historian of early Christianity • professor @umich • I don't care about typos on here, neither should you • https://t.co/W1DtkpenV3 • Not What They Seem
Apr 21, 2021 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Alright, in the last session for my history writing seminar, we got down to the problem of conclusions: after you've done all the work of the paper, what should you do for a conclusion? Here's a short list of conclusion moves, but the list needs to grow, so please add your faves
scan through your intro, looking for promises you've made ("this paper will offer a new perspective on X" or "my argument will expand what has been done on Y"), turn those promises into questions ("what is my new perspective on X?"), then answer them in the conclusion
Mar 26, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Another side quest from my History writing seminar: tapping into the alchemy of the paragraph! (developed from things that my beloved @ginabrandolino does with her classes.)
So, step one: select a paragraph of your own writing, and deconstruct what it is is doing rhetorically.
How do you do that? Well, here's one way: I've made a color-coded template that identifies the job of every sentence in a sample paragraph:
Next side quest---"Get Structure"---is open for my history writing seminar, and I'm going to post a twitter-friendly version of it here:
#acwri#twitterstorians
Writing something the length of a dissertation/book chapter is not a natural thing to do! It takes effort, and to be sustainable, it takes effort distributed over time.
Dec 4, 2020 • 23 tweets • 7 min read
Here at the end of 2020, you might be wondering: who invented the best word of the year, namely "doomscrolling"?
Friends, it was me!
And, at the same time, it wasn't me!
Pull up a chair and hear how #doomscrolling came into existence
So, Saturday, March 14: my employer, the University of Michigan, had just that week made the call to cancel in-person classes, which felt apocalyptic---UM is known for *not* canceling class, even in the worst conditions, so the U pivoting to in-person was a big shoe to drop.
Nov 11, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I've had multiple convos over the last few days w/ early career people who want to use twitter, or social in general, for visibility and networking, but are wary of stepping wrong, and I'm going to tweet here things I've said:
They're worried about Twitter's reputation for pile-ons---you know, the "Twitter mob" and getting dragged and such.
Feb 10, 2020 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
This morning, I'm #_Revisiting a 2009 essay from @monicaMedHist, "Integrative Medicine: Incorporating Medicine and Health into the Canon of Medieval History," History Compass 7/4: 1218-1245
#twitterstorians#medievaltwitter#lateantiquity
It's so useful, because it does three things: first, points out a lack in the field (namely, medical history hasn't been central to "medieval history" like law or religion)--as she says, we should recognize that "pursuit of health my have *itself* been a driving force in" history
Oct 20, 2019 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
Last term, I was a part of a group of faculty across multiple disciplines in the humanities @umich that thought through the problems of harassment and abuse in graduate education
@UMich One of the primary issues---and something a bit distinct from the STEM fields---is that much of graduate advising in the humanities is a one-to-one relationship
