This essay explores the various state(s) and future(s) of academic publishing, and also makes an argument for the radical hope of a vibrantly futurist University-Library, and the formation of new cultural-intellectual-artistic publics, that would come into being in new para-institutional spaces.

This short essay is part of a Forum centered upon responses to Simon During’s essay, “Precariousness, Literature and the Humanities Today,” Australian Humanities Review 58 (May 2015), and argues (following Nicholas Bourriaud’s figure of the radicant) for the becoming-itinerant of humanistic practice, as well as for reinventing the Academy as a wan…[Read more]

This essay comprises four parts, each by one of the co-bloggers at In the Middle (http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com). Karl Steel argues that the benefits of academic blogging outweigh its potential humiliations, and that academic conferences should post their papers publicly and allow for comments so that conferences, in a sense, never end.…[Read more]

This essay is partly a response + riposte to Johanna Drucker’s Jan. 2014 essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing,” and partly a plea for the University, and the Humanities, along with their publishing “arms,” to be refashioned, not as sites of cultural Authority from which Knowledge…[Read more]

Relative to many of the ongoing discussions and debates around the changing (and often precarious) landscapes of scholarly publishing, and especially around Open Access publishing, we at punctum books have put together a sort of “primer” (which also serves as our own, expanded vision statement) on what we see as the perils of the commodification…[Read more]

This essay serves as the Preface to “Still Thriving: On the Importance of Aranye Fradenburg,” a collection of critical reflections on the career and paradigm-shifting scholarship of medievalist and psychoanalyst L.O. Aranye Fradenburg.

This short essay, co-authored with L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, in the edited 2-volume collection BURN AFTER READING, eds. Eileen A. Joy, Myra Seaman, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Oliphaunt Books, 2014), ruminates the importance of the humanities as an important space for the artfulness of living, for enriched environments, and real-time experimental…[Read more]

The essays, manifestos, rants, screeds, pleas, soliloquies, telegrams, broadsides, eulogies, songs, harangues, confessions, laments, and acts of poetic terrorism in these two volumes — which collectively form an academic “rave” — were culled, with some later additions, from roundtable sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies…[Read more]

Describes and analyzes two episodes of article rejections based on political correctness and several published instances of politically correct inverse racism. Shows that political correctness in judging scholarship on race uses a double standard which enables reverse racism and an unsavory rhetoric. Discusses political correctness as the…[Read more]

Provides a personal perspective on, and analysis of, developments in the English profession. Emphasizes the proliferation of PhDs, the industrialization of scholarship and its effects on research and promotion, and the diminished influence and status of English studies. Makes suggestions for addressing present difficulties and reviving the study…[Read more]

Explores issues of professionalization and politicalization of humanistic studies. Sketches an up-dated return to the basics of humanistic research and teaching.

This chapter uses Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive to consider the ways that collaborative, public-facing digital humanities initiatives can conflict with institutional conventions and methods of evaluating academic labor. Collaborative work creates challenges as well as opportunities for its organizers and laborers. The particular…[Read more]

The Public Philosophy Journal’s 2018 New Engaged Scholars Digital Pilot Program, which officially kicks off on February 7th, is designed for doctoral students seeking guided, collaborative opportunities to develop early drafts into publishable content. This is the program agenda.