G F Badley
Biographic Data
| ID | 5628 |
|---|---|
| NAME | G F Badley |
| GIVEN NAMES | G F |
| FAMILY NAME | Badley |
| SIGNATURE | BADLEY G F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6681-3966 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 143 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Eclectic Auto-ethno-graphy
In this article, I discuss auto-ethno-graphy, here deliberately hyphenated to stress the crucial, constituent elements of the admittedly blurred genre of autoethnographic inquiry. I do so mainly to rescue the genre from the accusation that it is not only blurred but also inevitably uncritical
Escaping, Living, and Writing
I use this narrative to trace ways in which writers such as Graham Greene and Michel de Montaigne escaped from tedium and unhappiness so that they could live better lives and write for greater pleasure and satisfaction. I then outline ways in which I have struggled to escape from the prison camp of strict academic writing
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Play, Personae, Writer
Albee's play has a campus setting and features two members of faculty and their wives as its only characters. I review the play to pick out themes in their lives and then connect these to Virginia Woolf herself as bipolar personality and as woman and writer. Much of the text is then a discussion of illusion and reality
Quality (and Qualities) in Qualitative Inquiry
I address some of the issues connected with the elusive concept of quality, especially in the process of qualitative inquiry. I do so by contrasting the relatively simple term "qualities" (or characteristics) with the more contentious idea of quality. I begin by considering aspects of psychogeography (assuming it to be one form of qualitative inquiry) and then by concentrating on the concept of quality itself in autoethnography, specifically as w…
Scribbling Toward Utopia
I first invoke Joan Didion’s essay “Slouching Towards Jerusalem.” Her concern was to move away from the dystopia that parts of the United States had become through drug use and other temptations toward a more utopian state. My attempt uses a number of examples where utopias have been imagined and some where the main lesson is cautionary rather than optimistic. Even Sir Thomas More’s Utopia had its faults while the East German vision of a socialis…
Heirs of the Enlightenment
In this article, I select a number of Enlightenment figures and suggest that, despite inevitable contradictions, they should still serve as exemplars for a modern age of a series of values such as freedom, tolerance, and social justice. I believe, however, that The Enlightenment is, nevertheless, a work in progress
Slow News From Nowhere and Other Utopias
In this extension to Scribbling Towards Utopia, I concentrate on two authors who make their own utopian strivings key features of their work: William Morris, the English socialist, and John Dewey, the American philosopher and liberal educator. I also borrow ideas from Jasmine Ulmer’s Writing Slow Ontology to suggest that our utopian hopes will, if ever, only be attained slowly and not quickly
Post-Academia: Life, Liberty, and Happiness
In this narrative autoethnography, I reflect on living in Post-Academia. First, I discuss how universities have become more managerial and less collegial. Then, I consider my own move from being an academic to becoming a post-academic (even verging on the post-humous). Finally, I look at the possibilities of living a sort of flourishing life in post-academia, enjoying a new sense of liberty, and accepting, despite increasing decrepitude, enough h…
Academic Writing Otherwise: A Rumination
In this rumination on academic writing otherwise, after Taylor and Benozzo, I address a number of important issues they raise. These include notions such as the academic-writing-machine, authorship, writership, and postauthorship. Throughout the article, I compare and contrast their views with examples from a variety of sources including some of my own articles. I especially comment on the fitness of autoethnography, bricolage, postacademic, and …
Utopian Hopes? Dystopian Fears
I use a discussion about our human hopes for a this-worldly utopia as a counter-choice to allowing the world to drift or neglect its way into its own forms of dystopia. The signs are clear, including those of climate change and increasing authoritarianism
Autoethnography as Social Science or as Social Study
In this research article, I examine the thoughts why autoethnography should be considered as social study rather than as social science. I suggest that autoethnographers are comfortable with the artistic and literary turn in qualitative inquiry since it helps them illuminate and illustrate their main concerns and purposes. I conclude by selecting seven main purposes of autoethnography including what some regard as its major concern-achieving Dewe…
On Good, Human, Autoethnographic Writing
Stimulated by a re-reading of On Human Geography in which Ron Johnston described his shift to an anarchic model of geographical writing, I began to reflect on his approach in comparison to my own semi-anarchic way of being an autoethnographic writer
Autoethnography: An (Incomplete) Abecedarian Assemblage
