Collaborating With A Fine (Not So Young) Cannibal

I made this pact with myself that I wasn’t going to write about NBC’s Hannibal. Not in an academic way, at least. For all of its gore, its elegant violence that can make cruelty taste like art, I didn’t want to engage with it on a critical level because I love it too damn much.

On found family, fandom, and academia

So I went to a conference this weekend, a regional pop culture deal-y up in Baltimore. One of the reoccurring themes of the con was that of “found family”–how ragtag fleets of misfits seem to find each other in cult television shows like Teen Wolf, Doctor Who, and Supernatural.

And, weirdly, it was a theme that also rang through my own experience at the conference, and got me thinking about the distinctions between being a graduate student and being a scholar.

Now see, in my program, there’s been a lot of talk about how, as PhD students, we should act like our professors’ colleagues, rather than as “students.” That is, we should act like the professionals we want to be, rather than the insecure chicklets that we often are. I’m all for this attitude, in theory.

But in practice?

Writing is Hard(ly Something You Should Be Doing Alone)

Last month, I attended one of the two big conferences in my field, that of the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA). Ironically, it was the first rhetoric or composition-focused conference I’ve attended and the last conference of any sort I’ll attend (gulp) before I go on the job market this fall.

Eeep! No, I’m ok. I’m alright. I swear.

Anyway, one of the most interesting panels I attended at RSA was ostensibly about the future of journals in our field. I took this to mean there would be a discussion about the journal model more broadly, about restricted vs. open access, etc.

Yeah, no.

Instead, the panel featured the editors of three of the BFD journals in rhet/comp riffing on their roles as editors, the kinds of submissions they receive and why they do or do not suck, and the messy nature of the review process. Not what I expected, no, but fascinating all the same.

For me, one of the most striking moments was when Jim Jasinski, the editor of Rhetorical Studies Quarterly, described his role in this way:

Editors are there to help writers figure out what they’ve got.

YES. Exactly!

The best editors I’ve had a chance to work with have been able to do precisely that: to peer into the abyss of a messy first draft, pick out the ideas worth exploring, and make concrete suggestions as how I might make the most of what I’ve got. This is also what I see myself doing (what I try to do) as a teacher when I ask my students to write: to read their drafts with questions like what have they got here? where are they trying to go? how can I help them get there? in mind.