What I’m Reading: Atlas of the Heart

I should actually call this post “what I’m re-reading and still trying to wrap my head around”—Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart isn’t a one-time quick read. It’s like a big beautiful coffee table book, filled with deep insights that make you go away and come back to it later. It’s been visually designed for that, with quotations highlighted and featured like they should be up on your wall or mirror as a daily reminder (apparently her house and office are full of post its with words of wisdom on them).

The theme of my life in recent years–unmet expectations. I’ve been feeling a lot of bitterness about unmet expectations.

-My generation was told that we had to get a good education to get a good job—and we are now the most educated and lowest paid.

-I was told that I was gifted and I expected that to translate into a successful career. It hasn’t.

-I expected to be able to establish my career within the first 5 years after finishing my PhD. Now I’m nearly 8 years post-PhD and haven’t even managed to keep my foot in the door.

-I expected to have a lovely maternity leave with Paul, meeting up with other mom friends over coffee while George was in school. Instead, we were stuck at home, juggling distance learning and baby care and pandemic survival.

Everybody’s had a terrible time over the past couple of years, of course, and it makes me feel like I shouldn’t complain–my close friends and family have all survived, I have a roof over my head and food to eat, etc. At the same time, how can you not complain when you’re trying to process all of…this? The politics, the climate crisis, the pandemic, the gun violence, the racial reckoning, Brexit, Ukraine, the cost of living, wage stagnation, food banks…Comparative suffering doesn’t help anybody, but it’s hard not to go down that route.

The main point of Atlas of the Heart is to develop our language around emotions. Using more precise language can help us better understand our emotions, and those of others, too. I really liked the disambiguation pages, where she explains how different terms relate to each other. On p. 54, she explains how feeling discouraged is about losing confidence and enthusiasm, whereas if you feel resigned, you’ve already lost your confidence and enthusiasm. It’s a step further down that path.

As long as I apply to jobs and get rejected, I’m discouraged, but once I fully give up and stop applying, then I’m resigned. At the moment, I still have academic job applications pending, so I’m not quite at the point of feeling resigned, no matter how discouraged and frustrated I might feel.

Knowing these definitions and understanding that distinction between different shades of disappointment, discouragement and resignation actually does help to make sense of it all.

What I’m Reading : Methodology

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been taking some time to read up on research methods. It’s one of those tasks that’s always been lingering on the back burner—something that I’ve been meaning to do and just never gotten around to doing. It’s not exciting, but it’s important to have a solid understanding of research methods as a foundation for an academic career. A bit tiresome but useful for the future, like a nightly skincare routine that you’re tempted to skip.

Part of my imposter syndrome is that I really never had a strong foundation in methodology, yet I have taught research methods and supervised research projects for years. I recommend books to my students that I haven’t even read myself! I felt like I had skipped something. So, this past month, I finally corrected that and read all of the methods books I had on my shelf (but never actually read before), and ordered a few more.

-Excellent guide to content analysis, very clear and well explained. I read it cover to cover, and now I feel much more comfortable with my recommendations for it over the years!

—Altheide was recommended for further reading in Neuendorf’s section on qualitative research, and it really clicked with me. I have been doing what he described without knowing what it was called…

—Berger is one of those authors that we use in the first year undergrad research methods module, so I was familiar with the chapters of his that I’ve taught. This is a good introduction-level textbook, with clear explanations and good recommendations for further reading.

—I’ve always recommended Fairclough without really knowing much about his work and taking the time to understand it. Now that I’ve actually read this all the way through and worked with it, I wish I had read it years ago. I would have been a better supervisor for all of my students who wanted to do discourse analysis or CDA.

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—Good overview of different approaches, useful for comparing and contrasting techniques when you’re trying to decide what to do. Once you’re sure about your method (s), though, you need something more detailed and specific.

—Another one that was recommended by another text (this is the ‘snowball technique’ of literature searching, btw). I didn’t notice that it was an edited volume when I ordered it, so was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t just van Dijk—I think I may need to order one of his other books. Good overview, but not as prescriptive as Fairclough’s Language and Power.