I found Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries so engrossing that I decided to construct an experimental assemblage based partially on her somewhat playful yet serious alphabetical reconfiguring of her diaries. In my case, I used items selected mainly from various articles I have written concerning autoethnography following Heti's rather chaotic methodology
I Wish I had the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man
In this narrative, I trace several elements encased in a recent article entitled ¿Quien Soy Yo? These include issues connected with personal and collective identity, feelings of alienation, feminism, confidence, and assertion. There is also a deep implication that some higher education academies do not try hard enough to welcome new colleagues, especially from minorities, into their institutions
Autoethnography as Practice and Process: Toward an Honest Appraisal
In this article, I attempt a contribution to “honest conversations” about the writing practices and processes of autoethnographers. My attempt may or may not be useful to those who judge their own autoethnographic writing as messy or even embarrassing
Autoethnographers as Freedom-Writers
In this reaction to the attack on Sir Salman Rushdie in August 2022 I suggest that he and several other writers represent powerful role-models for autoethnographers who also aspire to be freedom-writers. Some of those I reference include Nobel prize-winners such as Orhan Pamuk and Annie Ernaux as well as other literary and political figures such as Maya Angelou, Elena Ferrante, James Joyce, and George Orwell. I then turn to Norman Denzin, recentl…
Blair Performing as Orwell Performing as
In this narrative, I identify seven main roles which Eric Arthur Blair performs throughout his life. Blair-Orwell is shown as enacting or faking or impersonating such characters in his own life-drama as Class Warrior, Imperial Policeman, Autoethnographer, Womaniser, Soldier, Socialist, and Political Writer
Perhaps I am Still Waiting for Godot
In this narrative, I use notions from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot to help me reflect on concerns about uncertainty, identity, the advantages and disadvantages of waiting, as well as the strange invention of Godot himself (or her-self)
The Seven Ages of an Academic Man? (First)
I use headings from Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man speech to structure a narrative about an academic’s progress through his own seven ages
Common—Reading—Placing—Writing
I create here another sort-of-life text, a narrative in which I suggest ways in which we could or should practice human approaches to reading and writing. I patch together scraps recovered from the rubbish heap of my own personal and professional history
Posthumous Autoethnography
I play with the idea of my being (nearly) posthumous in contrast to others who demonstrate all the characteristics of being (fully and vibrantly) prehumous. Their forms of collective autoethnography do, however, overlap to an extent with my more modest attempts at sort-of-after-academic-life-writing. Overall, I seek collegiality with those in our world—damaged though it is by our widespread espousal of the pernicious impact of managerialism and n…
“Sharing a Moment”: An Open Letter
I have used a letter format to respond to an invitation in a paper by Joanne Yoo to share thoughts and experiences about our academic and writing lives
Becoming Posthumous
In this micro-memoir, I show how I adopted, like John Keats, a 'posthumous existence.' I draw a parallel between his terminal tuberculosis and my own diagnosis of End-Stage Renal Failure though not between his brilliant talent as a poet and my own humble skills as an academic developer and writer. I also express my support for the idea of playing dead as a writer as suggested by the Nobel prizewinner Nadine Gordimer
Fragments of Truth and Post-Truth: An Associative Collage
This set of fragments provides a glued-together patchwork of key ideas about truth and post-truth. It contains a critique of notions of reified Truth and shows that it is our understanding of ordinary truth which matters. “Post-Truthers” refers to those who believe we have passed the stage when pure or objective Truth is a useful issue to explore. “Post-Truthers” are challenged because of their tendency to parade their feelings as important truth…
Education of a Burger King: A Lockdown Story
A brief narrative of a journey from drop-out to presidential despot
Post-Academic Writing: Human Writing for Human Readers
Academic writing is regularly criticized for its obscure and turgid prose, for its over-theoretical approach, and its reliance on jargon. In this essay, I suggest researchers and writers, especially qualitative inquirers, should move toward a more open and accessible style of "post-academic" writing. Put simply, post-academic writing is human writing for human readers and is at its best when it takes on a storytelling form. The essay features dis…
Playful and Serious Adventures in Academic Writing
In this reflective article, I examine three versions of adventurous writing. The first contrasts academic writing as either (or both) an anxiety-inducing task or a potentially animating and enjoyable quest. The second takes an auto-ethnographic approach to argue for the making of academic texts that are intended to be truthful and detailed accounts of their authors' embodied experiences. The third version, playfully and even subversively, uses th…
