Episode 5

Maya Gotschall: Welcome to the fifth episode of the seventh season of Red Penned, where we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of writing in different fields of study and work. Today, I’m here with Dr. Jared Holton, a current UGA professor in the musicology and ethnomusicology department of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, and we’ll be talking about the application of writing within the realm of the musical. Welcome to the show, Dr. Holton.

Dr. Jared Holton: Thanks, Maya. Great to meet you.

Great to meet you as well. And can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us a little introduction?

Sure. Yes, I teach in the School of Music, and I got into music because I loved music, started as a musician, and actually, to be honest, wasn’t into academia all so much. I was really into music and listening to music and performing music, and we’ll probably talk more about this, but got into the academic side, playing music, and really loved people putting all kinds of cultural layers into their music and social layers that went beyond just the performing of it. So then that got me into the academic side, and so now I’m more of like a scholar or an academic in music departments. Very interdisciplinary, I work in anthropology, performance studies, do some history as well, but located in the music department here.

So you never wanted to be a professor or work at a university before?

No. Actually, yeah, I came really late in my life. One of those reluctant academics, there’s a lot of us out there. I was always interested in research questions and sort of what things mean and what’s happening in the world. The university’s a great place to explore those things, but the beginning part of my life, I was more interested in playing music and being in communities and jamming, playing at festivals and performing, and then got into teaching music, and that’s when I really started to develop the academic side. Have you been in a band before, since you play at festivals and stuff like that? I feel like I should say yes, because we’re in Athens, Georgia. So yes, I did. In junior high and high school, I did some of those gigs. I was a pianist, so I started out when I was eight years old on piano. We had my grandparents’ piano. We were holding it for some reason, and I would just play on it. My family’s really not a musical family, necessarily. And then my parents gave me lessons for some odd reason, I don’t know today, and then that sort of started me off. And then I started getting into drums and percussion. So yeah, I would play the trap set, I’d play the snare drum, and my friend would squeak on the guitar, and we would have another friend who would join us for the vocals. We’d do a little trio here and there. My band experience was like a lot of students’ experience I encounter here in Georgia. They’re in concert bands, or they’re in jazz bands, or different kind of school bands that were accessible to me growing up.

So my next question is, what made you want to get into music and then later on teaching? But your grandparents’ piano, and then your parents giving you lessons, is that what made you want to get into music?

Yeah. I love the sound of the piano. I liked making sounds. I liked connecting a lot of sounds at the same time. The piano is a great instrument for that. And it was about five years in, though, that I really decided I wanted to commit a lot more time to practicing. And then I wanted to find people that did this kind of thing. So naturally in schools, it was sort of like, you join different band programs or things like that. So I did that, but I kept up doing a lot of solo piano work. I also grew up in a really rich hymn traditions and a Protestant tradition. So that’s informed my way. It was a non-instrumental thing, the voice not being an instrument. So I grew up with a lot of rich experiences singing, making music with people, and the kind of community that forms through that, and the solidarity and identification that forms through that. That’s had an important part of my life, I think, in considering who I am and that musical part of me, I was able to express in different groups. Yeah. And then when I got to college, I was good enough to get into piano programs and really perform and study at a higher level. But I guess I started teaching in college, started having a piano studio and got into the academic side. I really didn’t want to sit in practice rooms for seven hours a day. So then I started sitting in libraries for seven hours a day, which was unexpected. I did not want to switch that up. I don’t know how that happened. But I really liked being with people and the teaching aspect was what put me back into the community of still doing music. So working with music students, playing and performing with them, but also teaching and working on writing about music and also writing music sometimes earlier in my career.

I also saw that you teach a lot of courses on Arabic and Middle Eastern music. Could you tell us a little bit about that and what made you want to get into those specific fields?

Right. So in grad school in Los Angeles, I started researching Arab music with a band that was performing in Los Angeles. It was the oud instrument. Do you know what an oud is? By chance? By chance.

I looked it up when I was researching for this.

Nice.

So yes. Great. I do know what it is now.

Yeah. Like an Arabic lute.

Yes.

So this like pear-shaped bowl, you know, sort of earlier form of the guitar. So I heard a musician play that in the band and like he was able to express things that I had never been able to do on the piano after all these years of playing and study. And I realized that I was completely fascinated by what he was doing and it really sent me on a trajectory. I still wasn’t interested in doing academic work outside of that. So I ended up going to North Africa for many years as a part of international school teaching. So teaching high school, upper level high school classes, college entrance classes, international music exams, and worked in Libya for many years, learned Arabic, played with Arab musicians, my friends. We would gig on the weekends and go to music festivals and I loved it. And they started teaching me songs and some of their tradition and I was just completely enthralled by it. And the Oud tradition is very much a part of North Africa. So I started taking Oud lessons there as well. It changed my life, obviously. And so that was my entrance into the field. Eventually got into ethnomusicology, which is that field in music, academic music studies that studies the music and often scholars are also performers and artists, but they also take seriously the cultural and social side of music and how music takes place in the community. And so more of an anthropologist as well. And at the time, my friends were, you know, they were really supportive of me studying some of these traditions across North Africa and really supported my research. So that’s how I actually got into the field and got interested in writing about those music traditions and then playing Middle Eastern music.

That’s really cool. How did you come about to teaching in North Africa? Was it like a program or?

Yes, it’s so international schools across the world owned by different companies that can be privatized, that can be nationalized. This one was a privatized company owned by a couple of business conglomerates in the east of that part of the world, in India and in the Gulf, and they needed a music teacher. So they gave me a lot of freedom to come in as the only music teacher. And that was exactly the kind of thing I like to do. I like to develop. And I just found it on my teaching boards, things like that online.

And where in North Africa did you work the most? You said you were in Libya. What other countries?

I was in Libya for nearly five years altogether. And then I’ve done a lot of my research in Tunisia. So that’s just the neighboring country right across from Italy. And that’s been the main sites for my research.

In your specific field, do you tend to do a lot of writing about music for your work or for your classes?

Yes, writing. Yeah, writing about music is what I tend to do in all of my classes, which is often really new for my students. They are mostly musicians, so they come to my class sometimes really scared. They’ve never written about music before. So a lot of my classes are introducing undergraduate students to the act of writing about the thing that you love and you mostly play and practice on, writing about its history or writing about biographies of people involved in the performing or writing about the social and cultural layers that are there in the music that we may not talk about or musicians may not talk about. So getting more of like a comprehensive understanding of the music that we play.

Could you tell us a little bit about some of the music that you’ve written on before or I guess sort of what entails writing about music, like what do your students struggle with the most?

I’m working on four writing projects personally right now. So one is on a music festival in North Africa. I was there for that and helped instigate this festival and also did some research on the side. So I write a lot about the musicians who came. I write a lot about the music and the repertoire they played. I write about the ways that they collaborated and the interest for me in that is thinking about how music enables or disables collaboration. I’m writing another piece collaboratively with the three other scholars about music in an archive, a sound archive from like the early 1900s. So we’ve listened to a lot of these old like crackly records and transcribed them and then actually performed them. So some of these pieces are quite different the way we perform them today than how they are in those like old records. Most of these are created in New York City, first early decades of the 1900s from Syrian migrants that had just arrived. So there’s a lot of stories. It’s really rich to explore those stories and these people. I’m also writing another piece about an opera, a new opera that’s on the scene. So that’s sort of what I’m working on right now. My students, I think like for all writing students, there’s something we all deal with is sort of like how we write, how we get ideas down, the process of drafting things and reviewing things, editing, like writing as process is sort of just a common across a lot of disciplines, right? A lot of my students come and they’re used to playing something, but not writing about that. Struggles are different, but it entails thinking about their listening, like how they’re listening to something. So when you’re writing about music, writing is really all about listening because you’re writing about sound, rhythm and music, which has everything to do with how you’re listening to it and then how you’re sensing it. And sound is way more than just like coming through our ears. We feel it in our bodies, you know, it’s an actual, I think of it as a medium to talk about. We have to reorient our brains a little bit if we’re used to like performing and practicing and practicing repertoire and it’s about doing concerts, performing on stages, venues, doing gigs, things like that to all of a sudden like thinking and analyzing, how am I listening to this? And then how am I listening to this in a particular way that might be like quite narrow, like very historicized, more about where I’ve come from in my orientation and less what these sounds might mean to other people or from other places. Opening up those questions opens up a lot of avenues to write creatively about something. And then there’s that sort of weird crossing mediums thing, just like you’re playing sound and music and then you’re like writing words to it. There’s a gap that’s a struggle sometimes to cross when, you know, we’re really concerned about listening in particular ways to sound and making sounds and all of a sudden we have to find the words, the articulations to describe that from the orientation that we’re trying to emphasis on. That’s a struggle.

So would you say that it is a very creative, very descriptive process?

Yeah, it is. It is. But like if a poetry and composition person came, they might not think it’s very creative because we do a lot of writing about the history and about the culture which can feel sort of didactic. But the best writing about music is writing that is more creative and there’s more creative on the level of like getting the reader to think about the music, where it’s come from and like all the very interesting ways people live their lives through music. And then we can listen to that, interact with that music and sort of have a whole rich background of like why that’s so significant to people.

So when your students write about music creatively and descriptively, you said that they also have to include like the culture and historical background. Is there a lot of research that your students have to do for that as well?

Yeah, they do. Yeah, they have to read books like other people in the humanities and find articles and craft a topic and have a thesis statement and work on structure and flow and think about rhetoric and who they’re writing for and how to best communicate things. Yeah, just like students in the English department, like a formal English department, we talk about how to write on the scholarly register. And I have them take that project and sort of turn it around for a different register for a general audience doing something that’s not just a formal paper, but like a podcast or a video recording, YouTube recording, or maybe an audio recording with slides. But again, like directed toward a general audience where they’re having to explain some of the most, in our sense, the most basic words like harmony or like texture or like timbre for a musician that’s sort of, that’s the shop talk, but like explaining that to different registers. So yeah, they do research and then they also work with adjusting register to fit different contexts.

How do you go about teaching your students to write about music?

So buzzwords, like in pedagogy we talk about threshold concepts. Those are like the core ideas or core concepts that are in a discipline that really shape the kind of thinking, the kind of writing that goes on in that discipline. So for example, one of those threshold concepts like I would consider in music studies would be that music is not a universal language. Like we tend to talk about music being a universal language, but actually, you know, when you talk about the social implications of music or how it’s produced and disseminated and how it circulates culturally, it doesn’t have the same meaning. So in other words, it’s not always a language, it has different forms, it has different functions. So that’s one of those like concepts. I hope all music students who go through the program would sort of get and that we would work on in writing. So how would we unpack that in a writing class? We would write about that from different vantage points of the human experience. So we would unpack that with different methodologies as well. Do some ethnography writing, as well as do archival writing, as well as do some biographical types of writing, as well as do like reflective papers and thinking about your own listening journey, just to unpack how various music can show up in our lives and how multiplicitous music is when we listen to it and see how it’s emplaced in cultures, you know, all around the world. So in one of my classes that all majors have to take, we do multi-methods and then we will talk about a lot of the ways in the humanities we think about the human condition according to race and ethnicity, according to gender and sexuality. We do a unit on technology and communities and class. We also think about religion and spirituality, how that shows up in music. So those help us to sort of focus in on particular points that really have relevance in students’ lives where they can, you know, connect to it and write about it, thinking about their own experience in those human capacities, those human ways. So that’s, yeah, that’s sort of my approach for kind of opening up that door to, you know, going from like a performing musician to now doing more like academic thinking and then actually writing about what music is all about.

And then what kind of strategies or note-taking do you do or recommend when listening to and studying music?

Yeah, listening is a huge field, actually, in music studies. It’s like a trending field right now. People are writing about the different ways we listen and what that means for considering our bodies and who we are and how we make relationships and how we think about ourselves and how we see the world and how we make knowledge. Like in the most basic music class, I talk about deep listening. So I encourage the students, we listen to a lot of stuff, obviously, and I encourage them to do deep listening, which is listening multiple times to things, to objects like tracks in class, and then taking note of like cognitive responses to that music, things that the music makes us think about, affective responses, like how the music might make us feel, respond on a sensory level, and then behavioral sides, like how might that music cause us to think about, cause us to act, or what does the music do to our bodies? It’s not that clean in real life, right? These things kind of mix and mingle and smash together, but it helps students, you know, really consider like what they’re listening to and how it’s affecting them and then to reflect on how sound and rhythm affects our minds, affects our bodies, elicits emotions and feelings within us, and then thinking about like why that’s the case, and then just listening again and again, that repetitive listening can get us into like a deeper space where we can consider other kinds of things rather than just like background listening, you know, or some of the ways we like nonchalantly listen to music in our day to day gets us to really like focus in.

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Maya: And then you said earlier that listening obviously is a big thing, but you said there’s different types of listening? Do you just mean like different formats or?

Dr. Holton: Yeah, that’s really weird to say, isn’t it? Yeah, there’s ways of listening. And that’s sort of how we talk about listening based on our ethnographies we read from different parts of the world where people listen in different ways. When, it’s not that we’re like, it’s not like there’s some like other human organ out there that’s attached to different bodies that’s listening in different ways. It’s just that when sound comes to our body, we do different things with that sound. We mediate it differently. We create different sorts of knowledge. If we think of listening as like a singular process, you know, so like any kind of sound, we’re gonna get the same information because it’s just as simple as listening to that snap. Then we bypass that whole process of mediation in which actually sound is coming to us and we’re perceiving it and our brains are unraveling it and doing things to it and putting stuff on it and sticking things on it like emotions or whatever for us to then live out something because the same sound can have different meanings to people. So ways of listening, realizing that some people, for example, in a rainforest in Papua New Guinea would interact with the sounds they’re hearing in the rainforest like in a very different way that I might if I were there, you know, their cosmologies might be in the bird sounds that they’re making, that they’re able to imitate, you know, dozens of birds around them and able to respond to their environment all through sound, you know, and this sort of overlapping sound of being able to make sound and being that’s enveloped in a sound world that’s all around them and that they’re very understanding of themselves and who they are sort of wrapped up in these soundscapes. This is like a real study Stephen Feld did back in the 70s and 80s that poses that actually listening has different qualities to it and like living in big cities where we hear cars honking and things that like signal to us maybe danger, it may not have the same sort of qualities bringing somebody else in from outside cities that aren’t used to this environment. So different ways of listening, thinking about different ways we interact with sounds and the different ways that we produce knowledge and understand ourselves through that knowledge based on, you know, hearing, based on listening.