—This one arrived in the post today and I’m looking forward to reading it again. It’s the only method book that I remember reading during my MA research, and as such I’ve recommended it to a lot of supervisees. I remember struggling with it a bit, so it’s going to be interesting to see how I get on with it now.

Overall, it’s been lovely to take this time to sort myself out and grow more confident with the methods literature. It’s taken away some of the shame I felt around not knowing enough about all of the various techniques my colleagues mentioned so casually. I also felt like a bit of a hypocrite, as I always tell my supervisees not to forget about methods lit. It feels good that I finally followed my own advice!

What I’m Reading: Rewire

A colleague who studies social media passed this book onto me–I thought it sounded interesting, but I didn’t realise how surprisingly relevant to exchange diplomacy it would be, too. Zuckerman points to the example of his friend Johan Ugander, who co-authored a paper on international ties on Facebook. As a Swedish-American, he has more international ties than a typical social media user. This has knock-on effects, in terms of exposing those in their social networks to news and other shared content from different places. In exchange diplomacy, this is really part of the ‘multiplier effect’, where exchange participants pass on their knowledge gains post-sojourn to those in their social circles.

“People like Ugander who’ve lived their lives in different corners of the world are likely the key if we want social media to give us a broad view of the world and help us care about people we don’t otherwise know. With a Swedish citizen in my network of friends, I’m likely to be exposed to news and perspective I otherwise would have missed. Whether that exposure turns into interest and attention is a function of my receptivity and Johan’s ability to provide context around the news he’s sharing.”

Ethan Zuckerman, Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), p. 116

Exchange diplomacy is all about connection and cosmopolitanism. The underlying logic of exchange diplomacy is that connections between people of different nations/groups/ways of thinking will lead to a sense of shared humanity and a cosmopolitan mindset.

Has the ease with which we can connect digitally with others around the world made the face-to-face connections of exchange diplomacy obsolete?

I would argue that it hasn’t at all, because there is a gap between the potential to connect digitally and the actual ways we use these digital tools. We may be able to access platforms that enable discussion with foreign publics, but we don’t necessarily use them. Our online social networks mirror our offline friendship circles, and we develop filter bubbles just as we spend time with like-minded people in real life.

Furthermore, exchange diplomacy processes might be enhanced with the development of social media, not rendered irrelevant by them. As Zuckerman suggests, world travellers might play an important role in broadening online networks and making them more cosmopolitan–if we have a personal connection, a friend-of-a-friend, then news about a distant country we’ve never visited can feel more relevant and meaningful.

What I’m Reading

Michelle Obama’s memoir was the book of 2018–even before Oprah picked it for her book club, it was a huge bestseller. I added it to my wishlist as a pre-order, and my sister and I both bought it for each others’ birthdays in Nov/Dec! I’m about halfway through, and I adore it. She’s a fantastic writer and storyteller, and her tone is everything you’d expect from her. She’s brilliant yet relatable, down to earth yet Ivy League educated. Her stories of the South Side of Chicago and her youth outreach work make you realise how much untapped talent there is out there, how many brilliant people don’t get the opportunities that would enable them to shine–and how many people like her are doing inspiring, empowering work that never gets heard about because they don’t happen to be married to Presidents.

Oprah once said that whatever you do, to be excellent and “make excellence your brand”. Michelle’s behind-the-scenes account shows that the Obama family did just that–they knew that as the first African-American First Family, they had to be excellent, that one slip could undermine them and that they would be even more vulnerable to criticism than other First Families. The Obamas succeeded. No scandals, no corruption, no slip-ups. Michelle is relieved to be out of the White House, but the millions of people around the world now reading her book can’t help but feel nostalgic for the Obama White House’s excellence.

