Always when discussions of the use of blogs, or the appropriateness of academic blogging makes its rounds through the blogsphere, or emerges in a journal issue like this, I am reminded of the Tribble-like concerns that so often get expressed: that blogging is a waste of time; that it's self indulgent; that it does little to further one's career and can in fact damage it; that scholarly blogging has no merit because it isn't peer reviewed etc. etc.
Of course I make no claims to scholarly blogging. I'm a scholar who blogs, but when I do mention my research, it is usually because I think readers might find it as interesting as I do, or because I'm trying to organize my thoughts about something particular. The primary (or even secondary or tertiary) purpose of this blog has never been to work through scholarly arguments. That should be self apparent to anyone who's read it. Reading the Reconstruction issue got me wondering though if this blog might be a way for me to work through some of the challenges I've been having in my academic life lately.
Some of the challenges I've been facing lately that might benefit from more frequent academic blogging blogging could include:
1. Improving my writing. This is a big one. I have an advisor who tells me my academic writing is stilted and awkward, that I don't seem to have found my own writing voice. I agree that sometimes my academic writing is too strained. Part of it has to do with my training - remove every mention of the personal - and part of it I think with my relative inexperience in writing.
I've been admiring academic writers who can thoughtfully connect their personal positions and identity with their academic topic, and I'd like to emulate that. I'm still not sure about what kind of academic "voice" I have, which makes it difficult to know what I need to be going to develop it. Perhaps writing about academic topics in an open, everyday forum like this blog will help loosen that writing up.
All this practice would presumably make writing an easier process, which would have the added benefit of making my writing tasks easier when it comes to producing them.
2. Providing unity. Blogging more about my academic projects might unite the disparate pieces of academic work in a way that explains their commonalities.
Right now along with the dissertation research, I'm juggling a chapter revision, a collaborative book proposal, a conference presentation, and an organizational committee for another conference. Since each of these activities involves a different topic or area of interest, I'm finding myself compartmentalizing them in a way that I don't necessarily think does me much good. Since they are all academic endeavours, there is a commonality in them, and I think if I could find a way to incorporate them all into one category, I might find fruitful interchanges between them, instead of boxing them each up as a separate activity.
3. Working through the difficult parts of my research. Right now, I'm faced with a research task for the dissertation that I see the value of, but don't relish doing. (Isn't that the way so many things in these kinds of projects, or life in general, are like?) I've made little headway on this aspect right now in part because it pushes me in a research direction that I'm unfamiliar with and I'm having some difficulty figuring out what material I should concentrate on the most.
Perhaps blogging my reading would help me articulate how useful the material is as I work my way through it. A bonus might even come if I have some readers who could help me navigate through the quagmires of the reading as well.
This blog has remained mostly personal to this point because that's what it started out doing. I don't really wish to abandon the personal, since it gives me a great deal of satisfaction knowing that people who I care about stay in touch with me this way. I'm not sure if this blog will work as a combination of academic and personal posts.
Then again, after the Storyworlds post, tw asked if I was going to post some of the Nanowrimo writing, and I've been considering doing that (after I clean it up a bit since it's awfully rough right now). Although the fiction writing has nothing to do with the subjects I study academically, I'm finding the process of writing to be similar. Although I've written a bit of fiction here and there, this is the first time I've written so much in such a short period of time. It has made me much more aware of the writing process itself as I struggle to figure out how to get from one plot point to another, find a new plot twist opening up in the context of trying to write about something else, and taught me that much of writing is simply sitting down and plowing through what needs to be done. Inspiration be damned, just write!
So at the end of this post, as I consider everything I've said so far, I guess all I've done is confirm for myself that this blog will remain fairly eclectic, and given myself permission to make it even more eclectic if needed by discussing my academic work from time to time. I suppose this post itself is a good example of reason #3 above - working/writing through a problem to find a solution. Thanks blogreaders for coming along for the ride!
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