What do you feel like is always changing about the writing or the work in your field?

It is changing because of how we’re thinking about the process of listening, how technology develops, and how we’re seeing humans use technology for different purposes and to say different things, to mean different things, to resist certain things that have to do with music and sound, using music and sound to to enable those kinds of actions. And also realizing that the ways we often talk about music are layered with values associated with them, even the way we sort of might like sit in a concert hall and listen to a concert are informed by all these kinds of values and protocols that we don’t often call to mind or we go unspoken perhaps. And that might even devalue some other kinds of musical spaces or other kinds of musical experiences. And listening and then writing about those things based on those listening orientations can help us unmask those values and talk about them in society and actually consider a freer society in terms of access people have to music and stages and livelihood by recording artists. So like writing about music really has some real import into people’s lives and their survivability and having to do with the way we listen and the way we talk about sound and the way we talk about music and rhythm. So I think that’s a that’s a great thing I like to teach my students that are just used to being on the stage. It’s sort of like if you can learn to write about your experiences you can get to some of the foundational ideas that inform the way we do music, the way we play music, the way we listen to music, and help us understand what we include in that space and what we exclude in that space. Yeah, which has significant ramifications for people in society of course.

Is there anything about the writing aspect of your work that you would change?

Like my practice?

Yeah.

You know how I write? Yes. The delete key. I wish I could like take off the delete key of every keyboard that I have. I wish they like made keyboards that had no like editing capabilities on it because you know the more you write the more articulate you get and then the more articulate you get the more like perfectionist you might become with your writing tendencies. You know like in the process not allowing yourself to put words on page and just like get out thoughts and know that that’s just step one. So yeah, the delete key. I have to stop myself constantly from when I’m writing from using the delete key especially when I’m really starting projects. That’s something I’m still working on.

What is your favorite thing about it?

Favorite thing about writing is when you get the articulation in sync with like how you feel, how you think about something. There’s something so satisfying about that moment when you’ve edited something enough and people have read it and it starts a conversation and then you reread it later and you’re like yes like that’s what I wanted to say. It takes a long time to get to that point you know and a lot of steps and I find that really a satisfying moment and one to teach my students like to hold out hope for. There is that moment where you actually can write things in a way where you feel so good about it and that creativity is baked into that and so it’s inspiring like personally on many levels.

What is your least favorite thing about it?

The editing of course. It’s hard. I teach my students to we do peer review of course and we go through all these phases of editing and it’s still as a writer I find it difficult to go back to the same thing again and again. It takes me a long time to like get into my writing space. It’s like I feel like I have to climb into it and then I live there for a little bit and then I have to like climb out of it. So you have to really like situate your day sometimes to like get into that space and that’s hard when you have busy schedules and lots of things to do. Like it’s hard for me to just like sit down and write for 15 minutes on something and then back out. So it’s always a challenge for me to sort of find those spaces to write and find the time to really have those moments where I can really like dwell in it, live and have it, and then try on words and like really try to articulate something and then sort of break out of that and then come back to it at the end and then coming back to sort of getting doing it again. So I’m still learning how to do that more efficiently but allow myself to be creative in those moments where I can have some extended time to you know get in that space.

What is your most favorite thing that you’ve worked on or wrote?

I’m working on a collaborative piece right now. I can talk about that because I’m really enjoying the process. In the humanities it’s not as common to do collaborative publications. So it’s a whole different kind of process writing about it. So it’s a project we’ve been working on. I told you in the archive and we’ve transcribed a bunch of historical recordings. We’ve performed them and we’re going to be performing them again at the Library of Congress like in a month. So it’s been a year-long project and now we’re writing this up in an article and it’s very like auto-ethnographic, the focus of the article. We’re like thinking about our process and I’ve enjoyed the discussions. I’ve enjoyed the peer writing and like putting the article together. It’s absolutely messy. It is such an incredibly… Writing is a messy process but like then when you add like three others it’s incredibly messy. I make all my students do collaborative work because I think it’s so important. So I’m also doing it as well and it’s insane. But it’s sort of like the last week it’s kind of started to come together and the shape is coming into being and that’s like again that’s very satisfying. And when people get really excited like about others’ choices of words or how like somebody else described a story that really connected, that’s been fun to watch like between people in the article. And yeah, so I’m really enjoying that collaborative project right now. And that was about the

You said it was the archive.

Yes, the archive music.

It was about… Was it 1920s?

Yeah, yeah. Early 1990s recordings that like are crackly and sometimes you can’t even make out the lyrics and all that. And we’re writing about our work of sort of bringing them out, transcribing them, performing them today in ensembles and putting them back into circulation. Just talking about our experience doing that.

What challenges do you encounter when writing about music and how do you overcome them?

Yeah, so I’ve talked to some about this, right? Like the delete key, my perfectionism and how it’s hard for me to just write without deleting myself. And I seriously would want like a keyboard without a delete key and then another keyboard with a delete key and keep them for like separate parts of the writing process. So that’s something I still have to deal with is not self-editing too early in the process. And then there’s this moment where you have to let your writing go. It’s sometimes hard to know when that moment is. And that’s like you need to let it go to let other people read it. And yeah, I’m still figuring that out sort of when my golden moment is for having something together enough where I think like I’ve done what I could with my thoughts and now I need help on the outside and sending it out and letting people respond at it and bring it back to me and taking those comments. I find that challenging.

What’s the hardest thing that you’ve worked on and why?

One of the hardest things I’ve worked on was a chapter in my dissertation where I was writing about a music concert I went to in Tunisia. And I wanted to talk about how the way they were performing the music said a lot about these ideas and concepts coming out of philosophy. So writing, like bringing together that ethnographic, you know, rich textuals, reading a scene and describing it and getting into the music, writing that alongside like some heavy philosophy sort of ideas and making that work in a writing way was really challenging to do. And what I put out there, what I finished with is not finished, but it helped me understand the difficulties of sort of working cross disciplinary in that way. That’s a challenge to do. It was hard to write.

Was your dissertation on that, like completely on that concert?

No, that was just one of the chapters. I was writing about that musical tradition and that concert was sort of expressing that musical tradition, but I was wanting to do some philosophies coming out of the humanities and sort of bring that alongside and think about those two side by side. Yeah, it was hard to do. It was like bringing two different fabrics together, like two different textures together, trying to make something work between the two of them. So there’s a lot of like finessing and trying to figure out how language works and like the texture of like talking about a scene and all of a sudden switching to this sort of like philosophical that feels very distant, you know, and sort of trying to bring it closer to the scene. Yeah, that was challenging.

Is there anything specific that you try to teach your students so that you can see an improvement in their writing?

Yeah, we, for my students who are used to performing music, you know, writing about music is scary and quite difficult. So we just do a lot of basic writing tasks in class that like probably a lot of writing classes do, which is sort of like frequent write-ins, you know, on things that are not like too heavy, you know, like writing responses or writing about what does a piece of music stimulate in you, what you think about. So we can call that free writing. We do that quite a bit in my class, sort of open up those spaces where people can begin to articulate and think about language and discourse and things that sort of enshroud these sounds and these rhythms and how we can talk about experiences with music. So we do some basic things like free writing and then getting other people to read that writing and starting to grow the confidence that like everyone’s a writer to some degree and they write on different registers, but everyone is, you know, has their own spectrum of and development as far as like how they’re using language to talk about their experiences and just allowing people to be comfortable with that. And I am as an instructor, like I don’t judge students writing like they’re better than the other. I find just students can write in such many different ways. It’s fun to see all the different ways they write, but giving them confidence in building their own style in class with as many, you know, activities as possible to sort of just get them to be comfortable in their own, in their own writing skin and developing their style. So it’s like basic assignments I do, but that’s, that’s the purpose for all my students out there, why we do all of those assignments.

All right, and then final question. Is there anything that you would recommend for people in your field to try or to implement to improve their writing in the musical field?

I mean, I would go along with what a lot of people are saying in my field about writing, that writing is about, writing music is about listening and it’s listening to music. And so like probing this question of like, when we listen to music, what are we actually doing and what is informing our listening, you know, that often goes unnoticed so that when we write, if we’re not taking stock of like how we’re listening to the world, how we’re listening to the sounds and music around us, then we are, you know, what are we writing at the end of the day about music? And we’re reinforcing like maybe some values that we need to change. We’re reinforcing some, some cultural structures that we might need to reassemble. So for people writing about music, I think this focus on really thinking about what we’re, how we’re listening is, is really key and important so that that writing can probe some of the things that we need to talk about when we write about music.

 Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m really glad that we got to talk about this.

Thanks, Maya.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Red Penned. Please make sure to tune in for the rest of this season to learn more about the different fields of writing and the writers in them. Have a good day. Bye.

Episode 4

Maya Gotschall Welcome to the fourth episode of the seventh season of Red Pend, where we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of writing in different fields of study and work. This is your host, Maya Gotschall, and today I’m here with Dr. Nancee Reeves, a current UGA professor in the English department of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and we’ll be talking about the application of writing within fantasy and science fiction. Welcome to the show, Dr. Reeves.

Dr. Nancee Reeves Thank you, Maya.

Maya Gotschall Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us a little introduction.

Dr. Nancee Reeves Yeah, so I’ve been here at UGA for 10 years now. I’m a senior lecturer, and I teach mostly writing courses and then Victorian literature, and my focus is on science fiction and fantasy, and I’ve been moving more towards contemporary literature within that.

Okay, cool, yeah. So what made you want to get into teaching and studying the realms of fantasy, science fiction, Victorian literature

Pretty much, I’ve always loved to read. It’s always been my favorite thing in the entire world ever since I was a kid, and it’s always been the science fiction and fantasy for me, and so I just grew up doing that. When I went to college and I was an English major, I branched out and I actually started reading stuff that wasn’t just science fiction and fantasy, and I got really into all types of literature, which I think is incredibly important. I think it’s not very smart to only read one particular branch or stuff that you think you’ll like, because that ends up very much being an echo chamber, and you don’t get a chance to have all these different types of literature and such like that. And then after that, I didn’t know what to do. Like most English majors, I worked at a publishing company, I worked as a freelance writer, I worked at a library, but eventually I decided to go back to school because all I really wanted to do was to talk to people about books.

Yeah, that’s valid. That’s a fair point. Can you tell us a little bit about your freelance writing? I didn’t know that you did that.

Oh, it’s nothing particularly exciting or good. It was basically for the Indianapolis Star, and I just did a lot of paid writing, as in it’s like advertisements, but they look like they’re fluff. It’s like, you know, 20 gifts to get for your boyfriend this Christmas. You know, those kind of articles, nothing at all that is important or should ever be read. I did, for a five-year period, run an animal rights newspaper, and so I did lots of writing with that as well. Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that either. But yes, the next question. So I saw that you do a lot of research into Victorian periods, as you stated, dystopian literature and euthanasia, along with, of course, the fantasy.

Can you tell us a little about that and what made you want to study those specific topics?

My PhD program, I decided I wanted to really focus on Victorian literature, just because you really have to, like, kind of choose an area, and the Victorian era has so many wonderful monsters in it. You know, it has Dracula, and it has Frankenstein’s monster, but it also has H.G. Wells and Byrne and, like, just all these really great things. So I wanted to really focus on that, and I ended up writing about the idea of euthanasia because of the science fiction interests that I have. So in the 19th century, there started to be a lot of dystopian, utopian-type books, but a lot of them were just philosophies, people’s philosophies that were draped in the coatings of a story that they were actually trying to get ideas across, and a lot of them were about these perfect future societies where everybody was beautiful and healthy and blonde, and I think you can kind of see where those are going, and I just found it was really fascinating because a lot of them had euthanasia either actually in the text itself, or it was something that had to happen before the text started for the world to be the way it was, and I got kind of interested in the way that when it works within science fiction to have these wonderful worlds, how does it work within the real world as well? So I started looking at text outside of science fiction to see how euthanasia works. So for an example, I did a paper, and it was a chapter of my dissertation first, about fallen women, so women who were seen as less than because it could be for almost anything. Usually it was for, like, having children outside of marriage, but really it could just be for looking like you might have had sex outside of marriage or drank or something like that, but the only way they could be redeemed was if they somehow sacrificed themselves and died for others. So this idea that they were better off dead, that when they died, that’s how they sacrificed themselves, and then I expanded that and applied that to children. There’s tons of text, both fiction and non-fiction, that talks about for their own good, it’d be better if these children were dead because otherwise they’re just going to, like, be on the streets of London. So it’s kind of this idea of other people deciding that you are better off dead because it’s better for both you and for society, and I think it really reaches culmination within the science fiction of the 19th century. And then, of course, at the end of that period is when the eugenics movement really got started, and then in the early 20th century when it really took hold in America.

Oh wow. I never thought about it like that. Yeah, I go to really ugly places. Yeah, wow. So in your specific field, would you say that you do a lot of writing for different academic journals or books and personal stuff? What is the majority of your writing like?

It really, like, varies. Like right now, most of my time is spent on teaching and development of courses and that kind of thing, but I do spend quite a bit of time working on journal articles for, like, about pedagogy, so about teaching, about best practices and such like that. And then also I work on, I’m not working on any book manuscripts, though I do work on right now on getting, like, publications dealing with, like, right now I’m doing, like, something on tracing the idea of fungus fiction, which I know sounds really weird, but it’s kind of a huge thing within, like, science fiction and fantasy and looking at the roots of that and where it started and, like, and how it came to be the way it is now. So it’s really a hodgepodge of writing and a lot of my writing too is just, like, personal writing that I end up developing into, like, ideas about teaching and pedagogy and such.

