sabbatical-ing

Dear reader, you now find me back on my home continent, but not quite home yet. Instead I am nestled amid the many pleasures of Montreal. I decamped here from Sweden, after a conference in US and an indulgent weekend spent in New Bedford, being very normal about whales. ( Pro tip to future sabbatical-ers: while they still exist as such, get ivy league universities to pay for your trans-Atlantic travel, especially in a post-Hormuz era of jet fuel price hikes. Then use that coincidence of geography to embark on any literary pilgrimages that may be welling up inside you ). (I want everyone to know that whale captains had a sweet whale stamp they would use when their ships got a whale in their ship logs) There are many ways to explain why I'll be spending May in Montreal. There's a Civil Society & AI summit set happening in the middle of the month that I'm looking forward to joining, and which should be an interesting space to take the pulse of different Canadian constituen...

Sweden takes Easter very seriously. Despite the population's low rates of religious observance, it's a double stat holiday, a 4 day weekend, and an emptying out of public life and public spaces. Well, not all public spaces. There is always the immortal subway. And my god, it's a stylish one. Principled funding for art in tunelbana stations, plus a building spree, has made for 100 stations with weird stuff in them. It is, in the city's words, " the world's longest art exhibit ."  Sometimes that looks like a nice mosaic here and there, or a little sculptural installation snuck into a stairwell. So far, so standard to any New Yorker. Tiny subway tiles--nice! But this system really enters a league of its own when you get to the more recent stations, which are not fitted into normal human walls and square boxes of inhabitation. As a budget-saving and aesthetic-maximizing measure, they are composed of just roughly hewn bedrock, covered in sprayed concrete, and ...

In an eventful confluence of endings, this past week involved concluding my three month fellowship at CAIS, keynoting a conference at Bochum's local university, cleaning out my apartment, and biding farewell to a footloose mother that has been variably crashing on my couch ( ok, it is I who has been sleeping on the couch ) while she day trips around Germany. Lots of goodbyes. Lots of deadlines. More than a little bit of stress. More than a little bit of overly sincere declarations of respect and friendship with vows to meet again. A surprise bit of office karaoke, as icing on the cake. I'm now on an ICE train to Hamburg, and then on to Copenhagen. I'll linger briefly in Denmark for jazz, art, and coffee dates with interesting colleagues, before going on to Stockholm to take up another fellowship for the month of April with Digital Futures. This one will be briefer and less structured than my time with CAIS, and I'm looking forward to the change of pace. I ended up worki...

I'm often asked at this point in my fellowship whether or not I've become homesick. Alternatively, are there things in Canada that I miss terribly? My answer, perhaps disappointingly, is: no, actually. And, maybe that merits some explanation. It's not that I'm an emotionally indifferent person, with all countries and contexts alike in meaning. I've previously had plenty periods of intense homesickness while living in new places, which I've weathered both well and poorly.[1] I was even feeling a little that way inclined after a hurry-up-and-wait situation between the time when I took possession of my apartment here in Bochum and when my fellowship actually started at CAIS. But, once work began, I have been an utterly happy camper. How strange! Even stranger is the analogy I'm about to spin for you. In searching for an explanation, I keep coming back to some drafts I read of one of my PhD student's dissertation. She's a former Veterans' Affairs off...

Clearly, this is a city with some very enthusiastic sticker printers. Below, a modest selection with my best translations.   1) This one transcends language:   Universally understood by all women with access to cable TV in the late 90s/early 00s.     2) An impassioned, and yet intriguingly specific denouncement of inflation + food prices: Donair price cap now! No extremely high prices for daily food! 7 Euro is too much for a donair!   3) A strongly phrased sports culture demand: No love for Nazis! Nazis out of the stadium!     4) This pun apparently works in both languages!  Give Nazis the bird! 5)   The Simpsons provide a universal language template: This is the hottest summer of my life! This is the hottest summer of your life, so far!   6)    Another reason to say no to fascism: You can love whoever you want? Be careful! This is what happens when the AFD is in charge...   7)   This is how I learned that Germa...

A woman I met at a bar asked me what I thought about Berlin. Then, interrupting my own answer, she offered her own emphatic one: "I hate all this history shit. I am so over with it. Blah, blah, blah, wars. I'm done." This is at first blush hardly an encouraging thought to a professor with some minor historical inclinations, but I think we should all take it in stride. For one, my conversation partner here was Ukrainian, and I venture that there's probably a narrow range of war-related topics that seem interesting and worth the affective price of admission to her right now.  For another, I kind of get it. I react with my own distaste to the idea of visiting Germany and caring a little bit  too much  about rehearsing 20th century events. Doubtlessly, there's a way of bringing a kind of History Channel energy to the endeavour that is unappealing to everyone around you and boxes you in to a story that has a fixed beginning and end. Who has literal or physic time for t...

Ok, for all you academics out there, wondering how to travel during your sabbatical (or maybe just a summer) on someone else's dime, here's my guide for you! It's heavily cribbed off of Jonathan Sterne's advice , which he was always so keen to share. Here's to paying a few of those favours forward... First off, this is a problem you're probably going to need a spreadsheet to solve. At least, this is my tried and true strategy.  You'll have a column for links (what's the actually useful website you need to refer to, not the 101 vague descriptions of innovation and strategic plans that the sponsoring institution may have published?), a column for deadlines (essential), one for benefits (is there a stipend? travel assistance? housing?), and one for application requirements (do you just hand in a CV + proposal, or do you need to get someone from within the institution to sponsor you? Are you oblidged to bother your friends for reference letters?).  Next, do ...