This is going to be one of my more “insider” posts, in the sense that it’s less directed toward an audience not invested in academia than others. It will also focus on the specific context of my institution, but I’m sure readers at other universities will see parallels in their own workplaces. There are details […]
Continue reading →Things have been quiet on Breaking ABD for the past few months. The same has not been true for our apartment. Five months ago today, my wife and I welcomed a happy and healthy baby girl into our family. She is, in part, responsible for this extended blogging hiatus, but also more joy than I […]
Continue reading →This last week I’ve been contemplating the cumulative effects of decisions I make about what sources, stories, and perspectives to include in my dissertation. These questions came up for me last week when discussing a draft of the chapter I described in my last post. This chapter touches on how warfare in the mid-nineteenth century […]
Continue reading →Chapter three was supposed to be one of the easy ones. In my pre-ABD days, I completed a couple of research projects that I had high hopes for converting to dissertation chapters. One of these actually dates back to before I arrived at my current institution. Eventually, I did a little more research, revised it […]
Continue reading →Throughout graduate school, I’ve made the habit of at least glancing over job announcements that find their way into my inbox. In past years, I’ve selfishly rued those that advertise especially attractive positions, wondering if maybe they could have afforded to wait a couple more years. Now, as summer winds down, those announcements are taking […]
Continue reading →In theory, reading everything that has ever been published about a given subject is a finite task, even if it is impossible in practice. I find this thought comforting at times. Until I remember that there is always new scholarship coming out. The state of constant research output in the academy puts paid to the […]
Continue reading →Recently, the College Board made news for announcing changes to the scope of Advanced Placement (AP) World History. From now on, the AP exam will cover only the period after 1450 CE. High schools could still choose to offer an additional course covering world history before 1450 — making it a two-year sequence — but […]
Continue reading →Memorials are one of the most useful sources for historians of late imperial China like myself. In this case, ‘memorial’ refers not to a physical object like a monument nor to the word’s usual association with memory, like the upcoming holiday, except in a very abstract way. Instead, I’m talking about a type of document […]
Continue reading →One of the main points of this blog is to highlight the diversity of work that all-but-dissertation (ABD) students engage in. I like this focus because it’s not the most obvious thing about getting a PhD. That honor probably belongs to “it takes a really long time.” But the two are necessarily related: if all […]
Continue reading →During my time in graduate school, I’ve really enjoyed living in communities that are shaped by the institutions I’ve attended. Some people will say that moving out of the neighborhood and creating some space between university life and everything else is essential to their sanity. To be sure, no university neighborhood or college town can […]
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