Charles Alston (1907-1977) was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, although little-known today. Born the son of a previously-enslaved father in rural North Carolina, Alston's family moved to New York in 1915 as part of the Great Migration northward. After graduating from high school, Alston attended Columbia University, graduating from their Fine Arts Program in 1929. 

Perhaps Alston's most famous artwork is his 1970 bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. When it was installed in the White House in 1990, it became the first representation of an African American to be put in the White House, over a century after the abolition of slavery and just under 500 years after the first enslaved peoples were brought from Africa to 'The New World' in 1501. The Smithsonian Magazine has wrote great article about the bust yesterday, as an original casting joined the collection of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

These images all come from the Alston collection Artworks and Mockups for Cartoons Promoting the War Effort and Original Sketches by Charles Alston, ca. 1942 - ca. 1945, now stored at the National Archives, College Park, MD. You can see browse through the complete digitized collection through the everyday miracle of the internet, and the tireless efforts of librarians, archivists, and others to bring these collections to the public at the click of a button. ​

Throughout this article, all images and names link to a larger version of the cartoon on the National Archives website.

During World War II, Alston worked as a staff member within the Office of War Information (OWI). His job was to create patriotic cartoons and visual materials that would be distributed to black newspapers and publications across the county. His work was meant to rally African Americans to join in the war effort and 'fight for freedom' for those countries under control of the Axis Powers, even as people of color were denied basic freedoms at home in the USA.

Alston's cartoons clearly grapple with the difficulty of the task before him; he never hid or obscured America's ugly racial past, often including references to slavery. However, he focused on the accomplishments and achievements of blacks in the war -- and sought to frame them as part of a long and continuing tradition of selfless sacrifice and crucial contributions to the nation from the black community. Alston believed firmly in the power of history, and in the power of the press, where his cartoons were published.

The largest group of Alston's cartoons is a series of biographical sketches of black Americans, naming their accomplishments and linking their efforts to the success of the United States in war and in peace. While he included such canonical black Americans as reformer Frederick Douglas and scientist Dr. George Washington Carver, he was careful in his couching of them. He painted Douglas in patriotic hues by mentioning the Liberty Boat named after him currently fighting the Axis powers, even while noting that both had been born into slavery. 

Most importantly, though, Alston ​also gestured to lesser-known black Americans, such as Austin Curtis, 'successor' to Dr. Carver. [see cartoon above]

Alston introduced his readers to a veritable pantheon of black professionals with advanced degrees, national recognition, and awards. Indeed, his choices of subject skewed heavily toward what W.E.B. DuBois conceived of as the "Talented Tenth" in 1903 -- that small percentage of black and formerly enslaved Americans who were able to succeed within the pre-existing, white, systems of prestige and achievement. Alston shied away from and de-emphasized stories of black success that went outside conventional routes of achievement -- those who dropped out of school, were unable to afford education, and managed to achieve success despite these obstacles. Invariably, he mentioned the alma mater of his subjects, emphasizing their academic pedigree as well as their subsequent accomplishments. [See above and below]

However, in the context of the current war effort, Alston was more open to featuring heroes of less-extraordinary caliber, to emphasize to his readers that their everyday actions could affect the outcome of the war. While he was still happy to boast of Benjamin Davis, West Point class of 1936, and son of the highest rank black US army officer, he also celebrated black men in the armed services without pedigree, nonetheless performing great acts of heroism and earning medals along the way, such as Elvin Bell. Given the long tradition in the black community of expecting equal rights for equal service in the military, Alston's emphasis on men in the military makes sense; he may also have been reacting in protest against the segregation of the Army by color in the Second World War.

More surprising, then, is Alston's single cartoon acclaiming a factory worker on the assembly line in the home front war: Charles H. Fletcher - Soldier of Production. While the martial framing of Fletcher as a soldier played into rhetorics of sacrifice in war, another link between the army and the factory in World War II is that both were struggling with race relations. In the shortage of war workers, doors to high-paying jobs and work were open to black americans that hadn't been previously -- much to the anger of certain unions, employers, and Americans. In industrial Detroit, these tensions exploded in the Race Riots of 1943; at the height of World War II, 6,000 federal troops were called out to stop the rioting. Emphasizing the patriotic contributions and value of a black worker might have been Alston's subtle response.

​Alston did not confine himself to World War II combatants -- not content to merely gesture toward black service to the nation in the present, he set out to document black military service throughout United States history. The epitome of this trend can be seen in his sketch of William E. Lew, who not only joined the merchant marines at age 78 during the Second World War, but whose family history of service stretched back to Bunker Hill and George Washington's inauguration!

He also drew a cartoon illustrating Robert Smalls, a black hero of the Civil War who, while piloting a Confederate transport ship, defected along with crew and cargo to the Union Cause. 

