With My Gothic Dissertation, University of Iowa PhD Anna M. Williams has transformed the dreary diss into a This American Life-style podcast. Williams’ witty writing and compelling audio production allow her the double move of making a critical intervention into the study of the gothic novel, while also making an entertaining and thought-provoking series for non-experts. Williams uses famed novels by authors such as Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelly as an entry point for a critique of graduate school itself—a Medieval institution of shadowy corners, arcane rituals, and a feudal power structure. The result is a first-of-its-kind work that serves as a model for doing literary scholarship in sound. This episode of Phantom Power offers you an exclusive preview of My Gothic Dissertation. First, Mack Hagood interviews Williams about creating the project, then we listen to a full chapter—a unique reading of Frankenstein that explores how the university tradition can restrict access to knowledge even as it tries to produce knowledge. You can learn more about Anna M. Williams and her work at her website. This episode features music from Neil Parsons’ 8-Bit Bach Reloaded.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Predatory publishing is a complex problem that harms a broad array of stakeholders and concerns across the scholarly communications system. It shines a light on the inadequacies of scholarly assessment and related rewards systems, contributes to the marginalization of scholarship from less developed countries, and negatively impacts the acceptance of open access. To fix what is broken in scholarly communications, academic librarians must act as both teachers and advocates and partner with other stakeholders who have the agency to change how scholarship is produced, assessed, and rewarded. Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications (ACRL, 2024) by Monica Berger is a unique and comprehensive exploration of predatory publishing in four parts: Background; Characteristics and Research; The Geopolitics of Scholarly Publishing; and Responses and Solutions. It examines the history of predatory publishing and basics of scholarly assessment; identifies types of research misconduct and unethical scholarly behaviors; provides critical context to predatory publishing and scholarly communications beyond the Global North; and offers structural and pedagogical solutions and teaching materials for librarians to use in their work with authors, students, faculty, and other stakeholders. Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications gives powerful insight into predatory publishing across the world, inside and outside of the library community, and provides tools for understanding and teaching its impact and contributing to its improvement.Monica Berger is the Instruction and Scholarly Communications Librarian and Professor at the New York City College of Technology, City University of New York.Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Istvan David, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Department of Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, Canada. We talk about his coauthored paper "Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering – A Systematic Survey of Practices and Needs in Industry" (JSS 2023).Istvan David : "When I read a paper, I like to have a visual excerpt of it — somewhere I can go to find the key messages. This is immediately what I look for, because we all use adaptive reading depth, right — that is, at first, we skim to look for the key visual elements, to find and use those informative conclusion boxes — because on our initial-starting reading level, we are most helped by these features of the paper to really grasp the large meaning of the research reported there." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you turn a dissertation into a book?Today’s book is: The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook: Exercises for Developing and Revising Your Book Manuscript (U Chicago Press, 2023), by Dr. Katelyn E. Knox and Dr. Allison Van Deventer, which offers a series of manageable, concrete steps and exercises to help you revise your academic manuscript into a book. The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook offers clear examples, as well as targeted exercises, checklists and prompts to take all the guesswork out of writing a book. You will learn how to clarify your book’s core priorities, pinpoint your organizing principle, polish your narrative arc, evaluate your evidence, and much more. Using what this workbook calls “book questions and chapter answers,” you will learn how to thread your book’s main ideas through its chapters, assemble an argument, and revise the manuscript. By the time you complete the workbook, you will have confidence that your book is a cohesive, focused manuscript that tells the story you want to tell.Our guest is: Dr. Katelyn Knox, who is an associate professor of French at the University of Central Arkansas. She is the author of Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France.Our co-guest is: Dr. Allison Van Deventer, who is a freelance developmental editor for academic authors in the humanities and qualitative social sciences.