Public Scholarship with Drs. Ben Railton and Vaughn Joy

Public scholarship takes many forms. Ben Railton, PhD of Scholar Sunday and the American Studier blog and Vaughn Joy, PhD of Review Roulette are spouses who created their own website to house their public writing.

Meet Dr. Ben Railton and Dr. Vaughn Joy

0:00

Jennifer van Alstyne: Hi everyone, this is Jennifer van Alstyne on The Social Academic. I am so excited to be here with Drs. Ben Railton and Vaughn Joy. Did I pronounce that correctly? I should have asked before we started.

Vaughn Joy, PhD: Yes, you’re good.

Jennifer: They are here to celebrate the launch of their new website, Black and White and Read All Over, which is a new public scholarship collaboration because it’s kind of hard to house all of your things. And so by collaborating and creating a website together, how does that make it better? That is what this episode is about. Ben, Vaughn, I’m so excited to have you here today. Would you introduce each of yourselves? Ben, why don’t you start?

Ben Railton, PhD: Sure. And thank you so much for having us, Jennifer. It’s really great to be here. I’m Ben Railton and I’m a professor of English and American Studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts starting my 21st year at Fitchburg State. So been doing that part of public scholarship for a long time, but have gradually moved more and more into also public scholarly writing and social media use and blogging and all the layers, podcasting of sharing the work that we do and finding audiences. And then I’m really excited. I know we’ll talk more about it, but I’m really excited to think about not only finding existing opportunities to do that work, but creating opportunities. As I know you have as well, Jennifer, to share that work beyond what already exists and that’s a big part of what I’m trying to do alongside of my wife.

Vaughn: Hi, I’m Vaughn, and thank you so much for having us. Yeah, I am an independent researcher at the moment. I finished my PhD about a year ago this November, and I study media and media literacy and how absolutely vital it is to be aware of the things that we are consuming culturally. So, part of the reason that we started this site for all of the reasons that Ben was just saying and more that we’ll talk about, was that we weren’t really happy with the options and the disparate locations around the web for sharing our public scholarly works. We wanted to make a kind of central location for ours, but also for other people to come and share their works and their achievements and announcements and calls for papers and make a kind of home for American studies work that we all do in that community.

A central public scholarship hub, academic website

3:05

Jennifer: That’s fascinating. So because you’ve already had things, and I know at least for Ben it’s been a very long time that you’ve been publishing things online, the idea of this central home. What does that provide that it just hasn’t really been accessible for the public scholarship that you already have? What sparked this change? Because I feel like so many people are doing what you’ve been doing and sharing their work online, but that idea of a central home hasn’t sparked for them yet. What sparked it for you?

Ben: I would say there’s both a kind of more push and pull factor. Something that’s a bit more negative about some of the existing sites and then something that’s a bit more on the positive side, the pull side. And we could talk about either, but I don’t know if you want to talk more about the push one, the more negative side of what some of these sites feature.

Vaughn: Well, as has been in the conversation for a while, some sites are monetizing content that we do not want to be associated with or be supporting in any way, even if it’s driving clicks to the site. And that really, really pushed us to want to be in control of our own content and our own scholarship. We all, a large part of our academic community had to kind of flee Twitter when there was the acquisition [by Elon Musk] and when things really changed on that platform ideologically and philosophically. As for why we use social media and how good it has been for the academic community, when that started to fall away, we migrated to Bluesky largely or Mastodon. There was the midway point and also kind of lost the community that was there. We really, as I said, went to disparate locations and if that should happen again with one of the new sites that our scholarship moves to, we wanted to kind of preempt that and get ahead of it and have our own space that we can control so users know that this is us, this is our work, this is what we support, and if they don’t like that they don’t have to use it.

But there is no other kind of level to it. It’s just us.

