Transcript


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Well, the first question about Harlot and a project like Harlot--
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I think it's a wonderful idea, and one of the points you should constantly reiterate
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through this journal--through this mixed media journal--
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is how moribund the genres of scholarly publication have become.
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The traditional scholarly essay and monograph have not changed in their 100 year existence
0:32
since Johns Hopkins University Press was founded as the first press that specialized in publishing scholarly monographs.
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They also--Hopkins set up an assortment of scholarly journals for professors to share their work.
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The format, the genre in which you write scholarship hasn't changed a bit in a hundred years:
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an article is 20 to 30 pages long;
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a dissertation, which is the first draft of the monograph, is a 150 to 200 pages long.
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There's no rationale for those being the increments in which we write things.
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There's no rationale for all articles looking almost exactly the same.
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And for all first books, first monographs to be 5 chapters: an introduction, 3 chapters of readings, and a conclusion.
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But they all look that way! So, the great thing about a journal like Harlot is it's simply not adhering to that mold. . .
1:27
As far as scholars writing to a community outside the university--
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This is something that's always fascinating,
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because there isn't professor in the country who, working in a very specialized sub-field,
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doesn't aspire to write something for a "broader audience."
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The problem is, and Stanley Fish has pointed this out, they have no idea how to do it.
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They're so embedded in the idiom of their discipline that they can't write outside it.
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Most English professors are abysmal prose stylists.
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No one would care to read what they have to write, because it's such a chore.
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And it's a chore we take on grudgingly but voluntarily if you're in the profession,
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but if you're writing to people outside the profession--
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you have to command their interest. And I don't think academics have a very good understanding of how to do that,
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because most of the things that they write, the audience is captive anyway.
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If you can manage to do both, that's ideal,
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because I think that everybody should at least think about publishing in unconventional places,
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publishing in genres that are different than the traditional article, the traditional monograph.
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Having said that, the traditional article and monograph are the things that garner institutional rewards
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and you just can't refuse to do them and expect to advance in the profession--
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meaning, get a job, get tenure, get promoted.
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So, those are things that are non-negotiable.
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But, at the same time, the genres in which we publish our research
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won't change unless more people start contributing to journals like Harlot.
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