On reading articles in academic journals
No, not those, but interesting, challenging ones that are fascinating
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Academics can’t write.
Academic writing is boring.
Academic writing is difficult to understand, convoluted and impossible to follow.
I will not try to subvert these clichés, and clichés they are, nor attempt to suggest there isn’t a nugget of truth in them.
Yes, there is work written by academics that comes fairly close to being unreadable, sometimes for perfectly valid reasons, sometimes because the authors cannot write well, or communicate their ideas clearly. As with any industry or sector, there is an array of writing styles and abilities on display. Although I would argue that if you want to sample some of the very worst writings on offer from universities take a look at the output of university management, human resources or what passes for professional accrediting bodies…
I mention this because, over the past few weeks, I’ve been catching up with reading and preparing for the autumn semester, which includes updating reading lists, doing research and catching up on materials. I have to do this, it’s part of my job and quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether they’re well written or not, I have to digest (or ‘gut’) them.
Anyway, I found myself sitting in the garden reading a journal article I couldn’t put down, and it dawned on me this wasn’t the first time this had happened recently. A few days back I was sat in a craft beer joint in Riga enthusiastically extolling the merits of an academic article to a non-academic friend — much to his bemusement…
No, I am not suggesting you rush out and read journal articles, and you might not be able to because they’re paywalled or only accessible via institutions but there are some excellent, readable materials out there.
I would recommend the following, in no particular order:
Sarah Maza, ‘Presentism and the Politics of History: Revisiting the 2022 James Sweet Affair’, Past & Present, 2024, gtae003, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtae003
Daniel Immerwahr, ‘All That Is Solid Bursts into Flame: Capitalism and Fire in the Nineteenth-Century United States’, Past & Present, 2024, gtad019, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtad019
Francis J. Gavin, ‘Why We Write’, TNSR, Vol 7, Iss 3 Summer 2024
https://tnsr.org/2024/07/why-we-write/#articleWilliam Booth, ‘Rethinking Latin America's Cold War’, Historical Journal, 64 (4), 2020, 1128-1150.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/rethinking-latin-americas-cold-war/438677174CA5BE6096C214BA90C3EDAEMaria Todorova, ‘On Public Intellectuals and Their Conceptual Frameworks’, Slavic Review 74.4 (2015): 708–714.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/abs/on-public-intellectuals-and-their-conceptual-frameworks/EA46A13E7D4C6886BE6FCEC066222FBCChristina Schwenkel, ‘The Things They Carried (and Kept): Revisiting Ostalgie in the Global South’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 64.2 (2022): 478–509. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/things-they-carried-and-kept-revisiting-ostalgie-in-the-global-south/3983403E8216E17839E8EF8DB2DE05BD
Maria Mälksoo, 'The Postcolonial Moment in Russia's War Against Ukraine', Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 25, no. 3-4, 2022, 471-481. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2022.2074947 1
This is not a complete list and leaves many others out but I think these demonstrate the abilities of colleagues to write clearly, well and engagingly.
And yes ALL these references were Gen X raw-dogged by hand and tracing paper.