Ben: And the pull side of that coin I would say for me anyway, but I think I can speak for both of us, is that even when we are doing our own work – I’ve been trying to do on my daily American studies blog for almost 15 years now – it can feel a little isolated. It can feel a little like our own silo and you’re hoping to find audience and you gradually might find audience, but it still is a little individualized. And almost everything I’ve tried to do for a long time has been about supporting community, supporting solidarity, and so the idea of co-creating a site, even if it weren’t with a person I love, although that doesn’t hurt, was just a really, really beautiful example of interdisciplinarity, solidarity community as baselines while we each do our individual things and then support each other and a larger conversation. I think there were pushes away from some existing sites, even preemptively to try to have that control, but also the pull toward doing something that could be a model for things like interdisciplinarity and solidarity,

Jennifer: So writing within and as part of community, not just sharing public scholarship, but sharing people in the community and the things that they’re creating as well.

A space for academic celebrations, achievements, and announcements

7:28

Jennifer: It sounds like you’re also thinking about having other people write for the site. Is that correct? Or contribute to it?

Vaughn: We have an announcements page that the way we envision it would be used to share people’s joy and their pride in their academic work. We want to share people’s book announcements or calls for papers, calls for chapters, share anything that they feel doesn’t really have a home elsewhere that they wouldn’t feel comfortable promoting themselves. I have a book coming out next month and I loathe self-promotion, so we want to try and help other people with that.

Ben: And then I would say the longer term possibilities, and this is a very brand new endeavor for us, so we’re going to be very open to how it might evolve and people’s contributions to that. But whether it’s something like a resources page where we can share digital materials or archives or resources people might share with us. Or eventually spaces, yes, where people’s work might be part of the mix as well. These are things we are still figuring out. But yeah, the idea that it is a space that models solidarity and community, but also will allow people to hopefully feel that and find that for their work as well.

Jennifer: I have been a long time follower of #ScholarSunday, and when I think about the labor that goes into sharing in thoughtful and meaningful ways, that create resources, it makes me really excited to see what this site can become. I feel like so much of what I do when I’m working with groups and with universities is on celebration, on getting folks to feel not just they’re able to share their good news. But comfortable doing it with each other without feeling like I have to reach a certain price point in my grant or get a specific award in order to share it even with your students. And so I feel like there’s a lot of hiding or silencing that happens just in our own celebrations and the things that we have put a lot of energy into and things that bring us joy and help the community.

I feel like a lot of that is quieted because there is not a place where people are invited to speak that. I’m so excited that there’s going to be a space on your website for that. Ooh, that makes me really happy.

Collaborating on their website as a married couple

10:28

Jennifer: Okay, so my question is really about collaboration. A lot of people feel like an academic website needs to be just for themselves or maybe just for one thing. And so the fact that you’ve already not just had both of you on this project, but that you’re bringing in different entities from each of your public scholarship works and creating room for growth in the future. What has collaborating on this website been like for you two?

Ben: Well, the first thing I want to say is that almost all of the work on the website so far has been fun. I am at best technologically challenged and-

Vaughn:

As am I, let’s-

Ben: Well, the challenges are on a spectrum of extremity. But yeah, I think it’s worth saying, it’s good to know what we can and can’t do well, and Vaughn is really good at both the design of it and the drawings, which are hers. The hand drawings are hers and are excellent, so that’s part of collaboration for sure. And then the other thing I would say is just both going into it without any one vision. I think already a lot of things have evolved a good bit from what we might’ve first thought of. And so building on some starting point skills but then having a real openness to just sort of seeing how something evolves when you’re working with someone else.

Vaughn: Yeah, I would say that. It’s been fun and I say that kind of questioningly cause I thought it would be more frustrating and sometimes the actual web design is quite frustrating. But it’s been a genuinely fun process and it has evolved in a lot of ways and mostly because what was first imagined was not actually possible at our skillsets, but I think it’s come out quite well and I’m excited to see where it can go. I do think that there’s room for growth and, yeah, I’ve quite enjoyed it. I really think that collaboration is incredibly crucial in the humanities. I don’t think there, as Ben was saying, I don’t think there’s a lot of opportunity for it and instead there’s a lot of competitiveness between academics who don’t need to be competing against each other. But the kind of structures of our little industry kind of push us towards either feeling competitive or collaborating. And I think that this is a really good model and I think that’s why I was a little afraid. I was a little like, “This might be frustrating to collaborate on something like this,” but it really hasn’t. It’s just been a pleasure.

