For other posts on graduate student life, literature, and leisure, see this and this post about counterfactuals. I recently finished reading the Harry Potter series for the first time. This is somewhat embarrassing to admit, both because it has taken me so long to get around to it and because now I seem a bit […]

Today marks my and my wife’s seven-year wedding anniversary. Seven years is the “normative time to degree” for a PhD in history, so by that standard I should be a verified marriage expert by now. Fortunately (?), though, I think the time-related expectations for this “discipline” are a bit more forgiving. I’ve alluded to Julie in […]

One of the more pretentious things historians do from time to time is attach the word ‘long’ to a period of time, like the “long 18th century” or the “long 1980’s.” We do this in order to highlight important trends or developments that, annoyingly, do not confine themselves to discrete chronological units. For example, a […]

Believe it or not, my time in Jinan is running down. I’ve decided to use my next few posts to write about three places that have been integral to my encounter with the city. I’ll focus on the people who inhabit and traverse them and the intersection between these slices of urban space, Jinan as […]

Believe it or not, my time in Jinan is running down. I’ve decided to use my next few posts to write about three places that have been integral to my encounter with the city. I’ll focus on the people who inhabit and traverse them and the intersection between these slices of urban space, Jinan as […]

Since I’m in China, I’ll be missing one of my favorite parts of the year – recruiting new graduate students. To make up for it, I’m writing this post as a recommendation for prospective students. I’ll walk through a series of questions that in my opinion help identify “deal-breakers.” These questions hardly represent the totality […]