At his age, I was unduly impressed with all earlier publications, esp. the good stuff by more senior scholars. I would describe almost all secondary lit (the first time I cited it) as "extremely useful," "insightful," "groundbreaking," etc. (that last wasn't hard, given the state of gender history in those days).
My editors made me take almost all of the adjectives out. It made me sound like a noobie, they said. I guess they were right.
Airconditioning is proof positive that God loves us, btw.
Oh yeah, the editors should have caught it! I feel that I am now owed a beer by several people.
And I'm constantly removing adjectives from my students' footnotes. That's just normal. But this was more like a paragraph-long and highly inaccurate description of my article, topped off by saying "Prof. Raincoat's structuralist argument prevents her from seeing the obvious explanation for this event, which is ..." where a. my argument in this article is post-structuralist as all get out and b. his "obvious explanation" is in fact the same one I ended up with. ARRRRRRGGGHHHHH.
Airconditioning may well be proof of God's love. But weather that requires this much airconditioning is proof that God is a passive-aggressive SOB.
Well, too much teleology always makes me break out in a rash, but I always figured that other parts of the ecosystem needed the hot weather. I mean, it's not all about us. But the airconditioning was a (historically belated) makeup call for humans, on God's part.
You are indeed owed a beer by the editors. Didn't they read through the articles they included?
Oh, *cringe*! The editors should definitely have caught that! I was a grad student low low low level assistant at a journal once, back in the day, and at a brainstormy staff meeting once suggested the only other person I could think of (in my limited awareness of People Who Wrote on X) to review a book on X. I don't remember the exact words of the editor, who was also my supervisor, but they were something tight-lipped and containing the phrase, "Nooooooooooooo." I later read the intro to the book and figured out all by myself, lalala, why that person would not have liked to review it: half the intro was about trashing her book, in kind of ridiculous ways.
IDK, you have to be a pretty ballsy junior scholar to do that, don't you? Gah!
And now I have "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" running through my head.
In general, I think, lots of young scholars (especially the dudes) look at reputation as a zero-sum game: if you want to have it, you must defeat the people superior to you mano a mano! As if collaboration cannot exist. (I don't excuse myself here, but I suppress it as best I can...)
I think that this is exactly right. Thank you! Yes! That's what's going on here, and it was puzzling me, but yeah. That explains it.
It's so dumb. I am a valuable ally, in that I have as much power as you can have in our tiny sub-field without having a named chair at an Ivy League institution. And I'm really well known in our field for being helpful and friendly and nice, especially to younger scholars. Why would you not want me as an ally? Why go out of your way to alienate me? Sheesh.
Somebody being the editor who was on your dissertation committee and also, ten years later, was the supervisor of the ill-mannered scholar who wrote the mean and inaccurate footnote? Oh, yeah.
I hate to say but I find the tendency to behave badly in trashing others in footnotes to be a very male academic behaviour. Every woman academic whose work I've read thoroughly puts the fight right into the meat of the text if she's going to make a stand over it but a lot of guys seem to believe they're required to diss somebody every chapter or so.
A few years back, a new book came out about topic on which I've published. My article was dismissed in a footnote as an utterly wrong interpretation. The following year, I heard him speak at a conference on the subject. I asked him about the specific source I had written on and which he'd categorically denied my interpretation about. He said that he had never read the source but thanked me for bringing it to his attention.
I think Goosey has it right: a lot of guys think of reputation as a zero-sum game. Whereas a lot of women, at least in my field, think of reputation as additive, meaning that if I make friends with lots of people and help them and they help me, all our reputations are increased.
To be fair, though, in real life I am a big ol' conflict-avoider; maybe if I was less averse to conflict I wouldn't find this sort of behavior so surprising and unpleasant?
I met you once at a conference and you were lovely and helpful even though we're not remotely in the same field.
In my own field, not so much with the lovely and helpful. Where are these helpful women in my field? I suspect I am derailing to rant about my own deep miserable grad school issues so I will leave it at that. But please know that in my academic fantasy world, I have a nice supportive supervisor who is quite Raincoat-esque.