Jennifer: That’s really nice to hear. I collaborate with my husband Matthew on a number of projects. He does a bunch of video stuff for me and I feel like collaboration has been so creative, so interesting to work together, but also frustrating at times. I’m happy to hear that this website has been just kind of a bright spot for you two and also that it’s going to create a home for things like sharing your new book.

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Vaughn’s new book, Selling Out Santa

13:39

Jennifer: Tell me about your new book. Is that okay?

Vaughn: Oh yes, thank you.

How do the politics and business practices impact the culture? And especially in that moment, it meant that Christmas films, which I use as a case study, shifted their storytelling devices, the Christmas tropes within the films and moved the genre in a much more socially conservative direction in very interesting ways from 1946 to 1961.

Jennifer: Fascinating. When does your book come out? When is publication day?

Vaughn: November 17th.

Jennifer: That’s coming up. I’m excited! I’m going to link to that for everyone who’s watching. When that book comes out, it will be linked in the comments, but it’s already linked in the blog post version, which will be up today on The Social Academic. Ooh, I’m so excited. I love new books. Ben, I would like to ask you about daily blogging. I know I didn’t prep you with this question, but that is something that sounds terrifying to most academics and so I’m curious, what sparked that practice? How did you get into it? Yeah, what’s daily blogging like?

Ben: So two things, and the second is the one that I make the case for with people when I make the case for doing something like this. The first one was just needing a place to write about things that were happening in American society and culture that in 2010 when I started the blog were really pushing me toward the idea of needing to be more of a public scholar. The 2010 midterms in particular, for example, which were really driven by very mythic visions of American history and identity that I really saw a lot of problems with. I wanted a space to be able to sort of share my contributions to the conversations that felt really different and to do it consistently in a short form way, in an experimental way without needing the time to create peer-reviewed publications or the like. It started there, but the second thing and the thing that I would make the case for to everybody, or at least everyone who teaches or works in a field or at an institution where it could be hard to find time to do our scholarly work. Fitchburg is a 4/4 teaching load.

I often teach a 5/5 with overload courses. And so I was about five years into that job in 2010 and I was realizing I just didn’t have the time to do long form work regularly. And so it really offered me an opportunity to keep being a scholar all year long during academic years, during semesters. And the thing I always say when I make the case for it is it doesn’t have to be daily and it doesn’t have to be written daily. I now write mine in batches and schedule them, but even seeing the work regularly compared to saying, “I’m going to do my work over spring break or in the summer,” or whatever allows me to stay in that space while I’m also teaching and being in service work and all the other parts of the work. It started with the kind of need for me, but I would say it evolved into being the best way I’ve been able to stay a scholar while doing all the other things too. I get that it can feel overwhelming and again, it doesn’t have to be on any one schedule, but I would say to everybody who’s teaching in institutions or working in fields where there’s a lot to juggle, it allows you to stay in that scholarly space. I think it’s more productive than it is overwhelming pretty quickly and pretty fully for us.

Supporting emerging public scholars

19:02

Jennifer: Vaughn, I feel like there are a lot of people who finish their PhD and then they wonder, “What does public scholarship look like for me? What can it look like for me? What does it feel like?” That is something that really, I feel like you put a lot of energy into creating this home for your public scholarship and that agency is something people often don’t realize that they have. What does it feel like to know that you have this home for sharing what you create in the future?

Vaughn: I am very excited about it because I do want to be doing this work. I want to be publishing public scholarship for the public and sometimes it can be hard to find places or like I had my newsletter for, it just turned two a few days ago. I had my second anniversary with Review Roulette a few days ago as I launched it on our site, which was very exciting. But there are other things that you want to write sometimes and you have to find a home for it. And we do have our three established spaces being

Those are the three main pages of Black and White and Read All Over.

