Recherche

So one of the things I get to do with my three months of vacation is work on my academic research. College professors try to write and publish in their academic fields for a few reasons:

• It keeps us up-to-date, both by putting us in touch with the outside world and by forcing us to read other scholars' research;
  
• It enhances the school's prestige;
• It gives administrators a way to measure performance, for purposes of hiring and promoting;

So over the past several years, I've submitted a lot of academic papers to conferences in the field of Communication. Most have been accepted, and a few even got what we call "Top Paper" recognition. Now, however, what I need to do is beat these projects into shape, which is to say that I need to improve them, tighten them up, and submit them to academic journals for publication. The standards that journals apply are a lot higher, so I need all the help I can get.

That's where you come in.

Honestly, I need fresh eyes. I've been working on some of these things for so long that I've stopped noticing details. I don't need other academics to comment on the finer point of this or that theory; I need someone to read what I've written and say, "You know, that makes me think of ..." no matter how tangential.

I've got a separate blog on Blogspot, this one set to private, which I'm using to develop three old conference papers in particular. Well, two conference papers, and the third project is actually my doctoral dissertation. If you'd be interested in reading up on what I do as an academic researcher, and giving me your reaction, then send me an email, ideally from a gmail account, and I'll send you an invite that'll let you read the blog.

One more time: what you reply with doesn't have to be lofty or academic in tone. It could just be "Here's something funny that popped into my mind while I read this." That could help a great deal.

Hope you're having a good summer.