Okay. How much of your time preparing for your writing for the stuff on teaching, lesson plans, how to be a better teacher, or even, like you said, like the fungi research, how much is that encompassed by research?

Oh my god, so, so much. You would just be amazed. Well, you actually, you know, as an English student, how much time you spend. Like, if you’re gonna, for this, like, fungi project I’m doing, it will take so much. I’ve heard even hundreds and hundreds of hours because you have to find out what every other single person has ever written about this. So you’re not just reproducing somebody else’s work. So you can, like, see what’s been done and then what still needs to be done and then also if it’s something that hasn’t been studied yet areas you have to then go and start looking through, like, the canon and figuring out, like, where did this first start. So I just remember, for example, for a paper I did on eugenics, I read a thousand page novel for a one-line reference to maybe an abortion clinic. Maybe. It’s still up for debate there. I actually quite enjoyed the novel, but it was, I literally had to, like, read that whole book just for that one particular line. So with any kind of research, be it for teaching, be it for literary, be it for anything, I would say research takes up 75-80% of your time. Yeah. So you really have to love it then. You do. You really, really have to love it. You have to know how it works. You have to have access to a good library and you have to be really patient for everybody finding things that you need.

Yeah. I recently just read Mexican Gothic. Where does that lie on the fungi?

Oh, that’s 100% in that fungi, you know, like, she’s very, very much influenced by the fungi narrative and, like, there right now is, like, the contemporary part. And you have Lovecraft who influences a lot of people. But before Lovecraft and, like, the early, like, around 18, like, 20s, 30s, we had Iger Allen Poe. And he has, like, referred, like, in the Fall of the House of the Usher, this idea of the unhealthiness and everything, and has the fungi in there. But then you can go back further than that. So that’s what I’m trying to do now, is I have a wealth, like, too much information from, like, the 50s on. But before that, finding out where it came from and how it ties to everything else is what really takes a lot of time. Yeah. It’s also, language is an issue, too. You know, like, if there’s stuff written in German about that, I don’t read German. So I would have to try to, like, find it in translation. And then you have to trust the translation.

Yeah. There’s, like, a lot of steps to that. Yeah. Do you think that the type of writing that you do for your work in your research is different from the type of more traditional writing that college students learn and do?

I guess it would depend on the class. Definitely, like, literary analysis. The reason that we teach literary analysis so much isn’t just because we think that people are going to spend so much of their time, like, writing literary analysis in their life, but it’s because it allows you to develop those critical and local thinking skills that you need to be able to kind of survive in the world and figure things out. So this is stuff that can be applied to different types of literature, but much more in a conceptual way, often than, like, an actual, like, physical way. So I would say that it is the beginning of that, because, well, we teach all of that, and especially when you do, like, larger, like, projects and such like that. But when you start doing it on a more academic or professional, higher education level, you go from, like, commenting on other people’s work on it to reading other people’s work and then coming up with your own observations and making your own intervention into what’s been done. So I would say that’s probably the biggest difference, but it’s definitely you have to have what you do in college to even get to that point.

Yeah. And what are some key elements that you think fantasy writers should focus on when writing? Like writing fantasy novels or doing research of it? I could say you could answer both.

 Yeah. Yeah. I don’t do nonfiction. I don’t do fiction writing, unfortunately. I always wanted when I was younger to be a fiction writer, but it just wasn’t in me, I guess. But I would say if you’re doing research, if you’re doing academic work on fantasy, my thing is the biggest thing right now is you need to move beyond the European canon and the British idea of fantasy and not in any way, as I said before, to talk about Tolkien, who is wonderful and very influential, but there is so much more out there. And I feel that fantasy really stalled out for a long time because Tolkien was so influential that everybody just wanted to do what he did. And that just happened over and over and over again. And in the last, you know, and there’s always been outliers, like lots of outliers, of course, but like the main thing and the main thing that was getting published were these Tolkien clones, even if they had moments of brilliance among themselves, too. But there’s fantasy traditions all over the world. And there’s a lot more in the last 20 years, we’re seeing like tons more of like feminist issues. You’re seeing tons more of like identity, both with like gender and sexuality coming into play in these, not just in like these almost queer baiting ways that we would get in earlier fiction, but like actually out there and being like a new thing. So I think we just really need to be looking at different traditions from different cultures and countries, and then different approaches as well. Like looking at things like urban fantasy, instead of just like high fantasy.

Yeah, that actually goes well into my next question, what you said about Tolkien, how about world building? Do you have like any advice that you want to like give people about how to do it well, how to do it not just repeating what Tolkien has done in the past?

In a way, like Tolkien’s like, in many ways, Tolkien’s a really good model for world building, because what he did is he looked at the actual world itself, and then he built his fantasy world on that. And so because of that, it’s very nuanced. A trouble you’ll see sometimes with fantasy and more science fiction, I would say, is that it’s a very, like it’ll be an entire planet with one culture on it. Right. Which is just obviously incredibly unrealistic. And it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, we have more than one culture just within a small town of Athens, you know, let alone within our entire world. And that is something that Tolkien thought about and did. And that’s mostly because he was making a lot of political points and environmental points and such like that. Some of them not so great, some of them wonderful. And so I do think that he’s a good model for that type of thing. But the main thing is just look at how varied the world is. Don’t just look at your own little insular area, look all around you when you’re building your fantasy world, because that’s what makes it rich is when you have like, so many different cultures, so many different ideas, and you make it more authentic, more like the actual world, despite having all these fantasy or sci fi elements within it.

And then what do you think are some good techniques or strategies that you would suggest to writers to use when creating well-rounded and successful characters?

No, in all my knowledge, this pretty much just comes as like a reader. But to be fair, I’ve been reading everything for the longest time. So and again, I would say just try to make them as realistic as possible. And by that, I don’t mean that they have to, like they could have like 50 eyes and fly. That’s wonderful. That has nothing to do with realism, but they need to have that emotional depth. They need to have like motivation and reason. A lot of the best writers will talk about how they have all these huge backstories and motivations for their life, for their characters, things that don’t ever even make it into the published stories or novels, but they give that richness to the characters that they need. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t write a perfect character. I hate perfect characters. Characters that just are like the best at every single thing ever. Real quick, what do you have to say about like, I guess I would call it like the pattern of like female characters losing all their powers or their hold on power at the end of the novel and like getting married and having kids and that’s like the end of it. Yeah, I’d say that’s incredibly problematic. That’s something that you see in all genres, not just like science fiction and fantasy. Like I can even think back to like Dickens novels will often do that when they have like strong characters, which Dickens is so strange because they’ll have one female in one book that’s just like the flattest, most boring character ever and the next one it’s like the most nuanced, amazing like character I’ve ever read in my entire life. But if you just try to wrap it up in this pretty package, it like, it like takes away the power of everything. I guess the main thing is, is you just want to try to make sure they can stay true to themselves without having to give up parts of themselves to be with like other people or to conform to ideas and such like that.

Yeah. That’s a hard one though because a lot of it comes down to what is the author trying to say?

Yeah. Like are they making, is that just convenient for them or are they making a point about the world that women have to give up these kind of things if they want like a full life or I don’t know.

Yeah. What’s something that you look for when reading or conducting your research that solidifies like a good fantasy book or a good short story to you?

Oh gosh, that’s so hard. Sometimes like I’ll love something and then I’ll have to like think about later on about like what makes me love it so much or even I’ll read something and I won’t like it that much and then I’ll read it again and then I’ll be like this is amazing. But I guess for me, and you’ve heard me say this a thousand times Maya, but it just comes back down to being authentic and being like real. Like one of the novels that we read in my fantasy literature course was The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison and I really love this book. I’ve given it to so many people as gifts and I made my fantasy lit course read it and the thing is not a lot really happens in it. It’s just about a guy who happens to be a goblin, half goblin, and his whole family dies and he takes over the empire which seems like a lot but it’s actually just about his everyday life. But I just loved it so much because I just loved how real it felt. It felt like a real person trying to be a decent person in a really hard world and so it spoke to me on a lot of different levels even though it was draped in all this high fantasy and everything like that. The high fantasy didn’t take away from it, it actually like added it and made it maybe the realness, the authenticity of it even more clear than it would have been otherwise. So for me it’s that real feeling of being real. It’s the same way with one of my favorite living writers, David Mitchell. Like his writing, whether he’s ones that kind of dip into fantasy like Bone Clocks or ones like Black Swan Green which are entirely realistic, it’s just that that character feels like a real person and it’s like a yank when the book ends because you know you’ll never see them again.

Yeah. What do you look for when you’re conducting your research or you’re like writing about your research?

Like what I look for for what I want to do research on?

Yes.

When you’re reading or when you’re talking and you like you think or ask something and you’re like I wonder what that even means or I wonder how that came about or why do we do this? Like that’s kind of the root of that and then you start like thinking about that and you’re like has anybody ever researched that or looked at that? And so then you go research it and you’re like oh good somebody has and you read that book and then you have that information. But then also if someone hasn’t then you start going a little deeper and a little deeper and then that’s kind of what leads you to the projects you want to do and the things that you want to write about. And often there’ll be there’ll be things that you you hope are going to matter that you hope you know they’re not always but you think they’re going to be something that tells us something about what it means to be us. Like one of the reasons why I wanted to do the project on eugenics and euthanasia is because I wanted us to look at why we think some people are better off dead and how we are taking that same philosophy and we’re internalizing it in our politics and such of like today even and that it’s really important to recognize where that thinking comes from because I don’t know how we’re going to read it out otherwise. But truthfully it just kind of comes from your brain just does that you just start you know when you get used to it when you’re always thinking about stuff you want to analyze everything. I have friends who refuse to see movies with me because they say I just like spend the whole I just want to talk for two hours afterwards like taking everything apart and doing research on it and like why did they do this and why do they do that which for me is what’s fun about it where I can understand where other people it’s just the event itself. Would you recommend that like a student would take that approach with like research that they’re thinking of conducting just writing it all down and then conducting like following that pattern? I think so very much like and literally just writing down the physical act of like writing it down and having it remembering it you can go back to it years later and have it or it can be you know and a lot of stuff you write down is

Episode 3

Maya Gotschall 0:31 Welcome to the third episode of the seventh season of RedPenned where we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of writing in different fields of study and work. Today, I’m here with Dr. Laurena Bernabo, a current UGA professor in the Entertainment and Media Studies Department of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications. And we’ll be talking about the application of writing within the realm of the academic. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bernabo.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 0:57 Thank you, Maya.

Maya Gotschall 0:57 Alright, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us a little introduction.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 1:01 Sure. So, I grew up in the Midwest. I got my bachelor’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies and Economics at the University of Illinois, graduated 2006. And then I served in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica for a couple of years before returning to the Midwest to get my PhD in Communication Studies at the University of Iowa and also got a graduate certificate in gender women and Sexuality Studies. And so I worked for a couple of years at the University of Iowa after graduating before getting a one year position in small school in Virginia, and I was there when COVID hit so really there about six months before everything went virtual. And so I moved by that point, I had already secured this job here at Georgia and so I moved down here, Star Wars Day May the Fourth 2020, which is a delightful time to move cross country and try to furnish a house. But yeah, so I’m wrapping up my fourth year here. Oh, cool. Okay, that’s

Maya Gotschall 1:54 so interesting. So what made you want to get into use of the EU like, we got a lot into women’s studies and Gender Studies. What made you want to get into that

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 2:02 I was just always been interested in you know, issues of identity, particularly gender, and then with time sexuality and race and thinking about how people are represented and who’s telling these kinds of stories, and why they’re telling the stories that they do. And I majored in women’s studies, I think because, well, first of all, I was literally bored to tears as a poli sci major. And my adviser recommended Women’s Studies, which was so new, a major didn’t even have its own real website yet at the University of Illinois, but I kind of stumbled into it as a major and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I just wanted to be a student for forever. And it turns out if you get a PhD and become a professor, you can kind of do that. And so at that point, I had to figure out what I wanted to study and I had heard that getting a PhD in women’s studies wasn’t necessarily the most productive for, you know, less likely to lead to a great career. And at that point, I somehow stumbled onto the fact that media studies was an actual field where you could get a degree and different programs look different around the country. So where I went to University of Iowa, you get your PhD in communication studies, which is a very large umbrella, but that includes Media Studies here at Georgia Media Studies is in the Journalism College and not communication.

Maya Gotschall 3:18 Right, right. Yeah, I did UNG before I transferred over here and then it was communications until I was able to finally like hone in on like what I really wanted to do when I came here. And so what made you want to get into like the study of media or moreso like the academia, of entertainment media studies, is it just like, the wanting to be a student forever? Yeah, like research and stuff.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 3:40 I mean, if you’re, as a student, you know, you’re kind of given some parameters for the kind, you know, you have to do an assignment and you have to do this kind of method or you have to have this many sources or whatever it is, but you’re given some degree of freedom of what you want to study and how, and I just wanted to, I just, I love television, like I wanted to crawl through my TV as a child and join the cast of full house. I wanted to be I loved that show. But like it never occurred to me to be part of the media because I grew up in the Midwest and no one there was really doing that, at least not that I knew of. And they say, you know, find your your passion or your hobby and make it your life and I really loved watching TV. And so I kind of again, eventually figured out that if you get a PhD in media studies, you can watch TV and talk about it and think about it and write about it and read about it for a living.

