Academic Blogging

Although I'm not comfortable any more with calling myself an academic, I thought I'd respond to these questions about academics and blogging (c/o Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber). After all, I was an academic when I began, and wrestling with academia formed a solid portion of the original blog.

If you’re an academic who blogs, what prompted you to start blogging?

As I recall, it was a combination of needing an outlet for a welter of confusion, frustration, etc. about being tossed out of the ivory tower and guilt about hogging the comment threads at sites like Invisible Adjunct's. It seemed a less-introspective form of journaling -- the comments and awareness of an audience discourage excessive navel-gazing -- and getting my thoughts out in tidy print helped calm the whirling in my brain.

And what keeps you going?

Partly habit. Or addiction? In any case, I like having a space in which I can lay out my thoughts and activities, get feedback on them, and thus maintain a record of my ups and downs. Lacking many offline outlets of this sort, I suspect that the blog plays a large role in keeping my head from exploding!

What do you try to do in your blog?

I don't know that there is much of a larger purpose here, beyond furthering the development of online communities. I try to be honest and open about my life to the extent I can without compromising my offline privacy and that of my family and friends. Occasionally I'll share things I've found elsewhere that I think are interesting or funny or useful, and sometimes I'll speak about a cause I care about. I will freely admit that much of the blog is about pleasing myself.

Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship?

Not really. Occasionally, I get feedback on larger contextual issues related to my work, but there is no direct relationship beyond both being by the same author. (Attempting to maintain a degree of anonymity makes sharing tricky!) Plus I rarely have the time or mental energy to do the kind of careful thinking my scholarship requires; the spontaneity of blogging is part of the appeal.

What do you get from reading blogs?

I love the encounters with other people and the windows their blogs offer on their lives, their thoughts, their hobbies and loves and fears... at least regarding personal blogs. Those that are directed toward more external purposes, like politics, or television, or craft techniques, I read as I read the paper and how-to-books and cheap magazines. In other words, for entertainment and information. I admit a particular weakness for forum-heavy formats, both because I like watching other people kick an idea or topic around and because I am a person who just can't shut up about things I'm interested in.