I don’t peer-review unless I’m forced. Admittedly, I hate it. Editing someone else’s paper is fine, but having someone look over mine has never been anything more than a test of torture. From high school, I’ve never known anyone who has improved my paper. And I know this sounds uppity, and perhaps hyperbolic to say…

For the co-writing blog, please go see Selby’s post here. Or else.

I want to preface this by saying that, when I wrote this, TED Talks were still fair game. As per last week, we were told TED works in a very different, more structured, more almost ‘hand-held’ way and it isn’t necessarily a fair expectation to hold regular speakers to. I disagree. I hold myself to…

Hundreds of articles are published every day across all disciplines focusing on almost any topic available. Nothing is off limits for the devout scholar. We can truly take nothingness and conflate it into the most grandiose story ever told, or take valid data points and skew them to support something they don’t quite prove, or…

Follow me through my hot takes on some works in historical cemeteries! Although I critique all these pieces, I must say, I didn’t read minding any of them. Well written with good structure, each piece serves its own unique purpose, no matter how highly specific. ARTICLE ONE: Ethnohistory, 1981, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter, 1981),…

Matthew Engelke, The Anthropology of Death RevisitedAnnual Review of Anthropology, vol. 48, p. 29-44 I know not a single name in the reference list. Now, this is not a failure of Engelke as if he cannot do good, robust research. It is a failure of myself for not having done more expansive reading. Despite my…

What will I be writing? What a loaded question. Maybe I baulk now because this means something, there is a stake here – a publication, a conference, a chapter. Maybe my brain is simply taking a non-paid vacation, leaving its staff completely composed of those hired by temp companies because, for once in its life,…

Writing processes are, to string in a cliche, much like snowflakes – no two are exactly the same. They are also subject to constant change as the writer, their content, or their situation evolves. Mine, however, has been quite stagnant. I mostly contribute this to simply knowing what works best for me, and having figured…