What I’m Reading

I recently finished reading Trevor Noah’s memoir, and it is crazy. He was interviewed about it on Oprah’s Supersoul podcast, so I knew a bit about his story–starting with the meaning behind the title. He was a mixed race baby in apartheid South Africa, which criminalised interracial relationships, so he was “evidence” of his parents’ crime. It feels very outdated, reading about these anti-miscegenation laws today, but it wasn’t that long ago–he was born in 1984! I knew he was young, but I didn’t realize he was quite that young–and I think I also didn’t realize how recent (and crazy) apartheid was. Watching Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, it all felt very long ago–but he only died in 2013.

Trevor Noah’s voice comes through clearly–he’s brilliant, insightful, funny, down-to-earth, and just comes across on the page like he does on The Daily Show. This clip captures a lot of the flavor of the book:

It’s full of stories from his childhood and what they meant in terms of shaping his life and worldview. His mother comes across as the heroine of the story–you find yourself rooting for her, laughing at her sense of humor, feeling amazed at her determination and drive. She’s an amazing woman.

The book’s also made me want to learn more about South Africa. I have a book on the South African Fulbright program, Outsmarting Apartheid, on my shelf that I haven’t gotten around to finishing, but it’s a particularly interesting case study. When the US government was distancing itself from apartheid-era South Africa in other ways (i.e. imposing sanctions), they still maintained educational and cultural exchanges. It’s a great example of exchange diplomacy being used to work around the official government channels and reach the people directly.

In my research on Fulbright women, I came across the story of Amy Biehl, a law scholar and activist who worked with the African National Congress during the transition to democracy. She was tragically killed in political violence, and now having read Trevor Noah’s description of the townships, I can better understand what happened and why. It doesn’t make it any less painful or tragic, but it’s important to recognise that this kind of violence wasn’t exclusive to Amy. She wasn’t necessarily targeted for being white or American or an ‘outsider’, as I’d assumed. Noah describes widespread violence in the townships, with fighting taking place amongst different groups of locals, too. In-fighting was one of the ways the architects of apartheid controlled the majority population. If you fight amongst each other, you won’t fight those who are keeping you down–a good lesson with continued relevance for class warfare, activist movements, etc.

 

What I’m Reading

Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008), edited by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant.

I bought this book almost 3 years ago and I’m finally getting around to reading it, which tells you something about the reality of motherhood and academic life. I read a few chapters with George napping on me today and I love it.

When I bought it, I hoped for some tips and lessons learned, but it’s more theoretical and reflective than that–after all, it was written by academics. I’ve also been surprised by the extent to which I identify with some of their confessions. In the first chapter, Jamie Warner (one of the few contributors who is not yet a mother) voiced some of the very same questions that I’ve considered over the years:

“And it gets even more complicated. What does it mean to be childless and then not be thin (no pregnancy weight to lose), not have a twenty-five-page CV (what am I doing with all of my time?), or not be a gourmet cook (with no little people who won’t eat anything that isn’t beige, covered in cheese, or deep fried)? What if my career doesn’t take off? I can’t blame it on soccer practice. Do I have an obligation to work every evening, serve on more committees, be a better teacher, and become a publishing machine because I don’t have familial obligations? Is being ‘average’ considered a failure in academia if one doesn’t have a family?” (p. 10)

 

When I was in her shoes, contemplating the big questions of career and family and work-life balance, I wondered whether having a baby so soon after finishing my PhD was partly a delaying tactic, whether I was using it as an excuse for my lack of publications and inability to find a proper (i.e. full-time, permanent, tenure-track) academic job. I half-jokingly reasoned that if it takes a few years to establish your career in academia, you might as well have a kid while you wait for publications to come through and jobs in your field to come up. Now, a few years on, when I voice concerns about my career trajectory, they’re often met with “Oh, but you had a baby”–as if that absolves me from any blame or guilt for not having published more, for not securing a post-doc or a research grant, etc. They’re trying to be comforting, but I don’t see it that way–I hold myself to a higher standard than they do (we’re always our own worst critics).

This book hasn’t really answered any questions for me yet, but it’s comforting to hear other peoples’ experiences and think “It’s not just me!” (On that note, I’ll also recommend Brene Brown’s work)