Essays, Essayists, and Essayism: A Slow Critique
In this essay I provide a slow critique of essays, essayists, and essayism. By "slow critique" I follow the lead of Foucault by adopting a patient process of slow rumination. I also try (which is what essayists do) to resist "fault finding" but feel that, at times, I fail in the attempt. Not all essays are fully successful. As well as appreciating the essay as form and process I offer a few examples of highly achieving essayists. My approach to e…
Why and How Academics Write
Academics are often criticized for their poor or rotten writing. In this essay, I look first at several ways in which academic writing may be regarded as, for example, obscure and turgid. Second, I discuss reasons why, despite such criticism, academics persevere with their writing. Third, I outline a number of approaches to the how of academic writing as a daily practice. Finally, I present my playful yet serious efforts to confront the hows and …
Blue-Collar Writing for Fruitful Dialogue
Norman Denzin has called for a reformed discourse to enable qualitative researchers to achieve a fruitful dialogue about democracy and social justice throughout the world. In this essay, I endorse Denzin's emancipatory project which uses a critical framework modeled on writers such as Wright Mills, Paulo Freire, bel hookes, and Cornell West. I use material from Freire and Mills especially to suggest that fruitful dialogue also requires us as rese…
Conversation Piece
The human conversation, which academics learn from and contribute to in their inquiries, requires that they take sides to suggest radical change. Here, I reflect on ways in which those adopting a pragmatic stance may contribute to this elastic conversation. The means available for analytic inquiry include assemblage, bricolage, collage, critical reading, and all forms of writing. A pragmatic approach may help academics suggest radical action to a…
Lost in the Funhouse
In this dialogue one actor ("the interlocutor") questions another ("the funster") about his claim to have been and to be still lost in the funhouse. The funhouse is used as a metaphor for the universities in which the funster has studied or worked throughout his career. The funster claims that the dialogue provides a brief life-story that he admits is both a faction of verifiable life-facts and a fiction of imagined life-fables. The funhouse is d…
A Place From Where to Speak: The University and Academic Freedom
the university is promoted as ‘a place from where to speak’. Academic freedom is examined as a crucial value in an increasingly uncertain age which resonates with Barnett's concern to encourage students to overcome their ‘fear of freedom’. My concern is that the putative university space of freedom and autonomy may well become constricted by those who would limit not just our freedom to speak but also our freedoms to be and to do. Without academi…
Composing Academic Identities: Stories That Matter
Qualitative inquirers "should" tell stories that matter. Here, I examine the case that researchers who compose their own academic identities "should" also produce stories that matter. Indeed, developing our identities is a lifelong (even unto death) human quest to decide who we/or others think we are. These identity narratives become journeys without maps that their authors usually believe are tales that matter. Such narratives also re-describe q…
Hunting Roaches: A Sort of Academic Life
I have borrowed two images from Graham Greene. The first, hunting roaches, is a metaphor for attacking my own failures as a scholar. The second becomes a subtitle for this attempt to summarize a sorting of my academic life. I first explain why I have rejected autobiography, autoethnography, and mystory in favor of using Greene's "sort of life" as a way of structuring my scrappy academic experiences. I then use another set of apparently frivolous …
Losing in the Funhouse? Winning in the Playhouse
This article, autoethnography, my story or, preferably, reflective essay, relies on two metaphors. The first focuses on the university as an academic funhouse, a place of dialogue and ideas, espousing freedoms to learn, play, read, research, speak, teach, and even to offend. However, the notion of an academic funhouse in age of managerialism and neoliberalism is now difficult to sustain. The second metaphor is that of a global playhouse where pos…
The pragmatic university: A Feasible Utopia
‘Imaginings’ of the modern university include such ideas as ‘the ecological university’ and ‘the pragmatic university’. In his attempt to separate utopian from dystopian visions of the university, Ronald Barnett concentrates on an analysis of the ecological university and ignores, for example, the case of the pragmatic university. In this critical response the author focuses on the feasibility of the pragmatic university and argues that it easily…
Un-Doing a Title
