oh no, not another newsletter!

Yes, I'm doing it!

Listen, I know what you’re thinking: we have so many sources of content these days. Why does the world need another newsletter/blog/LiveJournal?

I’m going to be completely honest: I’m not sure that the world needs another newsletter. I have this fantasy about writing a short story in which everyone just agrees to stop generating content. The influencers stop taking selfies. The TED talkers stop gesticulating wildly on stages, glaring earnestly into the shadowed faces of audience members. Academics withdraw their publications from their disciplines’ premier journals, and all of the scrappy second-tier journals, too. Fingers are removed from keyboards. Pens and pencils and crayons are laid down. No new content is generated for 24 hours. Everyone looks up, takes a breath, and gets a good night’s sleep.

But here I am, generating “content.” What gives?

The bottom line for me is: I’ve missed writing, and I find I have a few helpful things to say in mainly three lanes: queer studies, Artificial Intelligence, and the higher ed job market. Of course, these lanes are so broad and so oversaturated that I think it’s worth specifying my particular lens, so you know what you’re getting. I write about:

• Queer studies grounded in the lives of people beyond big, coastal cities.

• Approaches to AI in higher education grounded in critical, and sociological, pedagogies.

• The higher ed job market for the majority of institutions: teaching-focused ones.

These areas give you a small snapshot of who I am: a queer scholar who has navigated a circuitous path through a variety of roles in higher ed, across a range of institutions. It’s not a stretch to say that I love higher ed, truly, as an imperfect industry (aren’t they all?). I guess this writing is a bit of a love letter to the work we’re all doing here, together, in Ye Olde Challenging Tymes of the 2020s.

How I came back to writing after years in higher ed

Speaking of love, I used to love writing. It rarely came easy to me, but it felt like a way I could effect some small change. Then, I started a PhD program in sociology, way back in 2010. As anyone who has been in graduate school will likely recognize, academia really drilled the pleasure in writing out of me. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely academia’s fault. I chose to adopt a writing style that allowed me to publish, and, ideally, be employed. Blame the poor academic job market. Blame impostor syndrome. Blame my desire for some kind of academic community. I wrote, and while I don’t like to brag, I was a pretty prolific publisher of peer-reviewed publications.

When I moved off of the tenure track (more of a hiking path than a “track,” really) and into a staff position at a teaching center, I pretty much stopped writing altogether, aside from wrapping up my book. Formal writing was no longer needed for my job, and it was (and is) the pandemic, and the world was (and is) burning, so why bother? I finished up a couple of academic projects, and kinda moved on.

Then, I had the opportunity to write a chapter for a book about higher ed careers beyond the professoriate (which you can access freely, by the way), and I remembered what it was to enjoy writing again. Maybe it was the exercise of processing my experiences in academia for an external audience. Maybe it was the supportive editors. Maybe I finally got a solid 8 hours of sleep. Who knows? But I remembered that writing is pleasurable for me. I kept writing, too, even in genres that don’t benefit me professionally (cough cough see this book review and this one). So here I am.

Newsletters as a genre of academic-personal writing

But why a newsletter of all things? Are blogs making a comeback? What is it, the 90s again? In so many ways, it totally is the 90s again! I mean, have you seen the clothes kids are wearing now? The legal protections that are falling away? There are lots of venues in which I could consider writing, given my day job¹: Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle are possibilities. There are also guest posts for others’ blogs and newsletters. I could try to write some kind of commentary for a journal, or submit an abstract for a book chapter in some edited volume. These approaches would likely generate more “reach” for my writing (well, maybe not the academic stuff, lolsob).

For me, what this newsletter enables is experimentation. If academics don’t get materially compensated for their writing anyway, and it’s not required for my promotion, I appreciate the opportunity to work through some thoughts in a semi-public way here. I don’t expect a substantial “reach,” for the same reasons I don’t ever expect to be “cool”: I’m terrible at self-promotion, and I tend to be interested in relationships and complexity, and I’m not publicly on social media much (yet. Do I have to be more, now? Ugh.).

What I am trying to do is write my way back into joy. I’m trying to learn, and I truly welcome suggestions from those of you who do this kind of writing more regularly. Why do YOU do it, if you do?

But what am I getting with this newsletter???

That’s enough (too much, really) of the why. If you know me, or have ever attended a workshop, or taken a class, with me, you know I like a long, drawn-out, context-setting intro! It’s who I am! Ok, ok. What is this newsletter about? You might be interested in this newsletter if:

• You know me and you like the way I tend to think about the world (hashtag ambivalence!).

• You are interested in pedagogy but are tired of the generalized advice to do more with less, or pedagogical approaches that ignore who you are as an educator.

• You are a graduate student, or you work with graduate students, or are a recent graduate student trying to navigate the practical side of academia.

• You are interested in reading more about artificial intelligence from the perspective of someone who is a sociologist and knows a bit about teaching, evidence, and inequality. Honestly, if you’re sick of reading about AI, I also totally get it.

• You would like to read something about academia that is grounded in evidence, names explicitly how power works in higher ed, and doesn’t fall into neat binaries.

• You are interested in approaches to queerness and LGBTQ lives that center the experiences of folks beyond large cities in the U.S.

Basically, these are my lanes: academia, teaching, AI, and queer stuff. If you’re into any of those circles on the Venn diagram, it might be worth subscribing. And if you, like me, are at the overlapping center of the diagram, well, what are you waiting for? Maybe I’ll squeeze in a little bit of life stuff, as well (what content am I finding helpful in this moment? Quite a bit! You should check out my friend Pam’s newsletter on AI in higher ed!). As with everything, this newsletter is a bit of an experiment for me, and I’m giving it the ol’ college try (pun intended).

And before I wrap, here’s a sneak peek at a couple of topics I have on tap for my first couple of essays/articles/whatevers. I’ve been wanting to write something about AI and trust, responding to the well-meaning hand-wringing about AI detection tools I’ve seen from my teaching colleagues. You’ll have to wait for the punchline on that one. And I’d like to start a series specifically for grad students on the job market - timely, given that the summer is often a time grad students are working on job market materials (you’re not? Oh! Maybe that should be the subject of a post - managing the work of the job market). I have an intro to this series just about ready to go, and I’m planning to do in this series what I used to do in my graduate pedagogy course, plus some bonus material, and for free. That is, I’m going to talk a bit about what higher ed actually is, for those of us who don’t have generations of faculty in the family (i.e., most of us), and how we can approach the most common work in academia in job materials (hint: it’s TEACHING! TEACHING, people!). Should be fun! Hope to see your eyeballs in the future maybe? Gross, Clare. Kinda gross.

1. I feel the need to acknowledge that my writing here reflects my own perspectives, not those of my employer, and I do this work outside of my working hours and with my own resources. Actually, I write best in the wee hours when my coffee is first making its way into my system, before I get too deep into email.