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The Underconference
The flyer for the International Studies Association 2021 annual meeting features a crag of red stone set against a clear blue sky. It is a vision of expansive wilderness, and it stands in cruel contrast to the beige function rooms and windowless halls in which most conference activities take place. ISA 2021 was slated to…
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Writing through the pandemic with Ursula K. Le Guin
I spent the early reaches of the spring semester thinking a lot about academic writing. About pursuing an academic career out of a love of writing, and about how joyless academic writing can be. About academic writing reduced to a series of CV-enhancing products, and not as a valuable process in and of itself. Then…
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“Bird by Bird” is not about birds
This is my second year as a writing fellow at CUNY. Afforded a good deal of freedom in the role this year, I have been rooting around for helpful writing resources for students (and for myself). In the fall, several people recommended Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. One…
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“Why aren’t you in Mexico?”
Back in September, I attended the Conflict Research Society annual conference in Brighton. CRS is one of my favorite conferences, and I have previously attended in Oxford and Birmingham. The Brighton conference was great, with the same warm and collaborative spirit as the previous meetings. But one awkward, and perhaps important, moment stays with me,…
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From cuaz to cuate: Training camps for organized crime
For years now – more or less the entire duration of my doctoral studies – I have been intrigued by the fact that some organized crime groups in Mexico operate training camps. In one form or another, I worked this in to most of my course papers. Once I was done with coursework and working…
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Philip Luke Johnson 