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell (and why) and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also enjoy: Stylish Academic Writing The Emotional Arc of Turning A Dissertation Into A Book The Artist's Joy: A Guide to Getting Unstuck and Embracing Imperfection Becoming the Writer You Already Are Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us here again to learn from even more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would it be like if scholars presented their research in sound rather than in print? Better yet, what if we could hear them in the act of their research and analysis, pulling different historical sounds from the archives and rubbing them against one another in an audio editor?In today’s episode, we get to find out what such an innovative scholarly audiobook would sound like–because our guest has created the first one! Jacob Smith‘s ESC (University of Michigan Press) is a fascinating sonic exploration of postwar radio drama and contemporary sound art, as well as a meditation on how humans have reshaped the ecological fate of the planet. Before we listen to an excerpt of ESC, Mack interviews Jake about how his skills as a former musician came in handy for his work as an audio academic.You can listen to ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene in its entirety for free courtesy of the University of Michigan Press.You can also watch Jake’s 90s band The Mysteries of Life perform in the “bad music video” Jake mentions or on Conan O’Brien.Jacob Smith is founder and director of the Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries, and professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He is the author of three print-based books on sound: Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (University of California Press 2008); Spoken Word: Postwar American Phonograph Cultures(University of California Press 2011); and Eco-Sonic Media (University of California Press, 2015). He writes and teaches about the cultural history of media, with a focus on sound and performance.Today’s show was edited by Craig Eley and featured music by Blue Dot Sessions. Our intern is Gina Moravec. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Istvan David, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Department of Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, Canada; and, Houari Sahraoui, Full Professor, Department of Computer Science and Operations Research, University of Montreal, Canada. We talk about their coauthored paper "Digital Twins for Cyber-Biophysical Systems: Challenges and Lessons Learned" (MODELS 2023).Istvan David : "Making Figure 1, and also all of the text that depends on it——this was one of the hardest parts about writing this paper. I remember, in the very first draft, we had another layer there of abstraction, but we saw that the content was really hard to follow that way. So, for me personally, my takeaway from that process was: Though it made sense to us back then to follow our case-based generalization approach, this just wasn't going to work for a reader who hadn't gone down that exact same research path as us. So, really, you have to mindful of your reader like that."​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Görkem Giray, IT executive and part-time educator in the domain of computer science. We talk about his paper A software engineering perspective on engineering machine learning systems: "A software engineering perspective on engineering machine learning systems: State of the art and challenges" (JSS 2021).Görkem Giray : "By the time I received back the reviews for this paper, I had been working on the topic for over a year. So, that's why, like so many researchers deep inside their topics, I had started to become blind. Therefore, it helps immensely to have outside reviewers on your work——because with focus on a topic comes, too, this blindness in perspective. That's where the outsider view helps." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Redowan Mahmud, Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Curtin University, Australia; and, Mohammad Goudarzi, Lecturer at Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia. We talk about their paper iFogSim simulator for mobility, clustering, and microservice management in edge and fog computing environments (JSS 2022).Redowan Mahmud : "The thing is, when a researcher starts writing, they start from their own perspective. So, in our case, we wrote our manuscript from the perspective of, 'These things are right, and those things are the limitations.' But in the review process, we found out — as many researchers do — that the strengths and limitations of our work were not demonstrably in quite that shape. The reviewers still needed convincing that what we were doing was innovative and in the long run was going to make some impact. That was the task we needed to accomplish through the writing." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Darja Smite, Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and also research scientist at SINTEF; and, Jarle Hildrum, Director, Deloitte Consulting, Norway; and also, Daniel Mendez, Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and as well, Senior Scientist heading the research division Requirements Engineering at fortiss. We talk about their paper Work-from-home is here to stay: Call for flexibility in post-pandemic work policies (JSS 2023).Daniel Mendez : "Two key takeaways from our collective experience here are, No.1, figures don't need to be absolute — so, we should really focus on the essence of what we want to convey. And No.2, in terms of what we want to convey, I think that every figure ideally has one key message, one key takeaway." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the fourth episode of Publish My Book, Avi breaks down the core components of a winning book proposal and identifies key questions you should be able to answer to effectively convey to your publisher why they should consider your manuscript. Avi shares why it is worth your time to introduce yourself to your target acquisitions editor in advance. He then takes a deep dive into the book proposal itself by addressing how you can craft each proposal section as strongly as possible. From the table of contents and proposal abstract to identifying which sample chapter to share and how to compile a succinct CV, Avi offers insider tips to help you set yourself up for success from the outset.Related resources: How to Get a Contract from a Reputable Academic Publisher Before You Write Your Book Sample Book Proposal Watch Laura Portwood Stacer, author of The Book Proposal Book, in conversation with Avi Staiman about mastering the book proposal Hear from acquisitions editors: The Authors Handbook to Academic Book Publishing Identify your current stage within the publishing journey (and navigate the rest of the journey with success!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices