return.

+ book update, why I was at Harvard this week, a new workshop opportunity, horny Christmas movies, & more!

winter magic.

Dear ones,

Hello, I have returned! Thank you all for your patience and understanding re: my taking a month off (and extra-special thanks to everyone who sent coffee money— that abundance energy truly meant a lot during a month of no substack income, and I know it helped my writing). I still have a couple more weeks of intense work (wrapping up the semester, book revisions), but I am so happy to be back to the newsletter. I missed it! For today, I have a few updates followed by the usual Reading/Watching/Listening recs. 

Some things of note since I last wrote: 

• I finished my book draft! This was the goal of my time away, and I was indeed able to get a mostly-solid rough draft of the manuscript. It honestly still needs quite a bit of work before it’s ready to go to my editor, but the fact that I have substantive beginning/middle/endings of every chapter is a huge hurdle I needed to jump, and I did it. 

• I made it to the last week of the semester. November on campus was really intense. Understandably, my students are having a hard time processing the election results, and I’ve been trying to adapt our classroom in ways that make space for anxieties while also contextualizing some of these obstacles as not entirely unprecedented, and reminding students they have power to take care of each other regardless of what’s happening at the top. Tuesday is my last day of teaching, then I’ll be swamped with grading. Overall, this was a good semester, albeit a really stressful one. I had another batch of rad students though, and several months of really interesting and generative discussions. 

• I just returned from a quick trip to Boston, which was really good for my brain and spirit. I was invited to participate on a panel of critics to provide feedback on student projects presented at a Harvard workshop called the History Design Studio. How I got a Harvard invite involves my wonderful friend, V, who started as my yoga student, and then quickly became a comrade and collaborator. I’ll save that sweet story for another time. What’s important here is that he’s really generous with his position at a fancy university, and has many times over used his power for good (among them, inviting non-Ivy League working-class femmes to class). For five hours, I joined fellow scholar/artist/critics to offer insight on the brilliant and poignant work his students created over the course of the semester. It was an inspiring afternoon.

  
  & I was grateful to have a chance to be near my old stomping grounds. My five years in Boston were challenging in many ways, but they were also full of a lot of love and magic, and it was tender to be there again and remember so much of it. <3

• ICYMI:

  Alison Rose Reed
  and I recorded a conversation about post-election discourse, from the perspective of working-class femmes with backgrounds in academia and sex work. We used Alison’s excellent essay, “I’m a Stripper; Of Course I Wasn’t Surprised by Trump 2.0,” as a jumping off point. Give it a listen! 

• I’m running a new workshop for ex/recovering/adjacent/alternative/exiting/(etcetera) academics. It’s called Alt-Ac Winter Session and we’ll spend January 6-10 together on Zoom connecting, networking, strategizing, co-working, and more, all in an effort to imagine possibilities beyond traditional academic paths. How can we all use our PhD skills beyond the university? We’ll spend the week thinking and planning together, with tips from me on building freelance skills, finding alternative teaching opportunities, discussing how to create a resume from your CV, and so on. Paid subscribers get a discount, and there are two scholarship spots. I’ll be offering this to newsletter readers before I start promoting it on social media, so if you’re interested please email me (raechelannejolie@gmail.com) for more information and to reserve your spot!

RWLs below, plus my usual gratitude reflections. Coming next week: the 2024 culture favorites round-up! 

I love you. 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

Reading.