Maya Gotschall 4:31 So in your specific fields. On the topic of writing, you do a lot of writing for fellowships, academic journals, books and such. She talked about the type of writing that you do for sure. So

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 4:41 not a lot of fellowships. There’s occasional one that’ll pop up. It’s hard to get people to give you money to write about media. I feel like the kind of people who have money to spend on research and scholarship don’t necessarily put a lot of stock in media as a valuable thing to study. It’s a lot. I think a lot more money is available for STEM kinds of fields. But there’s the occasional fellowship. Like I currently have the arch lab Fellowship, which is here through the Provost Office at the University of Georgia. And that has afforded me the opportunity to teach just one class a semester instead of two which gives me a lot more time and energy to focus on my research and so primarily my writing is for articles. Books can be tricky. It’s kind of a matter of, you know, some people do books and some don’t. It’s really a matter of what your program is looking for. What kind of projects will give you will help you to get tenure, and so I’m working on a book project but they also take a lot of time. And so that probably won’t, you know, that’s a multi year process. And so I’m not planning on that helping me to get tenure here. So it’s mostly academic articles. You do a lot of research for your academic articles. I do some more than others. Part of the kind of trick of academia right is that in order to get tenure, you need to have a lot of publications and if each project is kind of unique thing unto itself, then you have to do a lot more research than if you find nuanced ways to tap into the same research pool to do a whole lot of projects. So at this point, I have I think three or four, I have four different articles published, that all kind of came out of my dissertation. So I was able to use the same kind of research pool of notes and data from which to publish for different articles. I do a number of you know, I’ve got a number of projects going that are about dubbing which is part of my dissertation. So even though they’re not about my dissertation, I’m still pulling from that same pool of knowledge. I do a lot of stuff on Black Lives Matter and television. So again, a lot of I’ve got like a library of notes. And so when I need to research, when I’m starting a new project, I start with my I think it’s one note, it’s like a an app. Yeah. So I start with one note, and I kind of comb through and figure out what do I already know and then fill in the gaps as I need to.

Maya Gotschall 7:07 It’s really interesting, what kind of strategies and note taking do you do when it comes to having to watch or listen to something versus reading something’s it’s a lot of your research is like watching movies or television shows? Yeah,

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 7:22 I would say I mean, in all things, I think detailed Note taking is really important. So like when I’m reading something, each source gets its own page. In OneNote. And I start with the citation and, you know, whatever, say, Chicago, I start with a full citation. And then I create like an outline so that I can look at it at a glance and understand the structure of whatever the reading was, so that I’m still able to make sense of it years later. And then I fill in whatever seems to be the relevant information, whatever direct quotes and the page number so like, all that data is available to me to quickly proves and you can do word searches and stuff with TV shows. I like to make sure you know, make note of what the episode you know, season four episode two kind of thing. And then I just kind of do bullet points about plots. And again, direct quotations. And then that way, when I’m dealing with a lot of data, you know, I don’t want to have to go back and rewatch something I want enough kind of thick description you might call it so that when I’m trying to make a case in my writing, that that information is all kind of available at my fingertips. And so like I did an article that looked at how police procedurals in the year after George Floyd’s murder address, and kind of talked about unincorporated themes of Black Lives Matter. And so I watched I think 10 Police procedurals like full seasons, police procedurals, some had more relevant information than others. And I ended up putting each kind of little tidbit that seemed relevant, you know, scenario or anecdote, whatnot. onto a post it and put them on my wall and I kind of I don’t know if you’ve seen like A Beautiful Mind, but I kind of crafted I had flowchart Yeah, I had, like 260 posted on my wall, and I kind of just moved them around until they resembled something like a pattern. And so not every piece of information ended up proving relevant or making it into the article, but it helps me to kind of visualize in a, in a coherent way for me to visualize what the paper might look like.

Maya Gotschall 9:27 Yeah, that actually helps a lot with my next question. So you did believe it was a journal article on Glee?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 9:34 Yeah, which one of you? Because like my dissertation looked at Glee in the context of dubbing and so there’s four articles about glee. Think it was your dissertation it was underneath your profile? UGA is website? Yes. Like I have an article that focuses on things. There’s like a broad overview article I did as a grad student. There was one about like ads for Glee in different countries and how they bounce remember what I argue there, but a couple pushed so yeah, me. And then since I’ve been here, I did one article that kind of focused on dubbing and how it communicates gender and sexuality and another article that focused on dubbing and race and ethnicity but it was all within the context of Glee.

Maya Gotschall 10:15 Okay, in did they change a lot like through different countries.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 10:19 So it’s not even about different countries, per se. It’s about like, if you look at dubbing as a process where this post production process that makes an American show available to Latin American audiences, and when it’s dubbed in Mexico that one version goes to 17 different countries. So you’ve got a small group of people deciding what Glee is going to look like in 17 Spanish speaking countries throughout Central and South America. And so what you find is that there are a lot of ways in which someone’s gender or sexual or racial identity kind of comes off differently in Latin America, but like, it’s not just it’s not just a matter of, you know, is it a positive or negative representation or did it like get better or worse, but like Why Why does it look the way it does? Why did it change the way it did? So for the example of Mercedes, who’s a black woman in Glee actress is a black woman, Amber Riley, and when they have to integrate when they’ve dubbed Glee into Spanish in Mexico, the company didn’t have any black women voice actors. There’s not a large I think, I don’t think there’s a large population of black women in Mexico City in the first place, even fewer who work for work in the public industry. And so when they created the stub, they hired a you know, white Latino woman who does not have the kind of oral inflections that we associate with black woman like she did not sound like a black woman. And so they’ve got this kind of white washed a bit version of Mercedes that goes through all these countries, but it’s not because of racism. It’s because a lack of options right, right. Add to that the fact that she’s not allowed to use slang because slang is so local that Mexican slang is not going to be understood in Colombia or Argentina in the same way, right. So like when she uses slang that gets stripped away because it it does not translate well. And so that then you have, you know, a black, you’re looking at a black woman on screen, but you’re hearing a white voice and you’re not hearing her speaking in a way that is authentic to the character as a black woman. Right. But again, it’s not because people are racist. It’s because you’re dealing with these very real constraints. About You know, when it comes to creating one dub in one country for 17 different countries all have different kind of racial makeups and breakdowns.

Maya Gotschall 12:43 So how much of your time preparing for writing is encompassed by research?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 12:48 I don’t know that I could effectively track time spent quote unquote, researching versus writing. It’s, you know, what is what is research right? There are organizations that focus on being productive scholars and they say that like thinking about it is really like thinking is research right? As a TV scholar, when I’m just you know, watching the shows that I love to watch, sometimes it feels like research because it starts to

Maya Gotschall 13:10 spark thing for my taxes.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 13:13 Um, and so, you know, and it’s not like you do all the research and then you sit down and write like, I tend to start the writing and then I kind of fill in the research as I go along. So I don’t know. I don’t know that I could break down percentage wise and in writing includes revising and editing. And then if you submit it to a journal, they will often say we would like you to make these 29 changes, however many changes they request. And so then you have to go back and write more and sometimes there’s a little bit of research involved, but a lot of it is just kind of like fine tuning, writing and figuring out how best to communicate messages.

Maya Gotschall 13:49 So like writing, reviewing editing, you would say that would take up like a big chunk of that a big chunk of it. Yeah. Do you think that the type of academic style writing that you do for your work is different from the more traditional type of essay writing that a lot of people are more accustomed to? I

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 14:06 would say yes, I think are we thinking like essays like for a college student? Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, academic writing tends to want you to demonstrate that you’re part of a larger conversation that’s already happening. It’s not writing for the sake of writing. It’s an order to kind of expand knowledge and create knowledge. And there’s definitely a lot of structure to it. That kind of takes some getting used to. A lot of I remember one of the first papers I wrote for grad school, my professor told me that it was very good for an undergraduate paper. But that, you know, Greg, that the Academic Writing is a little more, there’s a little more structure, it’s a lot more kind of intellectually rigorous, which I feel like can be a challenge. I’m very descriptive in my writing. Like I want to point out that things are happening and comment on them and not feel like I’m not great at the whole theory part, which you know, is important. So just a lot of writing, especially with revising is trying to demonstrate to the people who are reviewing your work who get to decide whether or not it’s published, that that you can make the changes they see fit. Right that you can submit an article. And if they don’t like what you’re, you know, if they have any problem with it whatsoever, they can basically ask you to overhaul your project and do it the way that they would have done if they’d been done doing the research. And you either have to say, like, nevermind, I’ll try somewhere else or you say, Fine, whatever gets to be published, I will do my best. It’s, it’s a lot of kind of internal struggle and negotiation with you know, people who are deemed expert enough to have valid opinions about your work, which may or may not be the case. Right. Deemed expert teams. I mean, I had I just I wrote an article with a student, a grad student, and we, you know, they asked for a major revision, like a kind of overhaul and we thought, like, the overhaul they’re recommending, seems valid. So we did a major overhaul. We submitted it, and they came back and said, Oh, we’d like to see like these other little changes. And so we did that and then send it back. And then we got another round or the field like, here’s these other little changes we’d like to see. And at this point, reviewer, one, who had been really supportive all of a sudden seemed critical about all these weird things. And it turns out that the original reviewer was unavailable to review the final draft, and so they had to send it to a new person. So it’s this new person who doesn’t know anything about, you know, they’re coming in with fresh eyes, and they have questions and it’s like, it’s like, that’s important. No, it’s like submitting it to, you know, to an audience member who hasn’t seen where the project has come from, and it’s important to make sure that they do understand what we’re doing and why. So there are some ways that we can make valuable like that feedback can be valuable. But when they say things like you should include more black women, because you only you’ve got Crenshaw and Williams, and they’re important, but you should say new people were updated people. And we said, well we’ve got 12 other black women, in our belief, like half of our bibliography, or more so as black women like who do you think were meant? So it’s like, it’s that kind of specific, nitpicky thing where, like, the fact that you asked that question tells me that you don’t know what you’re talking about, which is always interesting. But again, they have the power to say well, I don’t like that. So we have to figure out how to make changes and how to point out to them that they are wrong in a way that doesn’t make them turn us down.

Maya Gotschall 17:33 Would you say that like a big difference between like college essay writing and like the type of academic writing that you do to submit to journals and stuff it’s like they want it to be like you said, you’re very descriptive. They want to be less descriptive and like less personable

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 17:46 Not even personable, they just like there’s it’s a very different audience like when you write an essay, it’s for our college paper and they want you know, they they pretty much lay out rules for you of here’s what we want to see. You know your paper needs, your essay needs to be this many pages, you need to use this many resources. You know, there’s some kind of structure, academia and scholarly writing for articles is there’s a lot more ambiguity, and different people from different backgrounds have different ideas of exactly what it should look like. So it’s like, it’s like throwing a dart blindfolded and hoping that you come close. It’s it’s a lot of guessing. It’s a lot of do very patient. It’s a whole it’s a whole process.

Maya Gotschall 18:28 What do you feel like is always changing about the writing or work in your field? I honestly can’t think of a tick tock make a big impact in the internet.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 18:38 I mean, I that’s the first thing I thought of, like, I recognize that tick tock is a thing. I know someone taught me how to use it to look at Puppy videos. I think that was in spring of 2021 and I don’t think I’ve looked at it since like, I don’t care about tick tock. I don’t like I learned how to use Instagram, but like I don’t like I like TV. I study television, and other than occasionally looking at how people on Twitter talk about TV. I don’t have a ton of use for social media as part of the conversation.

Maya Gotschall 19:10 Yes, like streaming services. So streaming is

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 19:14 definitely disrupting stuff. Yeah. I mean, there’s like a lot more research on Netflix. There’s a fair amount of research on streaming and like algorithms and stuff. But I mean, if you look at media studies, there’s so many kinds of media studies and so many ways that you can zero in and so you kind of find your niche. And you might be kind of generally aware of other niches, but you don’t have to be super literate in them. You’re trying to kind of demonstrate your ability to be masterful in your area. So I can, I can understand when people speak to me about algorithms or about fan cultures or whatever the case may be. I would need to do some research if I was going to give a lecture on it to students, but you know, I’m aware that’s out there.

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Maya Gotschall 20:57 Is there anything about the writing aspect of your work in academia that you would like to change?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 21:02 I feel like I would like to know who the reviewers are. So the whole in academia typically what happens is you submit an article to a journal and you submit it kind of anonymized. So like even if I’m citing my own work, I just have to say like according to anonymous like so that whoever is reading the review, whoever’s reviewing your work, does not know who you are, and therefore they can’t judge you based on who you know that they can only judge your work on the merits of your work. But sometimes I see reviews and it’s like I want to like when you get something like you should, you know, include more black women. If I know that you’re a white woman that makes a lot more sense to me than if you like, and I’m going to I’m going to approach that feedback differently than if I know you’re a black woman. Right? If I know I mean, I got a review. I got turned down from a conference because one of the reviewers said they read my submission. And they basically said like, this is not valuable work. Like what you’re doing like this is a waste of time and energy. And the way they talked about it, I knew that they were a quantitative scholar and quantitative and critical cultural scholars are very different. I’m critical cultural. So they basically said this project is not worth consideration for a major conference. It doesn’t have merit, it doesn’t have value. A few weeks after I got that rejection, I got a an invitation to revise that work for the number one journal in my field and it has now been published. So again, the kind of the extent to which people are making very you know, from their own perspective judgments about the value of someone’s work, and whether or not it should be published. I think it’s fair to know who are those people who are evaluating you, you’re especially when reviewers will kind of famously recommend that you cite them, right. Everyone wants to be cited like I I submitted an article somewhere. And the feedback was, you know, you should cite A, B and C and A and C were my colleagues in this department, and I thought no one knows who he is. So like, because like, like, I know that reviewer see like, reviewer two was see, B is a good friend to see like I like you can sometimes forget who they are based on those clues. Like if they’re like, oh, you should use you should cite this book that hasn’t been published in his analogy do out for six months, like okay, yes, I will read your book. Thank you. It’s just it’s so there’s so much bullshit. Yeah, it is. So people are all out for themselves. It’s fascinating. But it’s like this game you have to play, like really political. It’s, you know, like I get that you want to be cited. I get that you might be invited to review something because you are the expert but like, I mean, famously. I was at the University of Iowa with this professor Lesley Baxter who’s like, the like she’s like the mother of interpersonal scholarship, and she would submit articles places, and they would say, oh, you should you’re like you’re misunderstanding Baxter’s work here like when you cite Baxter, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I swear to god, she’s like, I know what I said, like you’re misinterpreting my work. And so just, you know, I think, and maybe it’s an issue of like editors who kind of oversee the process. Kind of stepping in and being like, you know, maybe not all feedback. It’s important to pass on, maybe, maybe there could be a little more intervention that way, but just to kind of try to try to step out some of the stupid hoops that we are made to jump through, right?

