By Stacey Patton - Chronicle Vitae. This summer we're looking into the state of the postdoc—the staple of the science scholar's life cycle that's now gaining steam in the humanities, too. This is the second article in our series. Here's Part One: A Brief History of the Humanities Postdoc. See more...

By Brock Read - Chronicle Vitae. So yesterday The New York Times unveiled Chronicle, a nifty new tool that lets you track how often the paper has used certain language throughout history. Two-thirds of the media world is already playing with this thing. It’s produced some legitimate journalism and, uh, some of this, too. See more...

By Elizabeth Keenan - Chronicle Vitae. During my last year of grad school I participated in a professional-development workshop on crafting academic book proposals with A Real Editor. As long as we submitted our proposals in advance, she’d read them and offer a critique. See more...

By Joli Jensen - Chronicle Vitae. Most scholars dream of writing an influential masterpiece, but there’s a good chance many of us won’t. What often holds us back isn’t just a lack of time, space, or energy, but our own inner demons. Among the most pernicious of these is the myth of the magnum opus—a yearning to create something magnificent coupled with the fear that it can never be good enough. It can paralyze us and lead us to punish ourselves when our work doesn’t live up to our exacting standards. See more...

By Rob Jenkins - Chronicle Vitae. In response to my recent post on the connection between corporate influence on higher education and the decline of shared governance, one reader wrote: “More ‘corporations are bad’ blather.” Another congratulated me for “taking on the corporatization of higher education.”
Both, unfortunately, missed the point. I wasn’t trashing corporations. And I wasn’t talking about corporatization; I was talking about corporatism. See more...

By Katie Rose Guest Pryal - Chronicle Vitae. Working as an academic is hard enough without adding psychiatric disability to the mix. Academics worry about whether they should disclose their disabilities to colleagues. And they also must deal with the all-too-common ableist insults that some of these same colleagues toss around without a thought. See more...

By Gregory Semenza - Chronicle Vitae. Write every day. Over the years, this is the single bit of advice I’ve given most regularly to graduate students who aim to become professors. Unfortunately, after grad school, it’s a lot easier said than done. The seminar and ABD stages present young scholars with a misleading sense that an academic schedule leaves relatively large blocks of time for writing. See more...

By David Perry - Chronicle Vitae. The humanities do not need a Neil deGrasse Tyson. We need a thousand Tysons. Better yet, we need to stop waiting for the prestige economy to churn out a celebrity to save us. Instead, why not recognize all the good work that so many people already are doing in the humanities?
It’s time to vastly broaden our approach to finding the next generation of public intellectuals. My proposal: Look for teachers, not researchers. See more...

By Audrey Watters. I just got off the phone with Mike Lee, the founder of Edshelf, a startup that recently announced it was closing its doors at the end of the month.
There’s been a grassroots hashtag campaign on the part of some educators to #saveedshelf, and while I understand the good intentions — Mike is a great guy, and it sucks that his startup isn’t successful — I’m not sure I understand why this particular startup should be saved. I’m not sure why we’d believe that an expression of support via social media would trump revenue. More...