A complicated title may put some readers off. Others may be intrigued by the complexities that a messy title suggests. "Un-doing a title" is an essay that focuses on unraveling the threads of Hanna Guttorm's messy article "Becoming-(a)-Paper, or an Article Undone." The essay, first, introduces titology and titles and subtitles as paratexts. Second, it examines the title's main concepts, namely, Becoming, Paper, Article, Undone, (Post-)Knowing, Wr…
Human (and Posthuman?) Dancing: An Assemblage
Here is an assemblage of mystories, I-stories, and we-stories focusing (fuzzily) on the contribution that dance-stories could or might make to critical qualitative inquiry. This ensemble of fragments, collected or made-up bits and pieces, challenges us as academics or general readers to figure out what the performances of dancing human (or even posthuman) bodies could or might tell us
Titles Я Us
Using "Titles Я Us!" as a metaphor, I explore the case that when academics choose titles for their texts, they also reveal something about who they are. First, I briefly discuss the theory of titles-"titology"-as paratexts and pre-texts. Second, I identify several categories of title. Third, I analyze five recently published articles as mini-case studies and question whether they reveal anything useful about writer stance and writer voice. Finall…
Case Notes for the Impeachment of an Ability Traitor: A Textor’s Inquiry
These case notes are a response to “An ability traitor at work: A treasonous call to subvert writing from within.” The notes analyze Holbrook’s treachery despite her own admission of guilt. The inquiry is meant to provide firmer grounds for impeachment. The main accusation is that, as an able teacher and writer, Holbrook appears guilty of a trahison des clercs. The case writer is, like Holbrook, a textor, a weaver of threads, a fabricator of text…
Becoming Posthumous
In this micro-memoir, I show how I adopted, like John Keats, a 'posthumous existence.' I draw a parallel between his terminal tuberculosis and my own diagnosis of End-Stage Renal Failure though not between his brilliant talent as a poet and my own humble skills as an academic developer and writer. I also express my support for the idea of playing dead as a writer as suggested by the Nobel prizewinner Nadine Gordimer
Qualitative Ranting
In this article, I first sketch an account of various English radicals and ranters before concentrating on an American example, Johnny Saldaña's rant on " Blue-Collar Qualitative Research." Then, my main interest lies in discussing whether Saldaña's rant may appropriately be regarded as "qualitative." I structure the article by using a few theatrical terms-overture, beginners, main act, reprise, and finale-mainly to suggest that, despite his prot…
Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Qualitative Comedy in the Making
A discussion about bricolage is presented in a one-act play, a qualitative comedy in the making. The play takes its initial shape from Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" but is transformed into a more academic, but occasionally comic, dialogue. The characters engage with a journal editor by weaving the ideas and often the words of academic writers into a script about bricolage as a qualitative research strategy. The characters, …
Quality (and Qualities) in Qualitative Inquiry
I address some of the issues connected with the elusive concept of quality, especially in the process of qualitative inquiry. I do so by contrasting the relatively simple term "qualities" (or characteristics) with the more contentious idea of quality. I begin by considering aspects of psychogeography (assuming it to be one form of qualitative inquiry) and then by concentrating on the concept of quality itself in autoethnography, specifically as w…
Autoethnography: An (Incomplete) Abecedarian Assemblage
I found Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries so engrossing that I decided to construct an experimental assemblage based partially on her somewhat playful yet serious alphabetical reconfiguring of her diaries. In my case, I used items selected mainly from various articles I have written concerning autoethnography following Heti's rather chaotic methodology
I Wish I had the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man
In this narrative, I trace several elements encased in a recent article entitled ¿Quien Soy Yo? These include issues connected with personal and collective identity, feelings of alienation, feminism, confidence, and assertion. There is also a deep implication that some higher education academies do not try hard enough to welcome new colleagues, especially from minorities, into their institutions
The Theoretical and Conceptual Bases of Instructional Design
Don't Stop the Carnival-Three Cheers for the RCE
A Place From Where to Speak: The University and Academic Freedom
the university is promoted as ‘a place from where to speak’. Academic freedom is examined as a crucial value in an increasingly uncertain age which resonates with Barnett's concern to encourage students to overcome their ‘fear of freedom’. My concern is that the putative university space of freedom and autonomy may well become constricted by those who would limit not just our freedom to speak but also our freedoms to be and to do. Without academi…
Case Notes for the Impeachment of an Ability Traitor: A Textor’s Inquiry
