] good superhero comic is better than a bad literary novel.
And when he goes to Paradise, we think that Jane, of the critique of the mindset 'O, it is only a novel' Austen will be there to arm him up the stair.
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