In looking to the past of black military service, Alston also offered correctives to white mainstream histories of the time, and even myths that still persist today. Once instance of this is in his pointed depiction of Col. Charles Young, a West Point graduate who, in fact, RESCUED Theodore Roosevelt and his famous "Rough Riders" at San Juan Hill -- a key element of the story overlooked in Teddy's popular and celebratory boasts of his all-white soldiers' bravery -- and not mentioned when the future president won the Medal of Honor for his charge. (Which incidentally, was really up the un-romantically-named Kettle Hill.) Read more about Charles Young here.

​[Down with the cult of Teddy Roosevelt!]

In pivoting back and forth between black visionaries living and dead, past and present, Alston sought to frame his subjects as part of a long and continuing tradition of selfless sacrifice and crucial contributions to the nation from the black community. Alston believed firmly in the power of history, and in the power of the press, where his cartoons were published. He featured two editors of black newspapers in his series: "Fred R. Moore - Humanitarian, Editor, Leader" and "Robert Lee Vann - Lawyer, Editor, Crusader". His commitment to the power of the written word, and to the importance of reclaiming, remembering, and rescuing black American history is best seen in his cartoon sketching Carter G. Woodson, who was a founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the Journal of African American History. 

I wrote this post because I thought it was important to realize that the people we celebrate MATTER. Charles Alston's decisions for whom to sketch and how to frame their accomplishments were all highly political decisions. One of the things series tried to accomplish was to expand the depth and breadth of black American heroes in popular discourse.  

However, even in his drive to document overlooked black Americans, Alston only included two women in his series -- Lieut. Willa Brown [left] and Bessye J. Bearden ["Club Woman, Social Worker"].

On Martin Luther King,  Jr. Day, as we celebrate a day named for one inspirational and exceptional American, let us not forget all the countless other visionaries, artists, intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, athletes, architects, patriots, workers, and protestors of color who built this nation and continue to work to making it a better, more just, and more free society. Who are we not thinking of? Whose history are we forgetting, and in so doing, considering unimportant?

Oral history interview with Charles Henry Alston, 1968 October 19. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Wardlaw, Alvia J. Charles Alston. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007. (Find it at your local library!)
Digital Public Library of America holdings related to Charles Alston. More photographs, images of his murals, paintings, and other artworks, and more.

This month, I had the honor of being featured in the  “Seeds: New Research in Environmental History” series cosponsored by NiCHE and Edge Effects highlighting graduate members of the American Society for Environmental History .   

For the post, the brilliant Timothy Johnson and I were paired up to talk about our respective research projects, and together tackle the new directions the field of environmental history is taking, from where our work overlaps in the history of twentieth century agriculture. 

Tim's dissertation (recently defended, bravo!), is a compelling and incisive examination of the global fertilizer industry in transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, whereas mine focuses on backyard gardens in four crucial years of war from 1941-1945. However, in discussion, we were able to find many commonalities in our intellectual premises, approaches, and contributions to the field.

At a basic level, we concured that research in the overlap between business, state, and environment is more important than ever, given the incoming political regime on January 20th. Indeed, huge numbers of businessmen and corporate interests are poised to be at the helm for the next four years, judging by Trump's cabinet picks, even as the crisis of global warming will reach new heights of urgency.

​
However, other topics that came up in conversation included:

• The business community's attempts to "naturalize" capitalism in American society and practice
• Corporations as important historical actors in the ongoing American relationship with the environment, both in collaboration and conflict with the state.
• The importance of practices as well as products, of networks as well as the fruits of those relationships.
• Materiality as important to the past, especially environmental pasts; we are each in some way looking to describe how capitalist practices and products were concretized and embodied in the past.
• The American rhetoric of food production as key to construction of American abundance through corporate science and technology.

Most of all, our work each rests on the premise that agriculture is a uniquely useful site to examine the complex relationship between business, state, and the natural environment. As well as being rhetorically important to the American identity through the legacy of the yeoman farmer ideal, agriculture is a crucial domain of environmental interaction and impact: a place where science and technology meet with people and ecologies; where capitalist growth economies run up against natural limits of soil fertility and weather conditions; where disembodied global commodity chains of seeds, fertilizer, machinery, and food meet with local soil and dirt.

Today, I plan on attending a wonderful event here at the University of Delaware, co-sponsored by a variety of departments and featuring two flights of professors talking us through the election, and how to make sense of a post-election United States.

Education, I firmly believe, is my primary path forward from this election. I want to never stop learning, but I also want to teach, to engage in discussion, to contextualize, historicize, and yes, fact-check, even in this possibly post-truth world. 