But we also have a page for other stuff, just what other things are we doing? Are we on other podcasts? Are we publishing on other people’s sites? Are there articles that we want to publish that haven’t found a home yet? And I really think it’s very exciting to know that there is a home for anything that we do now, whether we can find it with someone else in someone else’s publication or if it’s our own. And I was feeling a bit of that pressure after finishing my PhD for sure. A few years ago, five years ago, I had joined a podcast called Impressions of America, and I was doing that for a few years. And then started my own podcast, which is linked on our site now: The Joy of Star Wars. It was American Studies and Star Wars. I kind of got a little into public scholarship, but I had stopped all of those things to finish my PhD and restarting could be kind of stressful and instead of taking a baby step, we made a website. It’s really good. It’s good to know that there’s a home for it and that it can evolve in whatever ways we need to going forward.

Ben: And one thing that I would add about the profession. At least within academic spaces, and there’s obviously more and more options for the work that we do now, which is a great thing and evolving thing. But within academic spaces, it has for too long still been the case that work that is not considered peer reviewed is discounted a fair amount of the time, at least for things like not only say tenure and promotion, but perhaps for the job search or other kinds of measuring sticks for the work that we do. And I think all of us who believe the opposite, who believe that it’s as significant as any work that we can do, just have to keep supporting it and supporting it especially for people who are at an earlier stage in their careers. I’m tenured, full professor. It’s easier for me to play around with these things, but also to some degree I’m less important of a person to hear from than the people who are emerging into the work. And so I just think supporting that as fully as we can for people finishing their PhD, for people who are grad students, for people who are early career faculty, for people who are independent scholars, for people who are in museums and libraries, in all spaces is ultimately what all of us who care about this work should be doing. And in a small way, this is trying to model that support. It needs to get to institutions and communities and beyond what we’re doing. I hope a little part of that anyways.

What is public scholarship? Sharing your research

23:50

Jennifer: You mentioned folks at a lot of different stages of their career and I’m curious, are there specific things that might prompt someone like, “Oh, actually public scholarship is something that I should explore more,” because this aligns with my values or this is kind of the direction that would make sense for my goals?

Ben: I’ll start. I think there’s two things I would say. One is almost all of us who do any part of this work, for example teaching, which most of us do in one form or another, in one kind of place or another are already doing public scholarly work. If we’re engaging with students, with audiences, if we’re giving talks, if we’re on podcasts, we’re trying to find audiences who are not just a peer review process. And so I think more of us are already doing it than we might give ourselves credit for. And it’s then about are there other audiences that I want to share that work with along with the ones I’ve already been sharing it with? And then the other thing I would say going back to where I was in 2010 is this is a moment where it’s really easy to feel pessimistic, to say the least. And feeling like you can contribute to conversations I think helps with that, which is why we want to support everybody doing that work. And I think most of us in some way have a contribution to make to the conversations meaningfully, and again are probably already doing it with students with audiences of different kinds. So that it’s about how can I find other audiences to keep doing that? I think most of us want to. It doesn’t have to mean any one thing, but I think it’s a genuine possibility for everybody doing this work.

Vaughn: And I’ll just add that I think I do speak for both of us when I say that the public part of scholarship and public history is the most important part for us. When I was teaching during my PhD, I taught a class on public history. And even though I am technologically challenged, my students had to make a multimedia project and a website and part of me was like, “If my first years could do it, I can make a website.” But I used to tell them all the time that there are many different reasons that people do history. And my reason is that my work is my activism and engaging in the process of media criticism and film analysis and making that public, practicing these skills publicly and encouraging other people to do so is I think vitally important right now.

I said on Bluesky today that media literacy is a survival skill now and it’s something that we need to be practicing. In my way, I’m doing that by sharing my Review Roulette and other things around the web and now on our website. And every scholar has those skills to offer. And if we aren’t sharing them with the public, then I don’t know for me what the point of this really would be. So it’s worth it on many, many levels. And also just to feel like somebody has read your work because I do have published articles and things that are paywalled that I’m pretty sure only the reviewers read and nobody else. Even if it’s just for that little aspect of feeling like you are sharing your expertise with somebody who cares enough to read it, that’s really worthwhile. For sure.

