How successful academics write - Helen Sword 2017

Acknowledgments

One hundred academic authors and editors generously agreed to be interviewed for this book. Their thoughts, words, and emotions are the foundation stones on which I have built my own house of writing, and I thank them all: Dan Albert, Kurt Albertine, Marialuisa Aliotta, Shanthi Ameratunga, Staffan Andersson, Tim Appenzeller, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Marysol Asencio, Donald Barr, Bill Barton, Ruth Behar, Claudia Bernardi, Ann Blair, Gillie Bolton, Brian Boyd, Margaret Breen, Matthew Clarke, Michael Corballis, Patricia Culligan, Janet Currie, Keith Devlin, Shelda Debowski, Enda Duffy, John Dumay, Maja Elmgren, Sam Elworthy, Margery Fee, Martin Fellenz, Mindy Fullilove, James Garraway, Fabrizio Gilardi, Alison Gopnik, Tony Grafton, Russell Gray, Christopher Grey, Susan Gubar, Kalervo Gulson, Tony Harland, Pauline Harris, Eric Hayot, John Heilbron, Ann-Sofie Henriksson, Cecilia Heyes, Douglas Hofstadter, Marjorie Howes, Maraea Hunia, Janelle Jenstad, Alison Jones, Ludmilla Jordanova, Deborah Kaple, Kevin Kenny, Tabish Khair, Elizabeth Knoll, Sun Kwok, Agnes Lam, Michèle Lamont, Ellen Langer, Carl Leggo, Mary Elizabeth Leighton, Kristina Lejon, Andrea Lunsford, Sarah Maddison, Pania Matthews, Eric Mazur, Inger Mewburn, Robert Miles, Johanna Moisander, Mark Moldwin, Massimo Morelli, Dory Nason, Kathy Nelson, Christer Nilsson, David Pace, Miles Padgett, Rebecca Piekkari, Steven Pinker, Ewan Pohe, Robert Poulin, Leah Price, Michael Reilly, Poia Rewi, Jennifer Meta Robinson, Thomas Aastrup Rømer, Lena Roos, Elizabeth Rose, Victoria Rosner, Stephen Ross, Carlo Rotella, Stephen Rowland, Trudy Rudge, Daromir Rudnyckyj, James Shapiro, Lee Shulman, Julie Stout, Lisa Surridge, Stefan Svallfors, Wim Vanderbauwhede, Lesley Wheeler, Michael Wride, and Mei Fung Yong.

I am grateful also to the 1,223 faculty members, postdocs, graduate students, and other academic writers who responded in thoughtful detail to my anonymous data questionnaire, as well as to the many colleagues who helped me with my data collection at forty-nine colleges and universities and eight international conferences in fifteen countries. In acknowledging my primary contacts at each of the institutions named, I hope that they will pass on my thanks to the many others who assisted me in arranging interviews and facilitating writing workshops: in Australia, Melanie Haines and Inger Mewburn (Australian National University), Sally Knowles and Rob Holt (Edith Cowan University), Kathleen Daly and Victoria Meyer (Griffith University), Tai Peseta (La Trobe University), Jacqui True (Monash University), Carolina Matheson and Jan McLean (University of New South Wales), Kati Kuusisto (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), Simon Barrie (University of Sydney); in Canada, Simon Bates, Isabeau Iqbal, and Amy Perreault (University of British Columbia), Stephen Ross (University of Victoria); in Denmark, Stacey Cozart, Gry Sandholm Jensen, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (Aarhus University); in England, Kathryn Black and Kathleen Quinlan (University of Oxford); in Finland, Elizabeth Rose (Aalto University); in Germany, Stefanie Haacke, Svenja Kaduk, and Swantje Lahm (Bielefeld University); in China, Iain Doherty (University of Hong Kong); in Ireland, Jade Concannon and Ciara O’Farrell (Trinity College Dublin); in the Netherlands, Tania Doller and Andre Lardinois (Radboud University); in New Zealand, Denise Greenwood, Anita Lacey, Nic Mason, and Janet McLean (University of Auckland), Gayle Morris and Lynette Reid (Auckland University of Technology), Bill Hagan (Manukau Institute of Technology), Lily George and Te Kani Kingi (Massey University), Tony Harland and Matiu Ratima (University of Otago), Meegan Hall and Kathryn Sutherland (Victoria University of Wellington), Ann Cameron and Kao-Yun Liu (Whitireia Polytechnic); in Scotland, Daphne Loads (University of Edinburgh), John Hamer and Helen Purchase (University of Glasgow); in Sweden, Katarina Winka (Umeä University), Margareta Erhardsson and Lena Roos (Uppsala University); in Switzerland, Michel Comte (University of Lucerne), Benno Volk (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Flavia Fossati and Eva Hanifa (University of Zurich); in the United States, Marjorie Howes (Boston College), Joe Bizup and Lauren Proll (Boston University), Janet Currie (Columbia University), Margaret Breen (University of Connecticut), Sophie Acord, Marsha Bryant, and Bonnie Efros (University of Florida), Amy Brand, Elizabeth Knoll, and Judith Singer (Harvard University), Jonathan Elmer and Tom Gieryn (Indiana University), Brian Baldi (University of Massachusetts), Susan Burke and Matthew Kaplan (University of Michigan), Becky Wai-Ling Packard and Mary Deane Sorcinelli (Mount Holyoke College), Nora Bacon (University of Nebraska), Karen Springen (Northwestern University), Amanda Irwin Wilkins (Princeton University), David Green (Seattle University), Floyd Cheung (Smith College), Julia Bleakney and Andrea Lunsford (Stanford University), Deandra Little (University of Virginia), Lesley Wheeler (Washington and Lee University). Thanks also to the organizers of the eight academic conferences (in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States) where I presented my work in progress and gathered interview and questionnaire data.