Maya Gotschall 24:42 Yeah. So full turn around. Check your favorite thing about working in academia,

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 24:47 that when I get curious and excited about something, I get to kind of do my thing. So when I was watching I did not used to watch a lot of cop shows, but I was watching the rookie, like I already liked the show. He was one of my favorites. And I was watching station 18, which is a firefighter show and I love that. And the year after George Floyd was killed, the stories that they told they like, touched me like I was so fascinated by the stories that they were telling and the ways that they were engaging these really sensitive issues. I just thought it was really powerful. And, you know, my love of these shows got me to have an excuse to watch them again and watch other shows and to kind of think about the role of television in our culture and its power for effecting change. And it snowballed to the point where, you know, a friend of a friend had worked on station 19. So I got to interview a woman who had been an exec producer on one of my favorite shows. And then I got to, you know, talk to someone at the WGA who invited me to you know, she’s like, I will pass you along to others, you know, a couple of others, like, you can have a couple of contests for free. So I got to interview the creator of the rookie and talk, you know, talk to the guy who created my favorite show to talk about how powerful his work was. And then when I’m in LA doing this, the greedy program like he came and talked to my students and I got make sure who created Brooklyn nine nine, a Parks and Rec and the good place to come and talk to my students like, Hi, my best in my life. So like, I watch TV, I get excited. I get passionate I get to be persistent and fall down the rabbit hole and use my combination of Moxie and lack of boundaries. To get to have really fascinating conversations with people that are you know, that through their programming gives my life you know, meaning and dimension. What

Maya Gotschall 26:34 is your favorite thing that you’ve worked on or wrote? I

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 26:39 think my favorite thing is probably the propaganda piece. It kind of started me on the trajectory towards the book that I’m working on, which looks very broadly at how broadcast television as an industry kind of has responded to the Black Lives Matter movement to increase diversity to tell different kinds of stories to greenlight certain certain kinds of projects. And that has allowed me to again, talk to a lot of writers and producers and actors. You know, when I was out on the picket line in the summer in Los Angeles, I would see someone, you know, people would wear like T shirts and hats from shows that they work on. And so I, you know, would strike up a conversation with someone based on their hat that you’re wearing and buy them lunch and pick their minds and that all contributes to the book. So I think, I think the journal article that just looked at that one season of TV, it was really fun to write and really fun to think through and then helped me to kind of jumpstart a larger project.

Maya Gotschall 27:30 Can you talk about the book that you’re working on now? Would you be able to talk a little bit about that? Sure.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 27:35 So I on the project is looking at how broadcast television for the first kind of decade of the George Floyd movement. So kind of starting with its kickoff after Michael Brown’s murder, and leading up until the strikes everything that shut down Hollywood in 2003, looking at that 10 year period, and considering in a bunch of different ways, how the kind of not just black lives matter movement, explicitly itself, but the kind of larger push towards diversity has changed the ways that things are done in Hollywood. So decisions about casting and increasing onscreen diversity decisions. about staffing writers rooms and pushes from different organizations to prove diversity in writers rooms. conversations about you know what kinds of stories get greenlit right the the responsibility of police shows to do better than they’ve done in the past right Color of Change had an article publication that came out that looked at cop shows, and it found just how egregiously police in cop shows can violate civil liberties and how rarely they’re held accountable for anything that they do. And so recognizing some really problematic patterns and representation that can contribute to a culture in which you know, where police procedurals are like the number one genre, the most popular genre on TV, how this can shape people’s perceptions about how the world works, whether or not the police do wrong, whether they’re, you know, perfect or imperfect. It can be really like television can be really powerful. And they really tapped into that. And so my book looks at the behind the scenes of it all. I’m including, you know, when a when a white man or a black man becomes a showrunner for a cop show, what kinds of stories are they going to tell what kind of perspectives we’re gonna get? And it’s not just the case that you know, black men do it one way and white men do it another way. But there’s you know, different a different kind of sense of obligation, I would say from one individual to the next about what is their job as a storyteller on the largest platform that that our country has. And so I’m pulling in interviews with writers, producers, actors, casting directors, you know, executives and media watchdog groups, to kind of get a picture of who’s making the decisions, what kind of decisions are making and what kinds of stories those are resulting in. So not just looking at cop shows, but also looking at, you know, non police dramas that are dealing with issues like BlackLivesMatter in some way or another or police violence. Looking at even sitcoms where they have either a very special episode. I think like new girl had one episode where they talk about race and policing in a comedic way, versus something like blackish, which is a sitcom that regularly deals with issues of race, or the neighborhood which is always talking about race. So just kind of really looking at what is this landscape that’s been created as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement on television

Maya Gotschall 30:26 right because new girl has the black side characters and black issues as you said like for fronted by black men and

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 30:33 women, right so like so in New Girl Winston is a black man who becomes a police officer, right? In a later season. And so there’s one episode where he and Joe, meet Nick, he and Nick are talking a little bit about race and policing and coaches in the background kind of piping in. So it’s a kind of, it’s a nod to the longer larger conversation but maintaining the kind of comedic humor of the or the comedic tone of the series, where they can kind of, you know, there’s an extent to which any given show might say, like, can we get away with not saying anything? Or like, do we have a responsibility or are we gonna get in trouble if we don’t say anything? Right? A lot of cop shows after George Floyd like, had to do something because you can’t pretend it doesn’t happen. But the extent to which they would do that and what that might look like were very different, like blue bloods had a very different approach than swats or other more progressive shows. Like a bat. Bless their hearts. They you know, I mean, this was a show before George Floyd even I believe they’d had an episode where a black man is being chased by Donnie Wahlberg, the white cop, white detective, and you see Donnie chase this black man into a building and then you see the black man flying through a second storey window to crash into the ground and screaming police brutality, police brutality, and then it’s revealed from an eyewitness that he knew he was cornered. So he threw himself out the window and scream police brutality to make it look like he had been the victim of police violence. And when your core audience is older, white people who are already skeptical, skeptical about black lives matter in the first place. They look at that and they say they’re making stuff up. They’re lying like the boys in blue are the good guys. It’s

Maya Gotschall 32:12 especially that’s the only episode that they have on that.

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 32:15 Yeah, like this. You know, they don’t they don’t do black lies on Blue Bloods. Like it’s right in the name blue books.

Maya Gotschall 32:22 Do you believe that TV shows have a responsibility to talk about these issues?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 32:28 I think morally kind of yeah, like I think if you’re helping to shape how Americans see the world, and if you’re contributing to a worldview that will vilify black people and ignore their pain. And make it okay for police to violate their civil liberties. And, you know, it’s the tip of the iceberg. Like, I think there’s a responsibility to, you know, do it. There are more or less responsible ways to do it. And I think you can’t pretend it’s not happening. And I think you can’t just say, well, the black people are lying, but I’ve yet to get anyone from Google ads to respond to an email, almost almost like they know that they’re not doing great.

Maya Gotschall 33:09 What challenges do you encounter when writing about your specific type of research in the entertainment industry, and how do you overcome Blue Bloods, not responding to emails?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 33:19 You know, if everyone will just do what I tell them to? I think there’s an extent to which you know, trying to convince people that television matters can be one kind of struggle, even in media journals, like each journal has its kind of niche so you have to find the right one. And then like, I really do, I feel like I struggle with framing, like, like how do you theory in a way that passes muster with an academic journal? Because again, I kind of get lost in the description. I can get lost in the weeds, theory of it all.

Maya Gotschall 33:49 What’s the hardest thing that you’ve worked on or wrote and why?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 33:53 I think the hardest might have to be an article I did on Scandal. I swear to God, I started working on this piece in 2015. And this morning, woke up to a revise and resubmit from a journal. So it started as like a project in grad school. were struggling to figure out what it was I was trying to say. But I like worked. on it and present a conference and fine tune it and I just kept working on it, kept working on it, and couldn’t seem to get it published. And then I submitted it to a journal called feminist media studies where like I tailor made it for this journal. Like I cited seven different articles they done like they’d been very similar work, but I was basically looking at this romantic relationship of this TV show and arguing that it is abusive, and that we as viewers are invited and encouraged to ignore the abuse and to instead see it through this very romantic framing. Like I can tailor made it for this journal and then I’m going to desk projection is being like outside the scope of their journal. It’s like how like, How in the world is that outside the scope? And then they invited me to review an article where someone else was doing a very similar project about a different show. I was like, how is that how am I outside the scope? But that’s not like I do not understand to this day, and then like submitting it to different journals, and you can submit it somewhere and they say, well, we’d like to see these major changes. So you do all these major changes and you said back and they’re like, Yeah, still not good enough. So we’re gonna pass and you send it somewhere else. And they say, well, we’d like to fit like, like, you can’t, like trying to make someone happy. Like who will be happy with us? Who can I make happy enough to get it frickin published? And at this point is 2024. The show’s been off the air for how many years? So at this point, it’s like trying to convince someone that it still matters. But, you know, bridgerton is still having trouble with issues of consent and romanticizing abuse. So like it’s an ongoing issue. So it’s just been like I’m, I’m stubborn, like I’m getting this in college, one way or another, like this thing.

Maya Gotschall 35:52 Are there any writing techniques or strategies that you employ when taking on a new research project?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 35:57 I think note taking like intelligent note taking, especially with all the apps available is like a game changer. I wish that I’d had one note all along like in grad school, like if every time I ever read anything, I took notes and had the all available, like you create a library of knowledge that is one touch away that gives you you know, you don’t need a whole you know, you don’t need a bookshelf full of stuff you can make do with with really good notes. And then the other main thing I do is I try to find because I do feel like I struggle with I can struggle with structure and kind of getting lost in the weeds. I like to find an article that has done something similar to what I’m doing, like a kind of parallel and reverse engineer how they put it together and use that to create my outline, because it’s like, you know, if they’re doing, you know, if my friend did this article, where he interviewed three television writers to talk about this over here, and I interviewed three show runners to talk about that over there. His work got published. So how did what is a publishable version of that?

Maya Gotschall 36:57 Fill in your own research? Exactly? Is there anything specific that you try to teach your students so they’re writing CS improvement?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 37:06 I emphasize proofreading proofreading, the proofread that sentence? Your Writing is a process so you don’t just you know, word vomit onto a page and call it a day, you know, get your words on the page, but then figure out is it structured? Is it clearly organized? Do you have no context clues as to where you’re going? Do you provide some kind of overview I’m a big fan of paraphrasing I don’t like a lot of direct quotes I pointed out to students like anyone can directly quote but like paraphrasing shows you actually know what you’re talking about. And so just kind of generally trying to encourage students to write well, and to use their you know, weekly writing assignments as a way to kind of stay on top of those right so like how well are you communicating what you mean to communicate? Do you demonstrate your ability like that you actually understand the concepts that you’re using, you know, in any given any given writing assignment at this point, I think I have six different little criteria where they can see if they are strong, acceptable or weak on that. And some of them is as basic as you know, did you follow directions and see within the word counts and be amazed how many students was that like

Maya Gotschall 38:11 the biggest problem that you see with students writing?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 38:14 Critical thinking? I think students and I feel their hand like they tend to stick to description. They want to keep rehashing what we already know and they keep wanting to point to what is but with the kind of things that we’re trying to get them to do in this major is we want them to think to the future so knowing what you know, knowing your, you know, knowing that this thing is happening in the world and understanding course concepts as you do, what predictions can you make about what will be happening in the future? And that’s, it’s like they’re, I imagine they feel like they’re standing at the top of a cliff and they’re worried to jump off. Right, right. But that’s, that’s where the critical thinking.

Maya Gotschall 38:52 And then final question, is there anything that you would recommend for students or people in your field to do or to try to improve their writing?

Dr. Laurena Bernabo 39:02 I think if you’re not using OneNote, get on it. It’s so handy. Like you can do a word search, like you can organize like, eat. It’s magical. Like I wish that I had known about this when grad school started, it would have been a game changer. And I think productivity buddies, like part of the hardest part of writing is that you have to be self motivated to work on stuff with like, you know, when you’re a student, you’re given directions, you’re told to write something and you’re given a deadline. And in academia, you have to come up with your own assignment and come up with your own deadline. And you know, there’s like, depending on where you submit, like they have different rules about word count and what kind of citation style to use. But you have to be very self driven. And so if you make a point of, you know, having a productivity buddy where, you know, once a week you work together in the afternoon, or whatever the case may be, you know, and I know another recommendation very generally is like, you know, spend at least 30 minutes a day on weekdays, doing the work, in whatever form it takes, if you’re reading if you’re writing if you’re just like thinking and outlining whatever the case is, but make sure it’s the kind of daily practice that you get into, which sounds easy, but can be difficult, especially in a really long day for teaching a bunch. You know, got to do whatever you got to do to get on it.

Maya Gotschall 40:13 Oh, thank you so much. I had a lot of fun talking to you today about everything. Thank you to everyone for tuning in to this episode of red pen and please make sure to tune in for the rest of this season to learn more about the different fields of writing and the writers and them. Have a good day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Episode 2

Maya Gotschall 0:01 Welcome back to the seventh season of RedPenned Podcast, where we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of writing in different fields of study and work. This is the second episode of the writers and today we’re joined by Abby heron, a current UGA senior studying Entertainment and Media Studies in graphic design. Today we’ll be talking about the application of writing in the field of arts and media. Welcome to the show, Abby.

Abbie Herrin 0:23 Hello.

Maya Gotschall 0:25 Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us a little introduction.

Abbie Herrin 0:29Well, yeah, like you said, I am an entertainment media studies major as well as graphic design. I’m super involved. At the red and black. And yeah, that’s, that’s the bulk of what I do. I am the Design Editor. I’ve been there since spring of 2021. So I’ve been there. I’ve been there for a while.