Jennifer: I really appreciate that. I feel like, so when I started my business, I don’t think I really thought about the public scholarship aspect of website design for faculty. I just knew that I liked doing it, but the more that I worked with faculty, the more I recognized that there is this want to connect with people beyond their own institution, beyond their field, to connect with people who are practitioners or people who really benefit from the research or who are actually going to use it and practice it in their classrooms and on the ground. It’s okay if you don’t have the skills. It’s okay if you’re learning the skills as you go, just like you Vaughn, it’s okay if you hire help to get it done for you or your institution provides support and you find new pathways to do it. But I think if you don’t recognize that it’s something that you want for yourself, that’s not always the introspection that we create time for. I’m really glad we had this conversation because you’re right, people are practicing public scholarship, they are already connecting in different ways that are part of their practices that align with their values and there’s other ways they can do it too. But I really appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing that.

Practical advice for you

29:30

Okay, so the website, I’m curious, is that something that you would recommend for people who are like, “Okay, public scholarship is a goal for me. I want to begin sharing things online.” Do you recommend people start by creating maybe a site or a home of their own or would you recommend maybe a guest article or something instead?

Vaughn: It’s a good question. It was a big investment in making the website, a time investment, a financial investment, a lot of effort went into it and many months of thinking about it, conceiving it. And if I were doing that as the first kind of foray into public scholarship, I would’ve given up months ago. I do, I think. If you are listening to this and are thinking like, ‘Man, I really do want to write something and get it up,’ you can reach out to us and we can talk to you about it. Ben is prolific with his public scholarship online in many places and I got a couple out there at places. I would definitely recommend trying to find a home for just one piece and starting there and working your way up or finding an existing podcast was really helpful for me. They were looking for a researcher and I joined and they asked if I wanted to be a host at a certain point. And it really helped develop some skills, some public speaking skills that definitely helped in my Vita for sure. And yeah, there are so many different ways to get involved with public scholarship.

Ben: And just to add a second stage to that kind of process. Then for me, and I’m not wedded to the Google version of it, there’s other versions I know, but Blogspot, which is where I’ve hosted my blog, which is a Google blogger site is very straightforward. It’s pretty bare bones. Our site is already doing more interesting things than I’ve done in 15 years on Blogspot. But it was a great training ground, particularly as a more individual voice. And now we’re obviously trying to take this next step in a lot of ways. I do think once you start to find homes for things and find spaces to collaborate with and reach out to us and talk to people, starting with something pretty straightforward and getting in that practice of sharing your work and sharing your voice is a great middle ground as you then maybe think about a more comprehensive or collaborative step. I think it’s a process. I think there’s different steps. There’s no right answer, but I definitely would say ways that folks can do it that feel manageable are going to keep it from scaring you off or going to keep it from feeling like it’s more overwhelming than productive to go back to that duality that I talked about before. It ultimately will be productive, but it’s got to feel that way long enough to make it happen, I think.

Jennifer: So it sounds like you’ve been using Blogspot for quite some time, and I know that #ScholarSunday was on Substack, which is something else that some people like to use as kind of a regular ease without a lot of technical things. Is it still something that you would recommend for people or has the decision to create a website maybe helped you reconsider the different options? Like, would you recommend Blogspot more than Substack, for instance?

Ben: Yeah, just because of what Vaughn talked about earlier, and I’m not going to pretend that Google is some altruistic charity. Obviously they’re a huge corporation doing plenty of huge corporation things, but Substack in particular, there just were a few different issues that made us feel like we didn’t want to be sharing our work in that particular space. That’s kind of everybody’s own calculus. Nothing is going to be perfect. Nothing is going to be without its complications. But yes, I guess I would say Google is ubiquitous. We all are going to use it one way or another. And Blogspot as a part of Google, I think is a pretty straightforward and relatively harmless part of the corporate internet. And we came to the decision for us anyway that Substack was not that.