Many friends, colleagues, and strangers have engaged with me over the years in lively conversations about writing. In particular, my current and former colleagues at the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education at the University of Auckland contributed to my work in innumerable ways, from commenting on my earliest draft chapters to helping me wrangle the statistical data. Tēnā rawa atu te CLeaR whanau: Adam Blake, Susan Carter, Tony Chung, Ashwini Datt, Claire Donald, Cathy Gunn, Wen-Chen Hol, Craig Housley, Barbara Kensington-Miller, Steve Leichtweis, Jen Martin, Matiu Ratima, Sean Sturm, and ’Ema Wolfgramm-Foliaki. Special thanks to Marion Blumenstein, Alistair Kwan, and Evija Trofimova, who helped me see the questionnaires with new eyes; to Lynette Herrero-Torres, Kaye Hodge, Arishma Lal, and Zoë Pollard, who brighten my workdays and lighten my workload in so many ways; and to Graeme Aitken, Dean of the Faculty of Education and Social Work, who has supported my international research ambitions even while modeling how to be a conscientious and caring academic leader closer to home.

Part 1 is informed in part by my article “Write Every Day: A Mantra Dismantled” (International Journal for Academic Development, 2016), copyright Taylor and Francis (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1210153), and several author quotes are revisited from my article “Narrative Trust” in Times Higher Education (5 Sept. 2012). Generous funding from the University of Auckland—a grant-in-aid of Research and Study Leave, a Faculty Research and Development Fund grant, a Hood Travelling Fellowship, and a Summer Research Scholarship—underwrote my travel expenses and supported the work of a summer scholar, Marc Reinhardt, and three superb research assistants. While I framed up the structure of the book, they gibbed the walls, hammered in the nails, and fixed up the creaks and cracks. Warm thanks to Louisa Shen, who was already on the construction site when the very first blueprints were being drawn up, and to Madeleine Ballard and Sophie Van Waardenberg, who helped with the finishing work.

A number of other people also deserve a special shout-out: my agent, John Wright, who trusted me from the beginning to get there in the end; editors Elizabeth Knoll, who commissioned the book on the basis of a ten-page abstract, and Andrew Kinney, who patiently guided the project to completion; graphic designer Gideon Keith, who helped me visualize the BASE; Katrina Vassallo, Angela Piliouras, Andrew Katz, and all the others at Harvard University Press and Westchester Publishing Services who magicked the manuscript into a beautiful book; Michele Leggott and Olive, who keep my love of poetry alive; Janet Lindgren, “my reader in New York,” who commented on draft after draft with unflagging wisdom and patience; Selina Tusitala Marsh, with whom I shared many laughter-filled write-on-site sessions over cups of coffee and glasses of wine; and Beate Schuler, whose loan of her father’s desk for five days of productive writing in Bad Homburg turned out to be only the starting point of her generosity.

As always, my most heartfelt thanks go to my family: Claire, who sent me the Bukowski poem that gave the book its title; Peter, who lent a sympathetic ear and fixed up a last-minute statistical glitch; David, who kept me laughing through it all; and Richard, who created the nurturing environment of “air and light and time and space” that made it possible for me to bring this book into being. I could not have done it without him.