Maya Gotschall 0:47 Sounds good. Let’s see. So what made you want to get into art?

Abbie Herrin 0:51 So when I was a kid, I really really loved movies. And one day my mom took me to go seat up. And then from then on, I was like, wow, I should work at Pixar. And then from there, I started doing a lot more art and then throughout middle school in high school, I kind of kept doing that. And then I did two years of AP art and I actually ended up applying to art school. But that was really expensive. And I decided to not go into hundreds of 1000s of dollars worth of debt. Right. And so now I am here doing graphic design, and it’s great. Yeah, yeah, I’m great.

Maya Gotschall 1:24 How much writing do you actually have to do for a graphic design major.

Abbie Herrin 1:29 There’s like a surprising amount. I think with a lot of our projects, it’s kind of expected that like, I guess you’re able to explain like what you’re actually doing and there’s a lot of copywriting specifically. So like, they’ll make us like last semester. For example, we had to do this fake, kind of like fake Athens guide and so there’s a lot of writing in that and so we’re on teams of eight which is like a lot of people but there was on a copywriting that when did that because it’s supposed to be supposed to be like this guy that can be going out to anyone who’s new the city and so there’s copywriting there’s also just like writing not presentations per se, but I guess like proposals of like, Hey, this is what I want to do. And you kind of need to be able to explain that in a succinct like four to six sentence paragraph. Okay,

Maya Gotschall 2:13 what does a typical writing assignment look like for you? Have you ever had to write like a description of a piece for example, like what do you tend to do?

Abbie Herrin 2:21 So there are kind of like two main writing assignments. I feel like within the art school, so as an art major, you have to take, I think, two semesters of an upper level art history, which also includes doing the to like, under like the intro classes, right? So I’ve taken four or five semesters art history, and so a lot of that is like, you go to the lecture and you had to like, during the exams, you have had have to have like this synthesis of like, Oh, here’s what we learned. And like, let me compare this piece like I know, one of the prompts that we did when I was in Baroque art history, the entire test was just like, what is violence and how is it portrayed in the Baroque time period? I forgot what like, time she gave us this specific point. But like, it’s just like, really, I don’t know, I guess really ambiguous and they want you to be able to really like synthesize, like, Here are these things and these paintings like they use this tone, they use these colors and like how does that represent violence? Or like how does that represent whatever topic you’re in and so there’s that one and then as far as like graphic design, a lot of it is copywriting so the writing is never like there’s never assignment is purely just like write down these things. Well, actually redact that sometimes there are assignments is like, Okay, you need a statement by this time, we’re gonna go read them. So there’s like, Here, write a paragraph, explaining your project, and then that’s like the entire assignment. And it can be there’s like this weird level of like, trying to find this balance of like, how casual it can be. I feel like a lot of people have very specific voices. Right, in these statements. And that’s a big part of it. And then copywriting is just any writing that goes on to the project, like I was talking about with the Athens guide, and those already in that one and then we have Capstone switch writing about for like, for example for my capsule when I’m making a card game to have to write like the instructions and have to write what’s going on the cards. And then also for the Capstone, they wants to make a book. So we’re writing entire book, entire book about what exact it’s our process flow. It’s not, there’s writing to be expected. It’s mostly more of like a graphic design book. And those are like, a lot of times they’re like full photos and like some cool graphic elements and they’re like, maybe like a paragraph or whatever on the page. There’s a very, like, specific look to like art books and graphic design books, I think, but that still has a lot of writing in it and it’s still something that like needs to sound professional. And nice. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 4:41 Is it an art book based on like your art or what exactly?

Abbie Herrin 4:45 so it’s like about your own art. Yes. So it’s like a Process Book. So we’re basically we’re having to document like, all of the steps of us making our capstone from like, the early statements to sketches to whatever in the repayment into a book. And then we have writing to go along with it and then like, like I was saying, kind of like finding your voice in like art writing. People are very, like different in terms of like, there’s some people that have like, a lot of writing and it’s like kind of serious. And then you can also in that same way, kind of get away with like, super succinct. Like, if you can get away with like four sentences. That’s what they want you to do. Because like, most people who are like nice books, they it is a visual experience. So they don’t, people aren’t going to read a paragraph, right? And so some people can’t get away with like four sentences and it’s like quirky and fun. And so you have to find that balance of like, who you are and like what is your project, and you go from there.

Maya Gotschall 5:39 Do you have a lot of troubles? Sort of like shrinking it down into like, this type of four sentence format that they want you to have?

Abbie Herrin 5:47 I don’t think they they never really like actively say like, oh, it should be like four sentences or like this or that. I think just kind of the vibe because I feel like a lot of times when I talk to my professors, like I had a draft of one of my cards and I had like, it wasn’t even I hadn’t written anything yet, but I was like, oh, like, this is the amount of text I want. And she was like, no one’s gonna read that. You need to like shrink it down. Um, so it’s not necessarily like a sentence. It’s more just like, a vibe. Yeah, I think I do. I feel like I’m pretty wordy. And so usually, like the first thing I write I’m like, I can probably cut. Maybe not half of it, but like close to half of it. And that’s really just looking at it and staring at it and being like, well, I guess I don’t need these words. And they just get rid of it. And then it still makes sense magically and then then it’s fine.

Maya Gotschall 6:32 Do you feel like having an art major has helped you sort of be able to like look at things and like, cut it down?

Abbie Herrin 6:41 No, um, I honestly think I think that you must see stuff in the reading we’ve had to do there is more helpful in art just because I don’t think we’re ever really taught how to, especially with copywriting I don’t think we’re ever really taught how to write which I think is also true just in college in general. Like you just kind of come in knowing like they expect you know how to write which I think is completely valid. But I think because I did a lot more writing the first like two years that I was here compared to like some of the other people there that aren’t double majors. It was helpful in that, like, I think I can cut stuff down faster. And I A lot of times, like I’ll be in class and they’re like, Oh, I just don’t know what to write. And I’m like, I usually can like crank it out and then cut from there. I think there’s also maybe like a symptom of being around like, I don’t write at the red and black, but I’m around a lot of writers, right. And so I know, like their kind of strategies. And so I can kind of like synthesize that and be like, well, if I just write a ton of bad stuff, then there’s at least one good thing in there and I can cut it from there. And I think a lot of people, or at least some people in art can kind of be like get stuck on like, oh, I want to write one good thing the first time and like, that’s not always it might work for some people. That’s not really how it works for me, so I just gotta crank through.

Maya Gotschall 7:57 Yeah, that’s fine. What challenges do you encounter when translating visual concepts or emotions into written descriptions or explanation? So it’s just like artists statements or project proposals, similar to the book that you’re doing, but I guess, since we already talked about that a lot, maybe something different.

Abbie Herrin 8:15 I think like, a lot of not even like problems or difficulties, but just like obstacles, I suppose is just conveying tone. Right? Um, like back to like, the Baroque stuff. Like a lot of it is really like a lot of it is like Catholicism, art and a lot of it is actually really violent. So it’s like how do you how you describe that? And like, do you say, Oh, this painting is like, a decapitated? I don’t know if she was here that if this painting like this painting is like a David holding like decapitated delight, like do you say that or do you like try to go around that? And so that’s like really interesting. A lot of times like in our history, you can just kind of say it because when the professor already knows what you’re talking about, but I don’t know, I think there’s like not like a censorship but it’s like, who is your audience? And how do you convey that? Yeah, tone is really hard to get, especially if it’s just text, if there is like no image to go along with it, like how do you describe the texture of like, brushstrokes? If that’s like, super important, like, how do you if you want to share like jokes about like, how do you describe that? You can’t really in some ways, because like, you just kind of need to see it and you’re like, oh, it’s like, splatter paint and it’s like all these colors and that’s cool, but you can’t really, you can’t really give a good idea of what it is. Yes, yeah. So that’s kind of like a harder thing to do. I think.

Maya Gotschall 9:38 Do you think it like gets harder the more abstract a piece of art gets?

Abbie Herrin 9:43 Yeah, I think so. Also, because like, I feel like when pieces become more abstract, they’re also up for a lot more interpretation, right? Um, but like when you have something that is a bit more like my favorite artists is Edward Hopper. His stuff is very, like there’s a lot of tone and there’s a lot of like narrative that’s like, infused in it, but it also is like, Oh, like this person is sitting at like a diner table. And like that in itself is like, easy to describe. So I feel like yes, there’s a lot of tone in the meaning of the painting can get changed a lot of stuff, but like, so you always have that problem regardless of what the artists but then we have an abstraction on top of it. It’s like, oh, I need describe what it looks like and what it like feels like and that becomes harder, I think.

Maya Gotschall 10:28 How would you say that? Like this type of writing that you have to do like descriptions, project proposals. The process writing that you said that you have to do a lot is different from the more traditional style of writing that you’ve done before or like that you were taught in high school and stuff like that.

Abbie Herrin 10:42 I think artists writing is a lot more of like writing for an audience. Right? So there’s like kind of two ways of like, I feel like personal artists writing so there’s one of just like journalism and not journalism, journaling, and using that as kind of like a research and part of your just like art practice. But then there’s also like when you’re copywriting for like graphic design, or you’re writing a plaque or whatever or description for your piece to be like put up in a gallery like you’re writing for people. And so a lot of times with like traditional writing and like high school and even college, it’s more like academic, you’re writing for one person and typically that’s your professor. Maybe it’s for other people and like academics to read, but it’s a very, like limited audience. But with art, it is kind of under the guise of like, oh, I have to write for everyone. And that doesn’t mean like, you have to like dumb it down a lot. It just means that you have to be I think more approachable. And how do you explain like these maybe sometimes complex, maybe sometimes complex things, but like, how do you how are you succinct, and how do you just make it approachable for everyone? Because, like I was mentioning earlier, like when you have like, if you have like a paragraph of like a huge paragraph of text, like a cool thing to look at, like everyone’s gonna look at the cool thing, and they’re not gonna read the text. So it’s like how do you how do you keep something that when you also have to be aware that like, people aren’t always gonna read it? I’m like, do you I feel like most people when they go through museum they don’t read the text. So it’s like, the images will speak for themselves most the time anyways. But on the off chance someone does read it. It’s like it still has to be like approachable and kind of for everyone, I think.

Maya Gotschall 12:22 What do you feel like is always changing about the writing or the work that you do in your field?

Abbie Herrin 12:30 I think kind of going off of the like, approachable aspect. I think a lot of graphic design like they’re kind of it’s kind of one of the guys that like I feel like a lot of graphic design is very commercial. It doesn’t have to be but a lot of people that want to go into the field like want to work in advertising or work at a firm and so I’m going off with like, it’s for everyone. I feel like whatever the copywriting whatever is like popular that’s going to evolve right now I feel like it’s this like kind of like sarcastic like, Oh, I’m quirky kind of mentality and being like, like, Yes, this is an advertising but I’m also like, I’m aware. Like you’re aware that I’m aware that I’m advertising to use like let’s have fun. Like I feel like that’s really popular right now, in terms of like copywriting but that probably won’t always be true. Like it’s going to evolve from that. And so it’s kind of like keeping up with like, oh like what’s working with like the general public, and then especially like art history reading, I feel like that doesn’t really change super much because it is pretty academic still. And that is a lot more formal. So you don’t have to worry about worried about that changing. I think I’ve read like pretty recent art history books and like really old art history books and they all they all kind of sound the same minus a few different phrases but like it’s still very academic.

Maya Gotschall 13:44 Yeah, it sticks to like the more traditional Okay. Is there anything about the writing aspect of your work that you would change and you can talk about graphic design or history? Like the type of writing that you do in general like like you said, like you’d like the copywriting you didn’t really learn much about it, like would you change the fact that you have to do a lot of copywriting.

Abbie Herrin 14:07 I actually really like it, I think. I think the thing that is maybe a little bit on not unfortunate, but like maybe one played everyone’s strengths is that like, again, this expectation that you know how to write, when that just simply isn’t everyone’s strength. Like honestly, you can make the argument there. There’s a reason why your graphic design major non English major there, right? Because I know people that like really don’t like it. And so I think that maybe just in the kind of like, major is the expectation like that’s not always great. And I know if it doesn’t play to people’s strengths and they just kind of end up putting it off. To the last minute which is something you can’t really do with reading sometimes. So that aspect isn’t amazing. I feel like a lot of the arts This is also true with like your to media studies, but maybe there’s like this expectation to kind of be a jack of all trades. And that’s just not something that everyone can do. So it kind of sucks for those people.

Maya Gotschall 15:06 basically, you’re saying that you wish it was like more open to everyone who also like doesn’t have that type of experience that you have.

Abbie Herrin 15:12 Maybe or just like, maybe just like, again like a like a class period or like a semester kind of like, dedicated to it. It doesn’t have to be like a whole class. I think a whole class on copywriting what kind of stuff but just like, hey, like, here’s this, here’s this skill that you’re probably gonna have to know. Here’s some more instruction on it. Because not everyone is a writer so it’s like can be hard. It’s

Maya Gotschall 15:40 like having someone come in beforehand like before you get deep into the major details like come and teach you what you what’s to be expected.

Abbie Herrin 15:47 I think so because they kind of just like and granted like I feel like copywriting is different for everything. So you just kind of have to figure it out. And maybe that’s why they didn’t really teach us is because it is pretty case by case. Because like we today actually we had a we had a visiting artist, and she works. She used to work at cards against humanity. And so at the copywriting for like Cards Against Humanity is gonna be super different than like the copywriting for like, I don’t know, like a coffee brand, right? And so in that way, it’s like how do you really teach that you just kind of have to go with the flow and you have to like get a vibe, and then you have to edit from there. So I understand it that way but like it’s not really taught because arguably, you can’t just have fun to teach, but maybe just like having some basic, like instructional like prompts or whatever, and then making people like a little bit more open to it. Yeah.

