Category: Academia

  • Writing from the other side of a year

    Writing from the other side of a year

    A year ago, I found out that I was losing my job.  Two months into a graduate program is particularly bad timing (or at least it felt that way at the time). And right after moving in together with my husband to our first apartment, in a new city, with no friends or social network. …

  • In Reflection: A Year of Self-Discovery in Wales

    In Reflection: A Year of Self-Discovery in Wales

    I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life doing everything I could to hide myself. Talk to just about any queer person over the age of twenty-five, and they probably have a similar story. It wasn’t until my late teens that I started tottering toward self-acceptance. Unfortunately, my first relationship put this journey on…

  • Thoughts as I Finish My Dissertation

    These days, the act of sitting down and writing a dissertation on an eight-hundred-year-old text feels absolutely absurd.  I believe on some level that what I’m doing is important and in fact relevant—whatever that means.  What is relevant these days?  These days are dark; indeed, some of the darkest I have lived.  A recent social…