From the digital archives: Bad Writing Contest, 1996-98 (with quiz!)
"Judith Butler at a lecture at the University of Hamburg, April 2007" by Jreberlein (Creative Commons)
In a week when we’ve covered such oddball yet at least a little bit thought provoking topics about writing like a literary draft, which type of writer is the best, and which theorist is cited the most often, it figures we should end the week by revisiting the “Bad Writing Contest” which made a little bit of a splash at the end of the 1990s. You remember that, right, where some of the most influential scholars–most likely to be of poststructural and postmodern persuasions–were skewered for their difficult prose. I’m withholding the names (though the photo here is a mighty big hint), because we’re gonna have a little fun with the winners and test your knowledge of them after the jump!
Lest anyone think that we here at Post Academic are aligning ourselves with the ideologically dubious and probably culturally retrograde judgments made by Denis Dutton and friends, we aren’t. Sure, the winners/losers can be difficult to read, but there’s definitely a method to what appears madness that’s hard not respect and admire. So keep in mind the following:
1. If my writing could be recognized as a “bad writing” alongside some of my Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial heroes, I would have been glad to be recognized as such. I remember when my grad school colleagues and I first found out about the “Bad Writing Contest” and how we took it with a grain of salt, bemused though we were that the biggest names in our field might be deemed poor writers.
2. It’s not like it isn’t a tradition in critical theory and its philosophical antecdents to use complex, confusing language to interrogate complex, confusing subject matter. Dutton himself seems to acknowledge this, though its couched in the worst bad faith possible in this Wall Street Journal piece he wrote justifying the contest:
As a lifelong student of Kant, I know that philosophy is not always well-written. But when Kant or Aristotle or Wittgenstein are most obscure, it’s because they are honestly grappling with the most complex and difficult problems the human mind can encounter. How different from the desperate incantations of the Bad Writing Contest winners, who hope to persuade their readers not by argument but by obscurity that they too are the great minds of the age.
That’s right, the whole contest really isn’t about writing, but intention, which make the whole thing less entertaining by a lot.
3. On the other hand, I’ve heard other Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial rock stars make similar complaints about their colleagues, probably as a warning to their students to do as they say and not as they do, in not becoming jargon juniors. I do assume, though, that they do so in much better faith!
Now what you’ve been waiting for–the winners/losers–is below the fold…
Support Matt Stewart’s LitDraft!
With the exceptions of JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer, the literary world still doesn’t have the mass appeal that generates the big bucks. Rowling and Meyer are big winners precisely because they appeal to a large audience, especially teens, who have disposable income and who aren’t afraid to spend it.
But these authors are in the minority, and it’s tough for new authors to break out. Although novelists are creative, they just aren’t the greatest at promoting themselves and convincing others why they matter. Hmmm … sounds a lot like grad students and academics …
Luckily, author Matt Stewart—whose novel The French Revolution comes out on Bastille Day, FYI—proposed a solution in a recent HuffPo piece. He suggests a LitDraft, just like the NFL Draft, but with authors.
Why not? The public obsesses over drafts, wondering which player is a sleeper hit and which player will flame out. And the marketing possibilities are dizzying:
The LitDraft is more than a mere recruitment tool–it’s a national media event focused on reading! Put the LitDraft on TV (CSPAN, PBS, whatever); give us face time with reclusive literary celebrities; provide running commentary and red carpet interviews; and package nifty segments on writers’ fascinating stories. It’d get casual fans fired up about new voices–hell, it’d get them thinking about reading for a few minutes period. Along the way, the LitDraft creates instant local celebrities, and a brief descent from the New York juggernaut might even make the book world feel slightly accessible to readers. (Did JK Rowling really wear that?)
A LitDraft would also benefit literature departments everywhere by reminding the public that words aren’t just important, but they’re also fun.
Want to know which writers Matt Stewart would like to have in his own LitDraft? Find out after the jump!
Image of 2008 draft results by Jim F, posted to Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license.
Who’s the best writer? An academic’s point of view (with poll)
I was reading this opinion piece from the Chronicle by Rachel Toor about bad academic writing and it got me wondering about who was the best writer–the academic, the creative writer, or the journalist. Now there’s no decisive way to judge this and the question seems to be a futile one to ask, at best, or a stupid one, at worst, since it obviously boils down to a matter of opinion and probably subject position. But seeing as I’m kinda two of the three types of writer I’ve listed, I was thinking about the skills that the different kinds of writing entail.
To try to compare apples to oranges to bananas, I came up with three criteria to consider each kind of writer/each style of writing: the writer’s strengths, the self-identified weaknesses, and how one might make a case for itself/against the others. I’m only focusing on an academic’s point of view here, since Toor’s essay got me to think about this. And if someone wants to make a case for the creative writer down the line, please do, because I’m definitely not one!
