Category: Editorials (Page 1 of 3)

Roundup, noun:

1. A systematic rounding up of people or things, esp.
   1. The arrest of people suspected of a particular crime or crimes
   2. The rounding up of cattle etc. usu for the purposes of registering ownership, count, etc.
2. The people and horses engaged in the rounding up of cattle etc.
3. A summary, a resume of facts or events.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd edition, Online edition, 2005

The very first “roundup” appeared on Unwritten Histories on April 24, 2016. My original idea was that there was so much cool stuff being published online, and more people needed to know about it. The first one was 650 words long. Little did I imagine that by the last one, published on July 28, 2019, it would grow to 1680 words, divided into 13 different themes. But then again, that’s kinda how Unwritten Histories always worked: it started very small and grew beyond anything I could have possibly imagined.

As we prepare to shut down Unwritten Histories, I find myself very conflicted. I’ve always felt that all writing, whether academic or creative, is inherently biographical. Looking back, Unwritten Histories was very much a product of a particular time in my life. How do you sum (or round….) something like that up?

Continue reading

by Stephanie Pettigrew

When I first started my PhD in 2013, I left a very comfortable, established community of support in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, made up of friends I had known since middle school, of family. I had a general sense of knowing my community and being known by it.

When I arrived in Fredericton, I found myself not only in a strange place, but without any pre-existing community support. It was really my only complaint about those early years at UNB. My mentors, Drs Elizabeth Mancke and Greg Kennedy, were amazing and would stop at nothing to support me, but they were not the peer network I increasingly craved. The grad student network at UNB was scattered, incohesive, almost ephemeral. I knew my peers existed on campus, sometimes I’d even get the odd beer with one or two of them, but they did not exist as a supportive network.

I had friends doing their grad studies at other universities who had the sort of peer support network I wanted, and I was downright envious. I missed having that sense of community.

As I started attending conferences and establishing a network outside of my own university, I began to grow more and more of that community I was looking for. Enter Andrea, and Unwritten Histories.

Continue reading

Tap tap tap

Before you get excited, I’m not actually back! I’m just popping in with some news!

So, first of all, if you’ve been missing my writing, I have good news for you. I’ve recently started writing the University Affairs’s Careers Café column! You can check out my first two pieces, on opportunities and online job announcements.  Here’s a preview of the latter:

Digital technology, including social media, has dramatically transformed the academic landscape over the last 10 years. Some of these changes have been positive, and some negative. Some platforms like Twitter have facilitated the creation of online communities for academics, creating spaces where we can provide support for each other, engage in conversation, and share our work. But at the same time, new publication venues, like blogs, have put even more pressure on graduate students and early career academics to produce material. Other changes are less easily categorized, but raise important questions that we, as a field, need to address. In this case, I’m speaking about the increasingly common practice of online job announcements. To be clear, I’m not referring to job ads, but rather, the announcements from the individuals who get the jobs and/or promotions.

Secondly, Stephanie and I have been chatting about what to do with Unwritten Histories. We’ve basically come to the conclusion that we’d like to keep everything up, and write occasional posts when the mood strikes us. I don’t think we’ll reactivate the Patreon account right now, though maybe we can consider switching to a per-post model. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

And on that note, keep your eye out for a brand new blog post on Tuesday. I wasn’t planning to do a gift guide for this year, but I couldn’t resist it. See you then!

I absolutely love citations. There is something beautiful about a perfectly formatted bibliography that just makes my heart sing. But aside from their aesthetic value, citations have tremendous transformative potential when it comes to academia, education, and the sharing of knowledge. So, in today’s blog post, I want to talk about why this is the case, and how you can maximize the potential of citations in your classroom.

This blog post was inspired by a recent Facebook post by the talented and lovely Joanna L. Pearce, which I will include below. While I was writing this blog post, I also happened to mention my plan to Krista McCracken, who was already planning to do a podcast episode on the same subject (in case you needed more evidence that our minds are psychically synced). So while I will be talking about citations in terms of education today, Krista will be speaking about citations and research; definitely make sure you check out that podcast episode.

  Continue reading

Here is a preview:

On April 3rd, I was on my way to class, when I received a phone call from my husband. It was the last day of the winter semester, and my students had organized a potluck to celebrate. My husband has battled Crohn’s Disease for the better part of ten years, and had decided to stay home that day because his symptoms were severe. Over the course of those ten years, we’ve been through several flares (as they are called), and knew what to do. So my husband calling me right before class time was quite out of character. And for good reason: he called to tell me that he needed to go to the hospital. After a brief discussion (he wanted me to go to class, I told him he was being ridiculous), I popped into class to explain what was going on, and then ran to catch the bus. That was one of the longest commutes my entire life, both literally and figuratively. I arrived at the hospital to find my husband curled up on the benches in the Emergency Room. While I didn’t know it at the time, we had just entered a two-month-long hell-scape that involved multiple emergency room visits, two major surgeries, and a lot of waiting. I’m happy to report that my husband is now doing fine, but the entire ordeal has highlighted the invisible costs of precarious academia, particularly those costs that arise from academic relocation.

Check out the rest here: http://activehistory.ca/2019/02/untethered-precarity-place-and-people/