Vivian Berghahn joins to discuss what is broken with the peer review system in general, how it impacts book publishing, and some creative solutions for how it can be rectified. Also, hear the surprising reason why small, independent publishers tend to have more robust quality review processes than big corporate publishers. Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 04, 2023•45 min•Ep. 115
Alessandra Anzani, Editorial Director, Academic Studies Press, talks about the steps that authors need to take to bring their manuscripts to publication. The conversation includes a deep dive into the different kinds of editing a book goes through, including what authors need to do themselves or with external support vs. the editing (some) publishers will do for authors. We also discuss some of the advantages of small publishers and how to best promote your book after it is published. Avi Staima...
Mar 28, 2023•38 min•Ep. 113
Dr. Joyce Kinkead, Distinguished Professor of English at Utah State University discusses her recent book, A Writing Studies Primer (Broadview Press. 2022). A Carnegie Foundation/CASE US Professor of the Year, Professor Kinkead’s primary scholarly areas are in Writing Studies and Undergraduate Research. She has brought a tremendous amount of her expertise in undergraduate research, writing, and composition to the forefront of A Writing Studies Primer. Writing is omnipresent in our lives, yet we r...
Mar 28, 2023•21 min•Ep. 215
Listen to this interview of Cormac Herley, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. We talk about the science of security and as well, about the communication of security science. Cormac Herley : "For very many projects, all through, I sort of have this kind of imaginary dialogue going on with my imagined audience or with representatives of my imagined audience, where what I'm doing on my side of the talk is to convince them. And for me personally, the point of the dialogue is kind of, What a...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 114
Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field guide to the memorials, museums, and practices that commemorate white supremacy in the United States—and how to reimagine a more deeply shared cultural infrastructure for the future. Cultural infrastructure has been designed to maintain structures of inequality, and while it doesn’t seem to be explicitly about race, it often is. Blunt Instruments help...
Mar 26, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 112
What do the technical practices, procedures, and systems that have shaped institutions of higher learning in the United States, from the Ivy League and women’s colleges to historically black colleges and land-grant universities, teach us about the production and distribution of knowledge? Addressing media theory, architectural history, and the history of academia, Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University (Columbia UP, 2021) reconceives the university as a med...
Mar 25, 2023•2 hr 43 min•Ep. 85
Is writing a nonfiction book harder than you thought it would be? This episode explores: What your reader needs from you, and why. Which writing struggles are the most common, and how to fix them. How to make sure your purpose in writing your book isn’t getting lost. Ways to more effectively focus on what you need to say. What to polish up [and how to do that] before you send it off. Why you can send it out before it’s “perfect.” Our guest is: Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer who earned a PhD in Commun...
Mar 23, 2023•56 min•Ep. 154
Sally Wilson, VP of Publishing at Emerald opens up about the challenges publishers are facing in contending with the onset of the mass adoption of AI tools including ChatGPT, and its ramifications for scholarly publishing. She also talks about the potential positive use cases for ChatGPT for reducing inequality in publishing. In addition, Sally discusses the nature of mission-based publishing and leading the charge in tackling United Nations SDG goals in publishing. Avi Staiman is the founder an...
Mar 18, 2023•48 min•Ep. 111
To the Collector Belong the Spoils: Modernism and the Art of Appropriation (Cornell UP, 2023) rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and appropriative modernist practice, which flourishes beyond institutions like museums or archives. Through a constellation of three author-collectors—Henry James, Walter Benjamin, and Carl Einstein—Annie Pfeifer examines the relationship between literary modernism and twentieth-century practices of collecting objects. From James's paper hoarding to Ei...
Mar 17, 2023•59 min•Ep. 110
Why is giving a presentation so stressful? Is your heart supposed to race? And how do you gain more confidence? This episode explores: How to feel more connected to your audience. Why feeling some “stage-fright” might be a good thing. What your audience needs from you. How to use tools to “break the ice” like asking your listeners a great question. A discussion of the article “How to Cope with Presentation Anxiety,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by Dr. James M. Lang Our guest is: Dr. Jam...