Jennifer: I appreciate you sharing that because even my father-in-law just last month was like, “I think I should start a Substack.” And he was considering it cause we have recently launched a YouTube channel called Art with Bob Pincus where he shares gallery exhibitions and all sorts of things, American art history. He’s so into it, but at the same time he felt like some kind of written thing would be nice to go along with it. And I was like, “Let’s just put it on your website.” I already made you a website. You have a WordPress, it has a home for this, so we don’t need to start something new. But a lot of people are recommended Substack, so I do appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me on that. Do you have any other tips for people who are kind of just getting started, they are committed to doing the long form thing, whether it’s a blog or a podcast or a Review Roulette kind of regular content? That’s what I’m asking about. Any tips for those people?

Vaughn: I would say make sure it’s something you want to do. It doesn’t have to be the ideal of a passion project. Mine just happens to be. I love Review Roulette, but it has to be something that feels sustainable, something that you are excited to do most weeks if weekly is your timeframe. Not every week. There are some weeks where I’m like, this is the absolute last thing I want to do, but overall it is a draw for me. It’s an exciting thing and a part of my week that I look forward to. So definitely one that you have a vested interest in that would be a good addition to your schedule to keep up with and put in the maintenance for because it is a lot of work to maintain your own thing, to write it, to share it, and do the promotion. And it’s a lot of work.

And I would also, on the flip of that, say that personally, I think that it should be something positive and not a venting space, especially with where we’re at at the moment. I’ve seen quite a few publications start out as a, ‘This is everything that’s wrong with the world,’ and it very quickly spirals into something that is not really productive and can actually hurt your productivity elsewhere because you’re thinking about, “How do I promote this negativity?” And there’s too much of that on the internet. We don’t need more of that. I don’t think that’s necessarily good for the people writing it or for the people reading it or anyone.

Ben: I second both of those. And the other thing I would say, and I hope that maybe sites like ours or #ScholarSunday or other things can help change this a bit, which is why people should share their work with us and reach out to us with announcements and news. Or if you’re starting a new piece of writing, let us know and we can put it on the announcements page for example. But generally, it takes a while to find an audience. I know with my blog for some years my main readers were my dad and one colleague who was very dedicated and a few other people here and there, and it built, it gradually built, it built in a variety of ways, but it does take a bit. You have to be willing to be doing the things Vaughn was talking about because you want to do the work and to get it out there and believe that it has things to communicate and stay the course for at least a bit while it finds the audience that it hopefully will. But again, the more we can build places in ways where that isn’t in a vacuum or a silo, the better. And so our site, as we started this conversation with is our version of that for us for sure, but also hopefully a place people can feel like they can get some of that support and solidarity to help build whatever people are trying to do.

Connect with Black and White and Read All Over

39:00

Jennifer: That feels like such a great sentiment for the future when it comes to public scholarship. That’s beautiful. Everyone, please go and check out their website. I’m going to put it on the screen again, Black and White and Read All Over. There are all sorts of things to dive into there. Once you’re there, go into the navigation. Actually, I’m going to switch over to the screen for one sec. We’re not going anywhere, but just look, there’s different things you can explore on the website, so go in, work around and look for the things that you are curious about because there’s a lot more there than you might expect, and I’m very excited to see how your website grows over time. I am cheering you on Dr. Vaughn Joy and Ben Railton. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we wrap up today?

Vaughn: Please reach out. Please get in touch. As my husband loves to say, let’s keep the conversation going. You can email us from the contact page, you can leave comments on our posts. You can email us individually if you like. Just reach out, let us know that you were there in reading and if you have anything to share, please, please do send it to us. We really want to help people get started on their own public scholarship or just promote what you’re already doing.

Ben: I agree.

Jennifer: I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me here on The Social Academic. My name is Jennifer van Alstyne and this podcast is about your online presence in academia. I’m so happy that we got to talk about public scholarship today because honestly, I feel like my definition and understanding of public scholarship has grown. And I really can see how so much of what we’re already doing is towards this goal and there’s ways that we can make it even more connected and more helpful for the people that we care about. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Vaughn: Thank you.

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