Hello friends 🤗
Some evening and weekend work this week to compensate for all of the time I spent in the company of wonderful people during the week. In terms of work, I have been outward-looking again: teaching then reviewing essays for Hidden Worlds. Busy busy busy.
📆 Activities 🛼
Tuesday 9th April
AM. Teaching Madness and Society
PM. Meeting with Neil; post-viva drinks for Michaela; CHSTM Research seminar on human remains in the Museum
Wednesday 10th April. Oral history interview
Thursday 11th April. Therapy; Coffee with Michaela
Friday 12th April. Phonecall with Neil
Saturday 13th April. Writing book review; creating module syllabus
Sunday 14th April. Writing book review
🤓 Reading & Reviewing 🔎
Again, much of this week has been away from my own work. Monday was taken up with seminar prep, and pretty much the rest of the week I was reading essays for Hidden Worlds.
Strangely enough, reading other people’s essay drafts has been useful in giving me a better sense of how to improve my own writing. So on Thursday evening, I returned to my second thesis chapter. I made some changes to the introduction that I am happy with - setting up the long cane better for the reader. I also want to add a paragraph that clearly signposts the structure of the chapter. Even though I had thought the chapter was pretty much done, I appreciate now that it would benefit from at least one more go over before I send it to my supervisors.
💰 Laurel Daen’s Technology & Culture article 📖
Amid this work, I snuck in a cheeky read of Laurel Daen’s new article since it sounded very much up my alley. It was fab. Not just in content, but in how clearly it was written.
It was a slightly different take on the interplay between disability and capitalism than is usually found. She argues that disability was not necessarily barrier to economic participation, but was an ‘enabler of innovation, business and profit’. It may edge into a valorisation of marketing at times, but it was a fresh perspective and resonated with much of my own research which I appreciated.
Laurel Daen, ‘Creating a User-Inventor Community: How Disabled People Innovated and Marketed Disability in Early Nineteenth-Century America’, Technology and Culture 65, no. 1 (2024): 117–41.
🧩 Entertainment 📺
📘 Finished Lessons in Chemistry. Brilliant. Every time Six Thirty was in charge of the narrative I melted. Favourite book I’ve read for a while now. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🎮 Started playing Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
📖 Started reading The Fury. Chose it because I enjoyed his book The Silent Patient, but a third of the way through and I am not sure about it (pompus narrators irk me).
📺 Watching Desperate Housewives, Married at First Sight Australia, The Apprentice, Grey’s Anatomy (new season), and Hunted
🎬 Currently watching Scoop - not usually into movies but this one piqued my interest and so far is very well written, acted, and produced.
Another busy week, great that you have managed to spend time with friends and got some hints and tips. Chapter 2 is going to be fabulous.