These case notes are a response to “An ability traitor at work: A treasonous call to subvert writing from within.” The notes analyze Holbrook’s treachery despite her own admission of guilt. The inquiry is meant to provide firmer grounds for impeachment. The main accusation is that, as an able teacher and writer, Holbrook appears guilty of a trahison des clercs. The case writer is, like Holbrook, a textor, a weaver of threads, a fabricator of text…
Leavesdropping on Two Men Talking: A Dream Inquiry
This inquiry is presented as a Borges-like dream. The inquirer dreams that two men talk about their writing. The dreamer tries to understand what they are saying, what they mean. Their talk appears full of abstractions and jargon — connectivity, faciality, haecceity, masculinities, multiplicities, subjectivities. Another character, George Orwell, enters the dream to harrumph at the pretentious diction the two men use. One of them sees their colla…
Two Nomads Writing: A Textor’s Review
“Between the Two” by Ken Gale and Jonathan Wyatt has been praised as methodologically significant and pedagogically important. Indeed reviewers may well struggle to challenge a book variously described as beautiful, brilliant, evocative, erudite, original, profound, and sensitive. A critical or nonaffirmative review may well be received as sour and curmudgeonly. Nevertheless, despite this risk, an attempt is made to critique the book in the form …
Lost in the Funhouse
In this dialogue one actor ("the interlocutor") questions another ("the funster") about his claim to have been and to be still lost in the funhouse. The funhouse is used as a metaphor for the universities in which the funster has studied or worked throughout his career. The funster claims that the dialogue provides a brief life-story that he admits is both a faction of verifiable life-facts and a fiction of imagined life-fables. The funhouse is d…
Hunting Roaches: A Sort of Academic Life
I have borrowed two images from Graham Greene. The first, hunting roaches, is a metaphor for attacking my own failures as a scholar. The second becomes a subtitle for this attempt to summarize a sorting of my academic life. I first explain why I have rejected autobiography, autoethnography, and mystory in favor of using Greene's "sort of life" as a way of structuring my scrappy academic experiences. I then use another set of apparently frivolous …
Titles Я Us
Using "Titles Я Us!" as a metaphor, I explore the case that when academics choose titles for their texts, they also reveal something about who they are. First, I briefly discuss the theory of titles-"titology"-as paratexts and pre-texts. Second, I identify several categories of title. Third, I analyze five recently published articles as mini-case studies and question whether they reveal anything useful about writer stance and writer voice. Finall…
Un-Doing a Title
A complicated title may put some readers off. Others may be intrigued by the complexities that a messy title suggests. "Un-doing a title" is an essay that focuses on unraveling the threads of Hanna Guttorm's messy article "Becoming-(a)-Paper, or an Article Undone." The essay, first, introduces titology and titles and subtitles as paratexts. Second, it examines the title's main concepts, namely, Becoming, Paper, Article, Undone, (Post-)Knowing, Wr…
Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Qualitative Comedy in the Making
A discussion about bricolage is presented in a one-act play, a qualitative comedy in the making. The play takes its initial shape from Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" but is transformed into a more academic, but occasionally comic, dialogue. The characters engage with a journal editor by weaving the ideas and often the words of academic writers into a script about bricolage as a qualitative research strategy. The characters, …
Qualitative Ranting
In this article, I first sketch an account of various English radicals and ranters before concentrating on an American example, Johnny Saldaña's rant on " Blue-Collar Qualitative Research." Then, my main interest lies in discussing whether Saldaña's rant may appropriately be regarded as "qualitative." I structure the article by using a few theatrical terms-overture, beginners, main act, reprise, and finale-mainly to suggest that, despite his prot…
Playful and Serious Adventures in Academic Writing
In this reflective article, I examine three versions of adventurous writing. The first contrasts academic writing as either (or both) an anxiety-inducing task or a potentially animating and enjoyable quest. The second takes an auto-ethnographic approach to argue for the making of academic texts that are intended to be truthful and detailed accounts of their authors' embodied experiences. The third version, playfully and even subversively, uses th…
Conversation Piece
The human conversation, which academics learn from and contribute to in their inquiries, requires that they take sides to suggest radical change. Here, I reflect on ways in which those adopting a pragmatic stance may contribute to this elastic conversation. The means available for analytic inquiry include assemblage, bricolage, collage, critical reading, and all forms of writing. A pragmatic approach may help academics suggest radical action to a…
The pragmatic university: A Feasible Utopia