Strengths: As an academic, I’ve always been invested in the idea that scholarly writing was the superior or at least the most intellectually engaged (read: superior) form, because it allowed for the most complexity and the ability to make connections that neither journalism and creative writing could. So what if academic writing is dense and opaque more than some of the time?: It just reflected the complexity of the thought it was trying to convey and there really is an art to slowly building an argument that makes academic writing appealing. Plus, academic writing and research require a command of materials like no other, since the scholar needs not only to have a strong grasp of the creative works it is analyzing, but also other critical work in the field, historical background, and theoretical methodologies. So I guess that’s why academic essays and manuscripts have to be so long, if they have to incorporate all of those elements.
More below the fold…
Lawyers, Grad Students, and Money
In the past, law students could shoulder massive amounts of debt because they could be fairly confident of getting a job. Now they are facing a situation that should be eerily familiar to Post Academic readers: Firms aren’t hiring the way they used to, and that student loan debt isn’t going anywhere.
Above the Law sums up the anger at the situation: “But do you know what the real bitch of it is? If it turns out you made a terrible investment by going to law school, it’s impossible for you to get out from under your mistakes. You can’t discharge law school debt through bankruptcy absent a showing of undue hardship.”
You sure can’t. But, chin up, o lawyer friends. Post Academic can help you look on the bright side! You still have it better than grad students! Here’s how:
Going to a big-name school can still help you. In academia, there are so few jobs that an Ivy League PhD can only get you so far. In fact, it might not get you far at all. A JD from an Ivy or otherwise big-time school still means you’re hot stuff, however, or at least you’re well-connected.* Even if you don’t have a JD from a top-tier school, you have a better shot at a job than your peers in the humanities.
More reasons for lawyers to feel a little better after the jump! Image of The Illustrated London News – Tichborne Case (1874) from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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Broke-Ass Schools meet Broke-Ass Students: The lists grow
If you’re looking for the most current news on Broke-Ass Schools and how they are creating Broke-Ass Students, we’ve found a great resource for up-to-date info on budget crunches across the nation. The Chronicle of Higher Ed‘s “Campus Cuts” blog compiles a list of schools facing cut backs. The “Campus Cuts” list covers everything from large scale salary freezes and furloughs to programs and faculty/staff positions that are threatened by the chopping block. Or you can just click on our own “Broke-Ass Schools” category listing and see which schools are hurting right now, which include SUNY Stony Brook Southhampton, UMass Amherst, some UIowa humanities grad programs, University of Maine, and–of course!–the UC.
"UVA Rotunda" by Uris (public domain)
So it looks like Broke-Ass Schools are trying to keep afloat by breaking-ass their students: Huffington Post has digested some of the latest tuition hikes at state universities in Virginia, Maryland, and the Kentuck. Reporting the second-hand info third hand here, the schools in the university system in Virginia seem the hardest hit–just hope the tuition hikes aren’t used to fund Confederate History Month. Here are the numbers, courtesy WaPo’s College, Inc blog:
U Virginia: almost 10% increase / $956 tuition hike for in-state students ($1900 hike to an almost $34,000 tuition for out-of-state students, too!)
Va Tech: 9.7% increase
James Madison: 8.5% increase
UMaryland is raising its tuition by 3%, while UKentucky and Louisville passed a 6% increase, which hopefully won’t go to paying the multi-million dollar salaries of basketball coaches John Calipari and Rick Pitino.
Academic publishing: New media, new approaches
Coming up against decreasing budgets and a general neglect of the humanities, what options are available to journals that might be feeling the pinch even more than the institutions that host them? Since we’ve been speculating about the possibilities of online publishing as a more flexible and easily accessible format to facilitate research and distribute it, it’s probably time to walk the walk and provide some examples of journals that have gone digital. Some of our colleagues and friends have passed along tips about online-only journals that are trying to match quantity and quality, while using digital media to do things that might not be possible in print.
The three journals we’re looking at offer new approaches to the way research is done and promoted, as well as tapping formal innovations only supported by digital media.
Philosophers' Imprint masthead (Open Access)
Philosophers’ Imprint: “Edited by philosophers, Published by librarians, Free to readers of the Web,” Philosophers’ Imprint is proactive in its use of available technology and in meeting the challenges of the present/near future where libraries are unable to either foot the bill for journal subscriptions or house more and more bound copies. Despite its no-frills but clean layout, the journal really seems to be ahead of the curve in rethinking how scholarship is disseminated and appreciated, offering its contents for free online without sticking to a strict publication schedule to maximize flexibility. Because it’s free, it also makes the most of basic resources available to scholars while dispensing with a huge editing apparatus and licensing issues.
More on the publishing philosophy of Philosophers’ Imprint, after the jump…
Accepting the Unholy Alliance Between Marketing and Academia
In a post called “Lies I Was Told in Grad School,” the blog Some Notes Toward an Investigation lists the following at #2:
Don’t market yourself to fit academic fads.
