Tag Archives: academic writing
Autofilling the Data Gaps
My macroeconomics professor at The University at Buffalo told our class, at semester’s end, that people in his profession “had a lot to be humble about.” I loved that line and have used it hundreds of times since, to describe … Continue reading
Ethan Mollick on Using Artificial Intelligence in Student Writing
I have added Ethan Mollick’s substack blog, “One Useful Thing,” to our Resources list (above). A professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Mollick writes that he’s “trying to understand what our new AI-haunted era means for … Continue reading
“Pre-Planned Feelings”
We have discussed our friend Clarissa‘s opinions on American academia and other topics in the past. She is an Hispanic Studies professor at a midwestern public university whose blog is always vividly written (and is contentious by design, I would … Continue reading
The scale of a work
Our friend Jonathan Mayhew, on finding the right size (for a book): I like saying that [my upcoming book on Lorca and music] is a medium sized book on a vast subject. So it is with scholarship. You are rarely … Continue reading
Not included.
Sometimes you have to read a story two or three times to make sure you’re reading it right. As in: A PhD candidate is hoping the University of Alberta changes its practice on publishing theses after hers was rejected for spelling her [Urdu] … Continue reading
How to write
I love my old friend Jonathan Mayhew’s prose. His blog, Stupid Motivational Tricks (Scholarly Writing and How to Get it Done), is often very charming (and it is always illuminating). Read this bit on the use of “scare quotes.” The … Continue reading
J. Hillis Miller
Professor Miller was a genial man whose ardent advocacy of the “deconstruction” movement in literary and cultural criticism was notable for his uncommonly graceful prose style. His early book “Poets of Reality” was a revelation to me my first year … Continue reading
Free at Last
United States copyright law was changed repeatedly in the last century to grant copyright extensions to entire classes of works of literature and entertainment. This meant that such work could not be referenced at length in works of scholarship without … Continue reading
10% and “the crisis in knowledge”
Writes Jonathan Mayhew: Knowledge is under attack from several fronts at once. In science itself, it is due to corporate corruption and the inherent bias toward interesting but possibly false results. There was that paper about how most scientific findings are false. … Continue reading
Good scholarly habits
My dear friend Tierney Wisniewski, this website’s cofounder and coeditor, has started up a new blog devoted to her scholarly work and how she gets it done. I love her inaugural piece, “Good Scholarly Habits.” Tierney writes with great clarity and … Continue reading