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Maya Gotschall 17:34 What is your favorite thing about the writing aspect that you have to do alongside your artwork?

Abbie Herrin 17:40 I know I kind of just sound like I made fun of a quirky like Gen Z copywriting but I love it. I think it’s so silly goofy. And I like making jokes like I like I think that’s like one of the fun parts about it. Especially like when you have a fun project or like you make your project more fun is that you can kind of do what you really want to and make it kind of your own and have your own voice. Which is something you can have a style on art, but it is it’s nice to have your own voice

Maya Gotschall 18:15 What is your favorite thing that you’ve worked on or wrote?

Abbie Herrin 18:21 I think like in progress right now, I do really like the book we’re having to make for a capstone class. Um, I think again, because it’s like since this is we do a lot of solo projects in art. The last few semesters I feel like we’ve kind of done bigger like group things. And so it’s nice to like have a lot of control over your project because we just even before when we were doing solo projects, it’s like it was very, like everyone had the same problem like you have to make this and that’s not to say that they all like all the art or whatever in looking the same like you can always do your own thing. But um, I don’t know it’s like nice to feel like I have the freedom to kind of write how I want to Yeah, so hopefully I’ll like the writing the most by the end of this. We’ll see it’s not done yet. But you’re liking it so far. But I am liking you so far. Yes, I can be like sarcastic and quirky and all those things. That Jen Yeah, I can have my Gen Z quirkiness. And it’s fun and like sometimes I’ll just like come up with things and I’m like, oh, I should have this to my to my Google Doc, my, my my book writing copy Google that I have going on right now.

Maya Gotschall Is the book more about the process or is it you sort of advertising the game or explaining the game?

Abbie Herrin 19:31 It’s about the process. It’s about the process, okay. Yes. Like it is explicitly like, Well, okay, explicitly as in like, this book is meant to document your entire the basically the entire timeline of your project, like from getting beginning to end. And like how you display that and how you write about it. Is your own decision, but like you have to do this thing, and it is mostly the idea of like, here’s where it started. Here’s how it did. Okay, yeah.

Maya Gotschall 19:56 What is the hardest thing that you’ve worked on or had to do writing for?

Abbie Herrin 20:01 I don’t love art history, writing. Personally. A lot of it. There’s no quirkiness, there’s no well yeah, there’s no quirkiness first and foremost, no quirkiness. Second of all, though, um, so much of art history writing, at least at the DoD is time because usually the writing is in a test version. Okay. Um, and so like when you when your time that just takes any like enjoyment out of it cuz you’re just like, oh my god, am I able to get like these pieces in and like, each professor is like a little bit different. The first upper level art history class I had, which was Baroque. She had one prompt that she didn’t give us beforehand. And so you had to go into the test knowing all the pieces and all the like, ambiguous historical context like you don’t, you don’t have to be like super specific. But there’s also a range of like teachers, I’m like, Oh, you need to know this year and like she was one of those professors that like you needed to know the year right. But then, so that was like, just simply not fine. And I was like, just it was just read. And then the more recent art I took, which was Asian art history, the professor was a little bit more chill. He would give us he would let us bring in materials so we could have an outline for the our essay we couldn’t write, pre write it but we can outline and we can have like the labeled photos or like images that we needed to know. And then he would give us he would basically give us like three possible prompts. And then you pick one from there, which in some ways is still a little annoying, because it’s like, just give us one like it’s fine, like whatever. But we had to prepare for all of them. But in that way, it was still it was still stressful. And I didn’t like it. But at least I’m like, Well, I’m allowed to have an outline. So if I do bad, it’s my fault. It’s not really you know. And so that’s just never fun. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 21:52 So you’d say like, that’s like more academic and you lean more towards the creative?

Abbie Herrin 21:56 I don’t have a problem with academic writing. I just think academic writing when it’s time is like, really not super great, but I also don’t think anyone likes timed writing. Yeah. Yeah, very few people are fans. Um, but also again, it’s like one of those things that like, not have those time manager. And so even if it was like a take home moment, I probably still write it in like three hours and just call it done.

Maya Gotschall 22:21 that’s fine. You don’t get to look at the pictures or paintings that you’re supposed to be writing about and these time reading point only with that one professor that you

Abbie Herrin 22:31 honestly, I feel like I don’t know about the other professors. So obviously lecture about the images and they’re like, oh, like, here’s this but like, with the structure of the broke class was like, she would give us a list of images. I think it was like, like 50 or 60. Um, and she was like, Okay, you need to know your Ambit. Ma’am. I feel like it was kind of like a range. It’s like if you were within a few years she maybe it was kind of okay, but you had to know the artist for sure. And also the medium typically though, you can like look at the you can just look at the photo. And it’s like, if it’s a painting, it’s mostly good oil sculptures are usually marble or stone, whatever. So that was kind of fine. And then have to know the historical context for Baroque. We had to know a lot about the the people who commissioned it, it was a lot of Dukes and people like super high up in the church. And just like kings and queens and whatnot, so you had to know who was others a word for Commissioner. I cannot think of the word right now. But you had to you had to know who ordered it. And then also, like, was it important if so, why? And then with Asian art history, because that one specifically was a lot more about earlier art. So it was like, like before, like a written history moment, and there’s so there weren’t people who had commissioned them. And so there’s a lot less strict about like, oh like this like King or whatever, until like the last little bit when you got to maybe like I don’t know, like 1200 and then they’re like, oh, like we kind of know now but you it just depends on the teacher as to how much information you like no before I mean, they’ll always give you like here the images and like here’s the information. It’s just a matter of do you have to memorize that before the test? Or do you get material inside that you can take in? But yeah, but then it’s also kind of stressful if you have material to take in. I feel like you study less because you’re like, oh, I have the ability to like look at this outline or whatever, but then you like you still can like freeze. Yeah. So it kind of sucks. Yeah, in a way. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 24:38 What is like the usual type of research and writing that you have to do for your pieces?

Abbie Herrin 24:45 It very much depends on whatever the project is. So like the example I use of like the Athens guide, if you looked a lot through like, oh, like guides, just like around like town guides. There were some people that had like a prize at the like they made it like a game and so they had a prize at the end. So there’s this thing called the Athens things to Athens beer trail that can be like a little off, but it’s like Oh, like that is technically a guide and it’s like a guide to like the all the breweries in Athens and so like there’s that kind of research. I don’t do with my most recent project. My capstone project is about climate change. And we’re making a card game about that. So I’ve been doing a lot more like traditional research of like, oh, like here are these articles in these papers about like effective solutions and whatnot. So that is very basic, but then it’s also like research is awesome, like going to target and like going into kids and like taking photos of like, Oh, like this is what target selling right now as far as like kids games, and like educational things. And like how does that like correlate with me? I also try to do some interviews. We had to do those. So I got in touch with a few professors here, as well as a professor at Tech and I did a quick little 30 minute interview with them. Global warming. Yeah, they were all a part of the so project drawdown is a climate change solutions, like organization. And so there’s drawdown Georgia, which is a like Georgia subset of that project. And so it’s all about solutions for Georgia and like how they can be implemented. So that was really cool.

Maya Gotschall 26:11 Are there any writing techniques or strategies that you employ when writing about art?

Abbie Herrin 26:16 Not really well, I think with again, with a timed writing, like it’s kind of hard to like, have any specific writing strategy other than like, oh, I have an outline. So I’m just gonna write within the outline, with the copywriting and graphic design stuff, kind of what I was saying earlier, is that I kind of just write everything and then I’m like, well, 90% of this is bad, but the 10% isn’t bad. So I’ll get rid of the 90% and usually by then if I do that, like once or twice, I can usually get it down to like what I need. I usually only write once, and I edit a lot like I don’t do like a lot of drafts, I guess I mean, I guess like a lot of it like the editing itself is like drafts, but I don’t feel like I do really more than one thing. I feel like I just write a lot of one thing, and then I kind of stay with that, which maybe isn’t always the best strategy, but I find that it’s worked for me.

Maya Gotschall 27:10 Do you see any constant interconnections between art and other fields of study such as literature, entertainment, etc.

Abbie Herrin 27:17 Um, I feel like kind of like what I was saying earlier, as far as Have you had an advantage of writing a lot more in the first two years than I think maybe some other people have. That has been really nice. I also have like I read a lot and I watch a lot of movies. And I don’t think that’s true for some might not for everyone, but there are a few people that I am not sure if they read as much or whatever. And so I think maybe writing can come harder to them. Just because they’re not as used to being around it. That might sound kind of silly, but I feel like even if you’re not like I’ve seen was like the random block, right? Like, even though I am not writing for the red block, I’m around writers and so I think like I hear them talk about their writing process a lot even though journalism writing is very different from creative writing or literature writing like it’s, I don’t know, they’re like things that you can just like via osmosis, like turn, like it just goes in your brain. And eventually you’re like, Oh, well, you know, like, they use this thing. And you know, maybe it’s for journalism, but maybe it’ll work for me and then and then it kind of it does or you take like one element of this thing and it kind of works out.

Maya Gotschall 28:26 Yeah, well, that is some you’d also have to read a lot of like the work that people do at the red and black to like make your graphic designs right.

Abbie Herrin 28:32 Yeah, I did that. But then also when I was working on the paper, like the way the editing process worked, and the way they had to cut down stuff, um, it there was like this whole system and like a system of software’s they use but like the very last stage of editing where they were like, cutting lines or just like changing like the tenses of words. I was actually the one who was doing that. And they were like explaining to me, they’re like, oh, like in this paragraph here. I want to get like I need to change this phrase to that phrase. And so I was actually the one doing it. I don’t really know why that was the process, but that’s just always the way they’ve done it. And so a lot of times like I’m actually the one making those like physical edits. They’re obviously the ones coming up with it in in the brain. But I would kind of I would be there in the moment. I’m like, oh, like, I have a vague idea of like AP style. Yeah. Because of that. I don’t really write an AP style, but like I have an idea. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 29:23 So we just say like, keeping open to the world. Like keep learning helps you a lot like Yeah, I think like what I’m saying yeah.

Abbie Herrin 29:32 I think like being a double major and being greedy. And being at the red and black has kept me a lot more open. When like, I love the DOD, but you’re on East Campus, and you’re kind of far away from everyone. And if you get stuck over there, it’s very easy to like stay in your own space. And just say that space isn’t great because it is but I feel like being open and having more experiences on like other parts of campus have been really helpful. Yeah, great.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Episode 1

Maya Gotschall 0:07 Welcome to the first episode of the seventh season of red pen where we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of writing in different fields of study and work. Today I’m here with Tatum Callaway, a current UGA senior studying Entertainment and Media Studies in history. And we’ll be talking about the application of writing in the realm of the historical. Welcome to the ship Tatum. Thanks for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, give us a little introduction.

Tatum Calloway 0:34 Yeah, so like you said, I’m a current senior here at UGA. I’m graduating in May. I have majors in history and entertainment media studies with minors in film studies, General Business and Law jurisprudence and state. My current involvement here at UGA is I’ve been a dog camp counselor for the past two years where we it’s kind of a extended orientation program for incoming freshmen. And then I’ve also been on the homecoming committee for two years, just to help homecoming events run smoothly for that week. And then this summer, I’m going to Austria and Germany to work on a world war two documentary for about a week and a half. And I’m very excited about that.

Maya Gotschall 1:17 Oh, yeah, that sounds really cool. So let’s see what makes you want to get into history.

Tatum Calloway 1:22 My dad has always been a big history buff. So growing up, we’re always watching like, the History Channel and then like World War two movies or any kind of like, movie like that. So I’ve always just enjoyed it. And I’ve enjoyed learning about it. And so coming into college, I thought I wanted to go into law, which is where that minor comes from. And I figured I love history. History is a great place to start before law school. So I started with that and then I’m just stuck with it.

Maya Gotschall 1:49 Cool. Google. What does a typical writing assignment look like for you because we are going to talk about like the application or the interconnection between writing and history.

Tatum Calloway 1:59 Yeah, so writing in a history class is definitely more focused on the research, of course. So an assignment would be about trying to find a new argument with the research that’s already been discovered in class. So or comparing different kinds of like historical writings that have already been written. So a typical assignment would just look like reading some books either primarily like second secondary sources, and then finding out new arguments between that and then writing about them, or gathering primary sources and then relating them to secondary sources. Okay.

Maya Gotschall 2:40 Do you think that’s different from like the more traditional style of writing that you’ve done before?

Tatum Calloway 2:46 Yes, so in high school and anyone before that, whenever you had like history papers, you would strictly write about what happened. And then whenever I got to college, you had to create a new argument and like, and I never really had to do that before. It was always just like, these are the facts. This is what happened. Now. It’s like, these are the facts and this is what those facts mean. And so I had to, it really took me a little bit to like rewire that in my brain and create a new like, way of writing history papers. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 3:20 Do you like this style better than the one that you learned how to do in high school?

Tatum Calloway 3:25 Um, it’s definitely a bit more challenging because you have to like, do a bit more work in critical thinking, but it makes the papers more like engaging and more. While challenging, but like, also more fun to write because you’re not just like, writing down dates and sentences. Yeah. Do you think it helps you like learn more about the history? Absolutely. Like because you’re actually having to make those connections for yourself in your head and not have to be like, Oh, this event happened. And this is why that led to this other thing happening. And so it, that type style of writing, like makes the links you have to form the links yourself. And it makes it a lot more known in your head. Right.

Maya Gotschall 4:08 That’s really cool. I didn’t know that. You guys did that. So like what do you feel is always changing about the writing or the work in your field? Because so much because it has history.

Tatum Calloway 4:23 I mean, everything’s always been like, discovered, and I still think like even though the events have happened in the past, the future still happening. And the way that those events have affected us today is unknown. And so I think like as time goes by, and we can see a better correlation between those things. It’ll change.

Maya Gotschall 4:46 Right? Yeah. What is your favorite thing about history and writing about history?