If this is a lie, then the truth is that you should market yourself to fit academic fads.
To anyone who has been through academia, the concept of marketing one’s self and establishing a brand sounds gross. Marketing is the science of selling more stuff to more people, and academia exists to protect useful knowledge from market whimsy, right? The free market brought us Pet Rocks, Bumpits, vampire fiction, and Fall Out Boy, so why should academics or aspiring academics trust the free market for anything? Then again, a little marketing savvy might help you become a professor. Let’s consider the pros and cons of mixing marketing and academia:
Pros: Marketers find a need, and they fill it as quickly and easily as possible. Any good marketer can sum up what a product can do for you. And that’s exactly what you need to do as an academic. You don’t have to sell yourself as the Pet Rock of Professors, but you will not get a job if you do not specialize in a subject that a university needs. For that reason, you need to research the academic market just as much as you need to research your subject of choice.
Cons: Fads don’t last. Consider the Pet Rock. Choosing a hot field of study is smart, but it takes a long time to earn a degree in the humanities. A grad student runs the risk of graduating right when an academic fad starts to cool off, which means all the slots are filled. Aspiring professors with student loans can’t exactly sit around until the next fad begins. On the bright side, this problem could be solved if grad programs admitted fewer students and offered more funding so students could finish their degrees faster.
Conclusion: Fads may be short, but the number of academic jobs is dwindling so much that the pros might outweigh the cons. Furthermore, approaching your career with a little marketing in mind might help you build a side skill that you can use if you don’t wind up in academia.
Lies I Was Told in Grad School [Some Notes Toward an Investigation]
Image of a pet rock by CarolSpears, under a Creative Commons license.
Academic publishing: A trickle-down theory and other ways to streamline the process
"Water drop animation" by Gmaxwell (licensed by Creative Commons)
We’ve discussed some of the difficulties with getting publishing before, which was mostly me extrapolating from my personal experiences. An article titled “The Back-Up Plan” from Inside Higher Ed last week proposed an interesting solution to making turnaround in the editorial process quicker, so that you don’t end up in an experience like mine where I had a proposal for a piece going back-and-forth with various editors and project proposers for a year-and-a-half only to end up with nothing.
Enter “The Back-Up Plan”: According to the article, the American Economic Association has set up a process whereby submitters can opt in to a plan where their essays can be automatically submitted to another “back up” journal if it is not accepted by the group’s top publication, American Economic Review. The idea is that readers’ reports would be passed along to the secondary journal, which is supposed to speed up review of the proposed article. Now you might argue, as some in the comment threads do, that resubmitting an essay using unfavorable readers’ reports is a kamikaze mission times two, but the choice of doing so is up to the writer. And apparently, most of the submissions going through this process are borderline cuts that were well-received–just not so much to be included in the assocation’s #1 publication.
More about the “back-up plan”, below the fold…
Resources: LiveJournal’s “Applying to Grad School” Group
LiveJournal may not look like much, and it lets its users put in way too many distracting GIF animations, but don’t let the appearance fool you. It has some of the best communities on the Web, and one of them is the community “Applying to Grad School.” The group gives people a chance to vent, to get feedback on statements of purpose and get random tips about finding an apartment.
The fact that this group isn’t heavily moderated is a bonus, as many of the responses are candid, but not as harsh as what you might see in other online forums. A recent poster asked how to handle grad student anxiety, or the fear of being exposed as a fraud, and the comments in return would have bolstered anyone having doubts about his talent. Other questions are more straightforward, such as “Moving from Alaska to DC” and “Calling a program to see when they plan on sending decisions.”
The Grad Café also has similar forums, with equally helpful and supportive answers, but if you have a question and need it answered in a jiffy, consider posting it in both places to get as much advice as possible.
So You Want to Go to Grad School? [LiveJournal]
Making a list: The most cited scholars in the humanities, 2007
"Foucault Party" by Primitivojumento (licensed by Creative Commons)
Over at the Chronicle‘s Brainstorm blog, gadfly professor and, somehow, one-time Post Academic commenter Mark Bauerlein has posted a list of the “Most cited authors of books in the humanities in 2007″, compiled by a dauntingly named Thomson Reuters’ ISI Web of Science. Here’s a link to the list, originally posted at the Times Higher Education Supplement last year, charting which scholars were mentioned over 500 times in the journals compiled by Thomson Reuters. Only in the humanities would a list of citations from 2007 released in 2009 make news in 2010, but I digress. Hey, it’s worth reposting and discussing if only because we get to use the Wikimedia Commons picture of a “Foucault Party” (with Freud and Bourdieu too) above.
So who won? Check below the jump, though the photo gives you a big hint…
