Tag Archives: academic writing

Apropos

Posted on April 24, 2026 by Robert Basil

Clarissa is not alone. On X writer Tyler A. Harper darkly assesses university administrators’ embrace of AI. “A lot of the push for AI (therapists! health care professionals! tutors!) is predicated on a tacit acceptance that the broken institutions cannot … Continue reading →

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Autofilling the Data Gaps

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Robert Basil

My macroeconomics professor at The University at Buffalo told our class, at semester’s end, that people in his profession “had a lot to be humble about.” I loved that line and have used it hundreds of times since, to describe … Continue reading →

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Ethan Mollick on Using Artificial Intelligence in Student Writing

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Robert Basil

I have added Ethan Mollick’s substack blog, “One Useful Thing,” to our Resources list (above). A professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Mollick writes that he’s “trying to understand what our new AI-haunted era means for … Continue reading →

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“Pre-Planned Feelings”

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Robert Basil

We have discussed our friend Clarissa‘s opinions on American academia and other topics in the past. She is an Hispanic Studies professor at a midwestern public university whose blog is always vividly written (and is contentious by design, I would … Continue reading →

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The scale of a work

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Robert Basil

Our friend Jonathan Mayhew, on finding the right size (for a book): I like saying that [my upcoming book on Lorca and music] is a medium sized book on a vast subject.  So it is with scholarship. You are rarely … Continue reading →

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Not included.

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Robert Basil

Sometimes you have to read a story two or three times to make sure you’re reading it right. As in: A PhD candidate is hoping the University of Alberta changes its practice on publishing theses after hers was rejected for spelling her [Urdu] … Continue reading →

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How to write

Posted on May 18, 2021 by Robert Basil

I love my old friend Jonathan Mayhew’s prose. His blog, Stupid Motivational Tricks (Scholarly Writing and How to Get it Done), is often very charming (and it is always illuminating). Read this bit on the use of “scare quotes.” The … Continue reading →

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J. Hillis Miller

Posted on February 14, 2021 by Robert Basil

Professor Miller was a genial man whose ardent advocacy of the “deconstruction” movement in literary and cultural criticism was notable for his uncommonly graceful prose style. His early book “Poets of Reality” was a revelation to me my first year … Continue reading →

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Free at Last

Posted on January 2, 2019 by Robert Basil

United States copyright law was changed repeatedly in the last century to grant copyright extensions to entire classes of works of literature and entertainment. This meant that such work could not be referenced at length in works of scholarship without … Continue reading →

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10% and “the crisis in knowledge”

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Robert Basil

Writes Jonathan Mayhew: Knowledge is under attack from several fronts at once. In science itself, it is due to corporate corruption and the inherent bias toward interesting but possibly false results. There was that paper about how most scientific findings are false.  … Continue reading →

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