Mar 16, 2023•57 min•Ep. 145
The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could have predicted the World Wide Web as we know it today: commercial, isolating, and full of, even fueled by, bias. This was not inevitable. The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom (U California Press, 2023) argues that much like our cities, the internet has become gentrified, dominated by the interests of business and ca...
Mar 12, 2023•31 min•Ep. 109
For over twenty years, James W. Cortada has pioneered research into how information shapes society. In Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), he tells the story of how information evolved since the mid-nineteenth century. Cortada argues that information increased in quantity, became more specialized by discipline (e.g., mathematics, science, political science), and more organized. Information i...
Mar 12, 2023•52 min•Ep. 65
"It is not only for science to give to publishing, but the time has come for publishing to start giving back to science." Tiffany Gasbarrini clarifies the difference between commercial and mission-driven publishers and how publishers who aren't bound by commercial interests alone can make brave ideological publishing decisions. She also makes a passionate case for why telling stories in science can make all the difference in the way we perceive and trust science as a community and society. Avi S...
Mar 11, 2023•52 min•Ep. 107
Today’s book is: Engage in Public Scholarship: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication, by Dr. Alex D. Ketchum. Public scholarship—sharing research with audiences outside of academic settings—has become increasingly necessary to counter the rise of misinformation, fill gaps from cuts to traditional media, and increase the reach of important scholarship. Engaging in these efforts often comes with the risk of harassment and threats—especially for women, people of color, queer communit...
Mar 09, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 143
Listen to this interview of Elissa Redmiles, Faculty Member and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems; Founder and Managing Researcher of Human Computing Associates; and Visiting Scholar at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. We talk about reaching people with your research. Elissa Redmiles : "And so, when I think about communicating to my own specific research community, I think about what is my call to action that I would like...
Mar 07, 2023•57 min•Ep. 106
Irene Van Rossum and Avi do a deep dive into how Open Access works (or doesn't work) in the context for book manuscripts in the Humanities. Listeners will get a better understanding of transformative agreements and why different countries have entirely different perspectives on the importance and primacy of Open Access. Irene also discusses important and creative OA initiatives such as 'Path to Open' which encourages libraries and publishers to work together to ensure that everyone can access re...
Mar 06, 2023•44 min•Ep. 108
Today I talked to Michelle Chihara, Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Annie Berke, the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. We talked about book reviewing in the age of the Internet and LA literary culture. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 06, 2023•40 min•Ep. 66
Jeffrey joins the podcast to discuss the prevalence of English in the academic ecosystem and in research publishing. Jeffrey critiques the lackadaisical approach US institutions take towards Spanish language content and research and makes a strong argument to follow the Puerto-Rican model which sees greater opportunity, equality, and sophistication in multilingual academic research. About his book: Despite a pronounced shift away from Eurocentrism in Spanish and Hispanic studies departments in U...
Mar 04, 2023•41 min•Ep. 105
Writing the Classroom: Pedagogical Documents As Rhetorical Genres (UP of Colorado, 2022) explores how faculty compose and use pedagogical documents to establish classroom expectations and teaching practices, as well as to articulate the professional identities they perform both inside and outside the classroom. The contributors to this unique collection employ a wide range of methodological frameworks to demonstrate how pedagogical genres—even ones as seemingly straightforward as the class sylla...
Mar 04, 2023•54 min•Ep. 190
Alan Harvey, Director of Stanford University Press, sits with Avi to discuss why it is so challenging for scholars to write and publish books and to dispel myths around the profitability of all university publishers. Tune in to hear how Alan's sixth-month commitment turned into a lifetime pursuit of enabling authors to convey their research in a compelling manner. Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 02, 2023•51 min•Ep. 104
Ben Denne (Director of Publishing, Academic Books, Cambridge UP) joins Avi to discuss how Open Access quickly became a predominant form of academic publishing in the last decade, what issues OA raises for the publishing industry, how OA impacts book publishing and some of the creative solutions for alternative models, including CUP's novel "Flip it Open" program. We also discuss Ben's journey from writing children's books to presiding over one of the most important academic publishers in the wor...
Feb 21, 2023•48 min•Ep. 103
Eric Schwartz joins Avi for a fascinating discussion about the relationship between Columbia University and the Press and how they bounced back after losing their biggest source of income. Eric also talks about the joint publishing program with Howard University and the work publishing still has to do to ensure that all scholars have the opportunity to publish with a leading university publisher. Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts. Learn more about your ad choices. V...
Feb 19, 2023•50 min•Ep. 102
How can cultural heritage give us the methodological tools and source material to confront climate change? How can the cultural heritage sector lead the way into a future that proactively faces the climate crisis? Who can be involved in this work—who gets to identify as a “cultural heritage expert”—and what is the work to be done? Climatic and Environmental Threats to Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2022) examines the challenges that environmental change, both sudden and long-term, poses to the pr...
Feb 18, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 101
While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printer at a printing press. In Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture (Duke UP, 2023), Kathy E. Ferguson explores the importance of printers, whose materials galvanized anarchist movements across the United States and Great Britain from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s. Ferguson shows how printers—whether working at pres...
Feb 15, 2023•55 min•Ep. 100
Jennifer Crewe talks about how translation became a key component of the Columbia University Press publishing program and how the press decides which books they want to translate. In addition, we go behind the scenes to understand the mechanics of a translation rights deal and how negotiations are conducted between academic publishers around the world. Finally, we cover the ever-changing business of academic book sales that can literally turn on its head overnight. Avi Staiman is the founder and...
Feb 08, 2023•52 min•Ep. 99
Museums everywhere have the potential to serve as agents of change—bringing people together, contributing to local communities, and changing people’s lives. So how can we, as individuals, radically expand the work of museums to live up to this potential? How can we more fiercely recognize the meaningful work that museums are doing to enact change around the relevant issues in our communities? How can we work together to build a stronger culture of equity and care within museums? Questions like t...
Feb 07, 2023•48 min•Ep. 189
As we interact online we are creating new kinds of knowledge and community. How are these communities formed? How do we know whether to trust them as sources of information? In other words, should we believe Wikipedia? Should You Believe Wikipedia?: Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores what community is, what knowledge is, how the internet facilitates new kinds of community, and how knowledge is shaped through online collaboration and conversation. A...
Feb 03, 2023•47 min•Ep. 335
Monumental Names: Archival Aesthetics and the Conjuration of History in Moscow (Routledge, 2022) asks us to consider: what stands behind the propensity to remember victims of mass atrocities by their personal names? Grounded in ethnographic and archival research with Last Address and Memorial, one of the oldest independent archives of Soviet political repressions in Moscow and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic examines a version of archival activism that is centred ...
Feb 02, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 98
Why is writing a grant proposal so stressful? Are you supposed to just know how to do it? This episode explores: How to align your values and interests with a grant opportunity. Why most of us will end up needing a grant. Things you can learn from a grant proposal that succeeded, and from one that didn’t. What your grant reviewer really needs from you and why. How to use the funder’s guidelines and terminology to your advantage. Why a guide book can help you write your grant proposal. A discussi...
Feb 02, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 153
We have usually relied on public intellectuals to provide facts, ideas, and cultural leadership--though not all have lived up to the ideal of “speaking truth to power.” Today, however, online networks and social media mean we are all public intellectuals, and we have new responsibilities that come with this role. Guests: Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary and author of, among other works, Black Prophetic Fire. George Scialabba, author of What Good Are Intellectuals Good For?, a...
Jan 30, 2023•30 min•Ep. 29
