Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: January 11, 2019

The new year. A time for resolutions and habit forming. Hopefully this year, writing is a habit you are working to develop. In the words of Lawrence C. Connolly, “Writing is something I do everyday. If I waited for inspiration, I’d never get anything done.” While this may be true, we hope you find inspiration and resources to further your writing in the following collection of posts from around the web.

We start with some non-writing new year’s resolutions and academic trends before exploring the balance of work and research as well as of work and home lives. We continue the collection with online resources to identify and highlight women experts, examine the joy of kids for the teacher-scholar, and address the double-bind theory of scholarly publishing. Finally, we revisit the discussion of problems with textbook costs and free alternatives as well as a new problem of printing delays in academic book publishing.

Whatever this next week has in store, we hope you find time to write everyday and to move forward on your projects toward your goals for 2019. Happy Writing!

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5 Suggestions for writing outside of your discipline

My own work has taken me far afield from my study of law. I’ve delved into feminist theory, critical race theory, rhetorical theory, literary studies, urban planning, and more. I’ve always found that the most interesting texts — textbooks, journals, book reviews — are those that are written in an interdisciplinary fashion. Maybe that’s my liberal arts education coming through, but there’s something about reading a law text with history examples, or an article on communication theory that pulls in political science, or even a sociology selection that combines medicine and health sciences literature that is simply more interesting. Students, professionals, and other scholars likely appreciate the interconnectedness of our interests as well. In order to keep people questioning and pondering, encourage broader discussion of relevant issues, and develop an increasingly interested and literate public, we must be able to do more than write inside our comfort zone.

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