Tatum Calloway 4:53 I love just the knowledge that comes with it. I love the fun little facts that like I never would have gotten if I wasn’t, if I didn’t have a history paper to write. I like the checking out a series of like five books from the library and then just like reading them in the world about the same topic, but they’re all different and just kind of like getting that collection of knowledge for myself. And it’s just fun because then I just have I have that knowledge for myself now and I like I like to share it with other people even though. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 5:25 Do you have an example of like, some little tidbit that like you learned that you wouldn’t have known before?

Tatum Calloway 5:31 Yeah, so I had a class and it was about ancient civilizations. And my final paper was actually on mummy portraits in Egypt. Okay. I didn’t even know what a mummy portrait was. But it’s basically just these painted on wood that they would put on a mummified body to identify them. It was kind of like a headstone. Like how are they to know who it was, whatever you’re wrapped in bandages that everything so I should know they had those at all and learning about them and like learning all the different kinds and how obviously the more upper class you were the more fancy your your portrait would be. And then lower class sometimes didn’t even get one and no one has ever known about about me portrait so I didn’t know Yeah, like spread that fact.

Maya Gotschall 6:18 What is your favorite thing that you’ve worked on or wrote before?

Tatum Calloway 6:23 That would actually be my senior thesis for for my history major. I compared and contrasted a little bit the desertion epidemic during the Civil War for the Union armies and the Confederate armies. Some people don’t know but desertion was one of the biggest issues during the war and it was a call it prolong the war like crazy and couldn’t really do anything about it because someone deserted, you’re gonna punish them. So like desertion was supposed to be punishable by death, but are you gonna kill the people that you need to fight the war for you? Right? So it was this big dilemma. And then people were realizing that they wouldn’t be killed if they deserted so then they just started doing it. And it was a whole thing and I talked about the morality between deserting from the Confederacy versus the north. And that was just my favorite thing because I had never really looked that deeply at desertion as a whole or even the Civil War. And so that was my favorite thing to to focus on.

Maya Gotschall 7:26 Do you feel like morality and like, philosophy, I guess has a lot to do with the writing that you do for history. Yeah, for sure.

Tatum Calloway 7:36 I think it’s hard to try to stay unbiased with your own morality when looking at it. So like for that project, specifically, it was hard because we, we, in today’s world have the privilege of hindsight. And most people would say that what the Confederate army was fighting for is wrong. But in those times, like, so you can be like, Oh, it was it was moral to desert from the Confederate army but then in that time, it wasn’t because you were leaving your fellow soldier to die. So like, I would say, morality is a big thing. Like, in any case, especially since history focuses so much on like war and political conflict and like governments and everything. You always have to focus a little bit on the morality and philosophy of whatever you’re focusing on.

Maya Gotschall 8:25 What challenges do you typically encounter when writing about historical events or figures and how do you typically overcome them?

Tatum Calloway 8:33 I would say the challenge that I face most of the time is coming up with an argument that hasn’t been done before. Just like as someone who doesn’t really have the time to like commit 10 years of research into something like it’s hard to find something new that hasn’t been talked about when you’re only scratching the surface of of the research. So that’s kind of my challenge, and then how I would overcome it is just continuing to read and like continuing doing more research and then just drawing your own conclusions and like, I would think reading primary sources, first, over secondary sources, because when you’re reading secondary sources, you’re getting other people’s arguments and other people’s thoughts. And so if you stay to primary sources first, then you’re allowed to make your own judgments and your own like assumptions off the bat without any other influential statements or anything like that. So I would say that’s the best way to overcome it.

Maya Gotschall 9:32 What is the hardest thing that you’ve worked on or wrote last year?

Tatum Calloway 9:36 Last December, I was taking a class on tutor Stewart history. And our final paper for that could basically be anything that we’ve learned in the class and it was just from the tutor store era, and I was really interested in learning more about Mary Queen of Scots. So I chose to focus on her. And it was just a difficult paper to write it was it was very lengthy around like 20 pages, and I hadn’t written that much before. And so I was very stressed about it, and I just didn’t really know where to go and like what to write on that can cover that much. And that really stressed me out which I feel like is what made it the most difficult thing to write. But towards the end, I just, my plan was to just write and just keep writing and decide what I wanted to keep and decide what I wanted to take out later. And I think that actually really helped because it allowed me to get a lot of words on the page and then I was reading about her and then just writing stuff down but I just read and it gave me new insight on her life and it that argument that I was telling you that you had to come up with that it flowed a lot easier to me in that. So, but that was definitely just the the most difficult thing I’ve had to work on.

Maya Gotschall 10:56 Yeah, out of pure curiosity. What was the argument that you made for that paper?

Tatum Calloway 11:00 It was about how later in Mary’s life she was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth because Queen Elizabeth felt threatened by her claim to the throne. And it was about how the letters that Mary would write to Elizabeth to her son, James, and everybody. It was how the letters and the way that she would write, and the words that she would use were, like gave the reader insight into Mary’s emotional state and how throughout her 20 years of imprisonment until her death, how those letters changed. And progressed into a lot more like desperate need and kind of drove her to a little bit to insanity.

Maya Gotschall 11:47 So that one definitely had a lot to do with morality, like for insight on into that paper. Yeah, definitely.

Tatum Calloway 11:56 Trying to kind of put your head into Mary being betrayed by her cousin being abandoned by her son. And what would you do with that situation because Mary was accused. Mary was accused of an assassination plot against Elizabeth and that’s I guess, for the morality comes in because it’s like, what would you do if she was imprisoned and you had no other escape? And we, we, as historians don’t really know. Specifically if she really did have something to do with it. But then you also have the morality on Elizabeth side, where Elizabeth is regarded as one of the greatest monarchs that England has ever had. Yet, she was obviously really terrible to her cousin solely because Mary might have had a stronger claim to the throne than Elizabeth did. And so where’s the morality in that fall? And so a lot of at paper I feel like that you write about them or on any of the other tutor Stewart’s are gonna focus on morality, right?

Maya Gotschall 12:56 Do you feel like not having a lot of like, historical background or proof like, like, for example, like you said that, like historians weren’t able to prove that Mary did have anything to do with an assassination plot. Against Elizabeth, do you feel like that, like something like that has hindered you before or did hinder you for that paper? Yeah, absolutely.

Tatum Calloway 13:17 In that paper specifically, and then the classes that I’ve taken that have like, predated modern record keeping, right, like the class that I was talking about earlier. The ancient civilizations, I found that infuriating because there just wasn’t information like available and you don’t know about specific people and so, it is really difficult. Basically, if you’re researching anything from earlier than the 1900s Or like, later than that, but from from not as well developed country or something like such as like England or Spain or anything like that, that did keep records, but the lack of knowledge and then the lack of thoughts, like obviously, you don’t know what those people 400 years ago, were actually thinking, whatever you’re trying to decide why they did the things that they did. And so it certainly hindered me that I feel a lot of other people whenever they’re trying to research it. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 14:17 Do you believe that storytelling plays any role in historical writing, especially if there is like a lot of information missing? Or, I guess also like translations, a lot of stuff is missing, like I know recently. I can’t remember her name. But a professor did like a recent translation of the Odyssey because a lot of it was a female professor. A lot of men did their own translations. And because it was a man, it was said that they cut out a lot of like, female perspective that was in the actual original text. And that apparently heard new translation is supposed to be like, more enlightening and less sexist towards the female characters in The Odyssey.

Tatum Calloway 15:02 I did not know that but absolutely storytelling. When people ask me why I like history, I tell them specifically that it’s, it’s because it’s just a story. And I love stories and I love it when professors don’t lecture but instead they’re just telling the story about what happened. But, of course, there are a lot of missing pieces throughout history and a lot of perspectives that get forgotten. The the famous quote is that history is written by the winners, and the people who are put down or subjugated or like anything, they, their perspectives get lost and forgotten, and people tend to not focus on them, even though they were extremely important in the way that the world became I think you can totally have different narratives through different people in the way that they experienced the same event, of course, and like you were saying, like in The Odyssey has been redone by all these men and they have this perspective. And now, finally, with the more progressive times, a woman’s been able to do it and enter the new perspective that’s been left out. And hopefully history can continue getting more prospective and or progressive, and searching for those forgotten perspectives like, personally, I don’t know how many more perspectives you need about a European soldier in World War Two, but you could talk about the people in just like the other countries who were affected. And, but that one story of that one kind of person has been told over and over and over. So hopefully in the coming times will will be people will start to focus on those forgotten perspectives. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 16:50 Are there any writing techniques or strategies that you employ when writing about history?

Tatum Calloway 16:57 My strategy is created outline, the most basic outline there is and then just write I don’t do a lot of planning. I know that’s kind of goes against what people tell you to do and what a lot of other people do. I’m just not that way. And I just like to just knock it out and then go back and decide if anything makes sense. And if it doesn’t, take it out or change it or anything like that. And so my technique is to just read the information and then put it on a page, the way that I initially interpreted it and then critique from there.

Maya Gotschall 17:30 I mean, if you like doing the amount of research that you said that you do, like checking like five books out of library at once is, is planning Yeah, but yeah, so

Tatum Calloway 17:39 like the reading is the planning. But the writing writing a little not planned.

Maya Gotschall 17:44 Do you see any constant interconnections between history and other fields of study? I know that we said that like it touches on philosophy a bit and a lot on morality. Do you like see any like connections with literature like the big classical literature, like sociology or anything like that?

Tatum Calloway 18:01 Yeah, of course. We, I mean, history is interconnected with basically everything because everything affects history and history affects everything else. So the literature of the time that that affects people’s minds, and people read it and people change their opinions and then they go on to write other literature and then it just the cycle continues. And then with sociology, just the study of groups of people and that is so interconnected with history. And since like you I don’t think it’s possible to study history without studying sociology, because you can’t understand the things that happen the way they happened without understanding why people did those certain things.

Maya Gotschall 18:47 But something like you like had to study before like in the past to like help you understand a prospective or to write like a history paper.

Tatum Calloway 18:58 I mean, one thing like, I don’t really know how broad of a field is, but demographics. I had a project. The class was history of crime and punishment, and we had to find some new data in the kinds of people and that were executed in 1600s, Germany. And so that just like studying the demographics of people like their ages, their race, their sex, their profession, all of that, like played into a part and so I don’t think you normally think about that, like with history, but like I said, just you can’t solely study history, history has little fingers in all of the pies, and you just have to look at all of them to truly understand what’s going on.

Maya Gotschall 19:40 Right? Do you feel like you’ve learned a lot more about writing that helped you become a better writer through your history degree?

Tatum Calloway 19:47 Yeah, definitely. Without my history degree, I wouldn’t have really written that much at all. So for sure, it made me a better writer just because it made me look at things differently. It made me write in a different way than I did before college, like I said, and it just gave me these new insights on like, what I had to do to make a compelling paper. And so the, the act of just writing papers over and over again, for for a class every single semester. I think that just helped build up my strength as a writer as a whole. Yeah.

Maya Gotschall 20:20 Do you have any tips for someone that is like jumping into what you were doing in your writing degree where you’d like writing papers back to back and like doing all this research and everything?

Tatum Calloway 20:32 I know it’s so such a cliche, but just like not procrastinating because it is very difficult to consume the amount of research that a history degree requires, or history paper requires and, and then write a decent paper based off of that if you’re leaving yourself only like a week to write it. Like most classes, you’ll have two or three like main papers throughout the semester. And so that’s that’s really not that much. Like you have plenty of time in between them. And so my tip would really just to be like, get your topic understand that and just like start as soon as possible to not stress yourself out and overextend yourself, right.

Maya Gotschall 21:13 Do you have to get most of your topics approved by your professors for each class?

Tatum Calloway 21:18 It depends on the professor. I’ve had like topics that were given to us. And then I’ve had them better just free rein then it’s like you can kind of write about anything. I don’t think I’ve ever genuinely had to have one approved but all my professors that let us choose the topic I have been able to email them my thesis and something like that to get their thoughts on it. And they’ve like, told me how to make it better or just been like that’s good or just been like, I don’t know if that’s enough, something like that. So like, they’re all very like open to, to helping you like pick a topic or narrow it down on everything.

Maya Gotschall 21:55 Would you recommend studying history?

Tatum Calloway 21:59 I would um, I mean, I think it’s always good to understand history can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been sort of situation. But if you really want to study study and like make it your making your passion, I would just say like you have to love it, and you have to love that kind of work. And so if that’s you then I totally recommend studying it. Would you recommend studying it for a writer? Yes, of course. Like I think being a writer and using those skills in a historical setting is really good. And it’ll challenge you to write in a new way. Like you’re not just doing like narrative or like literature and literary analysis or anything like that. So I think it gives you a new insight on how to just like, write something different. And then again, it’s just practice because you’re writing so much, and obviously practice isn’t going to hurt.

Maya Gotschall 22:56 Practice makes perfect. Exactly. Yeah. Is there any stories to share that exemplify your writing within this field, or that you feel like display it? Well? Yeah.

Tatum Calloway 23:06 So I had to write a statement of interest for the World War Two Foundation program that I was telling you about that I’m going to do this summer abroad. Basically, I just had to explain why I was interested in history and why I was the right person. To be accepted for the foundation. And my focus just really came from explaining how much I enjoyed learning about the like historical events, especially like World War Two. And I think I was able to do that pretty well. Because of because of my practice in in class. And I’ve I’ve taken a World War One and world war two class and I was able to like pull from my knowledge in that to explain why I find it so interesting and to also prove that I do have prior knowledge and it also wrote about my, my grandpa, who his family was from Austria and had to flee in 1939 due to the rising anti semitism, and so I have a personal connection to to this project. So I was really excited about doing it. But again, I had to properly convey that in in the writing. And then I was accepted into the position. So I feel like that. That gave me a little bit of confidence in what I wrote.

Maya Gotschall 24:26 Well, that’s great. Well, yes, thank you for joining me today to talk about history. It was really nice to have you and I love talking about all this with you. Thank you, everyone for joining us today on this episode of red pens in tune in for the rest of this season. To learn more about different fields of writing. Thank you so much. Transcribed by https://otter.ai