‘Imaginings’ of the modern university include such ideas as ‘the ecological university’ and ‘the pragmatic university’. In his attempt to separate utopian from dystopian visions of the university, Ronald Barnett concentrates on an analysis of the ecological university and ignores, for example, the case of the pragmatic university. In this critical response the author focuses on the feasibility of the pragmatic university and argues that it easily…
Blue-Collar Writing for Fruitful Dialogue
Norman Denzin has called for a reformed discourse to enable qualitative researchers to achieve a fruitful dialogue about democracy and social justice throughout the world. In this essay, I endorse Denzin's emancipatory project which uses a critical framework modeled on writers such as Wright Mills, Paulo Freire, bel hookes, and Cornell West. I use material from Freire and Mills especially to suggest that fruitful dialogue also requires us as rese…
Composing Academic Identities: Stories That Matter
Qualitative inquirers "should" tell stories that matter. Here, I examine the case that researchers who compose their own academic identities "should" also produce stories that matter. Indeed, developing our identities is a lifelong (even unto death) human quest to decide who we/or others think we are. These identity narratives become journeys without maps that their authors usually believe are tales that matter. Such narratives also re-describe q…
Manifold Creatures”: A Response to the Posthumanist Challenge
“Manifold creatures” is a description used by Philip Roth to characterize who we are as human beings. The essay that follows first examines our manifoldness and our creatureliness as well as our attempts to become more humane and humanistic in our lives and views. However, the recent surge in interest in notions of transhumanism and posthumanism may be seen as direct challenges or even threats to humanism as a viable political and social stance. …
Losing in the Funhouse? Winning in the Playhouse
This article, autoethnography, my story or, preferably, reflective essay, relies on two metaphors. The first focuses on the university as an academic funhouse, a place of dialogue and ideas, espousing freedoms to learn, play, read, research, speak, teach, and even to offend. However, the notion of an academic funhouse in age of managerialism and neoliberalism is now difficult to sustain. The second metaphor is that of a global playhouse where pos…
Post-Academic Writing: Human Writing for Human Readers
Academic writing is regularly criticized for its obscure and turgid prose, for its over-theoretical approach, and its reliance on jargon. In this essay, I suggest researchers and writers, especially qualitative inquirers, should move toward a more open and accessible style of "post-academic" writing. Put simply, post-academic writing is human writing for human readers and is at its best when it takes on a storytelling form. The essay features dis…
Jottings From a Blockdown Journal
These jottings are a series of journal entries for the six months from December 1, 2019, until June 1, 2020. They focus mainly on my attempts to write when blocked and suffering from pneumonia during that period which also coincided with the United Kingdom’s pandemic lockdown from March 23, 2020. My “block” and their “lock” became “blockdown.” I have survived both. So far
“We Must Write Dangerously”
This article is a response to the view expressed by James Joyce that modern authors (even academics) should write dangerously. I discuss the view in terms of four main subsections: dangerous style, dangerous stance, dangerous content, and dangerous reading
Essays, Essayists, and Essayism: A Slow Critique
In this essay I provide a slow critique of essays, essayists, and essayism. By "slow critique" I follow the lead of Foucault by adopting a patient process of slow rumination. I also try (which is what essayists do) to resist "fault finding" but feel that, at times, I fail in the attempt. Not all essays are fully successful. As well as appreciating the essay as form and process I offer a few examples of highly achieving essayists. My approach to e…
Human (and Posthuman?) Dancing: An Assemblage
Here is an assemblage of mystories, I-stories, and we-stories focusing (fuzzily) on the contribution that dance-stories could or might make to critical qualitative inquiry. This ensemble of fragments, collected or made-up bits and pieces, challenges us as academics or general readers to figure out what the performances of dancing human (or even posthuman) bodies could or might tell us
Why and How Academics Write
Academics are often criticized for their poor or rotten writing. In this essay, I look first at several ways in which academic writing may be regarded as, for example, obscure and turgid. Second, I discuss reasons why, despite such criticism, academics persevere with their writing. Third, I outline a number of approaches to the how of academic writing as a daily practice. Finally, I present my playful yet serious efforts to confront the hows and …
Sociology (48 works) · Philosophy (37 works) · Art (33 works) · Aesthetics (32 works) · Epistemology (26 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Literature (22 works) · Autoethnography (19 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Political science (16 works)