Aw, thank you. Please feel free to rant. I am always interested in other people's grad school experiences!
Also, not to mess your academic fantasy world or anything, but at the moment at least two of the students I supervise are ready to kill me, because I told them chapter drafts which they were completely convinced were ready to be defended needed extensive revision. So I am a crappy, terrible, rotten, no-good supervisor, obviously. At least this week I am.
Oh, whoops, right, I edited that bit out. When they asked me to write the blurb, six or seven weeks ago now, they needed it in a big hurry and asked if I would please write it on the basis of the table of contents (!!) and I said no, you'll have to courier me the entire ms on paper, because I'm so oldfashioned that I want to read the whole thing before recommending it to the world, and so stingy that I don't want to print it all out myself. But, I said, don't send it by regular post because we're having a mail carriers' strike. But they sent it by post anyway. So besides everything else they are now six weeks late with the catalog copy for this book and without a blurb. Hah!
Comments 18
At his age, I was unduly impressed with all earlier publications, esp. the good stuff by more senior scholars. I would describe almost all secondary lit (the first time I cited it) as "extremely useful," "insightful," "groundbreaking," etc. (that last wasn't hard, given the state of gender history in those days).
My editors made me take almost all of the adjectives out. It made me sound like a noobie, they said. I guess they were right.
Airconditioning is proof positive that God loves us, btw.
Reply
And I'm constantly removing adjectives from my students' footnotes. That's just normal. But this was more like a paragraph-long and highly inaccurate description of my article, topped off by saying "Prof. Raincoat's structuralist argument prevents her from seeing the obvious explanation for this event, which is ..." where a. my argument in this article is post-structuralist as all get out and b. his "obvious explanation" is in fact the same one I ended up with. ARRRRRRGGGHHHHH.
Airconditioning may well be proof of God's love. But weather that requires this much airconditioning is proof that God is a passive-aggressive SOB.
Reply
You are indeed owed a beer by the editors. Didn't they read through the articles they included?
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IDK, you have to be a pretty ballsy junior scholar to do that, don't you? Gah!
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In general, I think, lots of young scholars (especially the dudes) look at reputation as a zero-sum game: if you want to have it, you must defeat the people superior to you mano a mano! As if collaboration cannot exist. (I don't excuse myself here, but I suppress it as best I can...)
Reply
It's so dumb. I am a valuable ally, in that I have as much power as you can have in our tiny sub-field without having a named chair at an Ivy League institution. And I'm really well known in our field for being helpful and friendly and nice, especially to younger scholars. Why would you not want me as an ally? Why go out of your way to alienate me? Sheesh.
Reply
I hate to say but I find the tendency to behave badly in trashing others in footnotes to be a very male academic behaviour. Every woman academic whose work I've read thoroughly puts the fight right into the meat of the text if she's going to make a stand over it but a lot of guys seem to believe they're required to diss somebody every chapter or so.
A few years back, a new book came out about topic on which I've published. My article was dismissed in a footnote as an utterly wrong interpretation. The following year, I heard him speak at a conference on the subject. I asked him about the specific source I had written on and which he'd categorically denied my interpretation about. He said that he had never read the source but thanked me for bringing it to his attention.
Way to go, hotshot guys. Way to go!
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To be fair, though, in real life I am a big ol' conflict-avoider; maybe if I was less averse to conflict I wouldn't find this sort of behavior so surprising and unpleasant?
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In my own field, not so much with the lovely and helpful. Where are these helpful women in my field? I suspect I am derailing to rant about my own deep miserable grad school issues so I will leave it at that. But please know that in my academic fantasy world, I have a nice supportive supervisor who is quite Raincoat-esque.
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Also, not to mess your academic fantasy world or anything, but at the moment at least two of the students I supervise are ready to kill me, because I told them chapter drafts which they were completely convinced were ready to be defended needed extensive revision. So I am a crappy, terrible, rotten, no-good supervisor, obviously. At least this week I am.
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