So I was wondering what I could do to contribute to this great event. Together with a band of like-minded graduate students (namely, the inspiring Kiersten Mounce and the wonderful Elizabeth Jones-Minsinger), I got to work on a document we could distribute, full of information, further reading, links to charities and organizations, and ideas for exercising your active citizenship over the next four years. ​

The premise of this document is that there are basic tenets America’s constitution guarantees and/or that are in the best interest of all Americans:

• Civil rights, liberty, and freedom for all. Civil rights includes environmental justice and fighting climate change.
• Economic equality and prosperity for all
• Protection of democracy and fighting corruption in politics
• An informed citizenry as key to all of the above.

With the exception of climate change and the environment, all of these have been invoked by all sides of the U.S. political arena in the months leading up the election, even if different people meant different things while invoking them. These are issues that transcend party politics and provide common ground for all Americans to agree on -- regardless of whether you think political answers lie in big or small government, balanced budgets or increased spending, increased global humanitarian efforts, increased American isolationism, or increased American interventionism (or any combination of the above). This document represents a wide variety of causes that may be of varying personal importance to you;  if you feel motivated, we hope that at least one of the organizations, forms of action, or causes leaps out at you as worthy of your time and effort.

Some starting points:

• Invest in your community! Join nearby religious or faith groups that work toward causes you believe in; Support local businesses, woman-owned businesses, black- and minority-owned businesses; Join or start local chapters of national organizations; Volunteer at local charities (some listed later here), and get to know your neighbors -- ask them for sugar and give them those extra cookies you baked with it that you don’t even want and know you’ll just eat at 1AM if they sit in your kitchen overnight. Find out what your bank is doing with your money and move it to a different one (maybe a Credit Union!) if you don’t agree with their investments.
  
• Investigate your carbon footprint and work to shrink it--reduce, recycle and reuse can be awesome. My favorite way to do this is: instead of buying corporate conglomerates’ beer, invest in a glass growler and fill it up with beer from local breweries. Ditto with investing in a gorgeous water bottle to replace plastic ones -- and a favorite coffee mug with lid that you get filled at coffee shops instead of paper cups. (There are often financial savings here: Saxby’s offers %10 off if you bring your own cup, and %15 off if you bring a Saxby’s reusable cup- many other coffee shops offer discounts too.)
• Get together with friends, classmates, or organizations to offer to paint over any hateful graffiti that you might see or might be found in your neighborhood; beautify your home and connect with people at the same time. Or just make some public art on your own for yourself or as a local monument. Mark ground that is sacred to you and consecrate it with flowers, rocks, or other handy and meaningful markers. 
• Check out Volunteer Match, a great way to find with nonprofits that need your help, time, and/or expertise. 
• Take a moment to read the Southern Poverty Law Center's “Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide” 
  
• Or, read Yale Professor Timothy Snyder’s 20-point list of lessons from the 20th century to take into the 21st.

The other week, I reposted this genius tongue-in-cheek article from McSweeney's. It was wry-chuckle-out-loud funny, yes, but also touched on deeper problems I've been grappling with in this election:

Of course, I'm a sucker for World War II references, and anything playing with the historical memory and self images of "The Greatest Generation" and "The Good War." However, I also knew that the bulk of my political activism since the primaries ended had indeed been through so-called internet 'slacktivism'; signing digital petitions, using social media to promote political analyses I agreed with,  but not really talking with anyone. No phone calls, no door-to-door, no street signs, t-shirts, marching, or real conversations with real people, except for relatives and friends. 

I had been raised by two wonderful parents who taught me that voting is a civic DUTY as well as a right -- and that in our household, you lost your right to complain if you declined to participate in effecting the outcome of an election. But is voting enough, I wondered this year? 

​The facts are clear. These are the two most unpopular presidential candidates in American history. Election anxiety is at incredibly high levels. More Americans than ever before are feeling trapped in broken political, economic, and social systems, unsure of the way out -- and often lashing out at minority scapegoats and villianizing opponents on either side of the aisle instead of looking for constructive solutions. So is voting on one day enough?

I found my answer on Facebook:

Active citizenship is more than voting -- but voting is an excellent, and crucial, first step in exercising your active citizenship. I went to the polls this morning determined to aim for a higher baseline of political participation going forward -- and found a way for me to be involved in a national issue right on UD campus just next  week (#noDAPL).

In the worrisome election of my life I took a moment to find some things to be grateful for, and I hope you can too:

• TWO women running for president this year on my ballot
• More viable down-ballot third party candidates than last time I was at the polls (read up on yours to assess viability yourself at Ballotpedia)
• helpful, patient, efficient election workers helping me vote
• long lines of active citizens and participants in our democracy
• polite and supportive volunteers campaigning for down ballot candidates at legal distances from the polls, thanking everyone for voting, even if wearing stickers for the other candidate.

If only everyone had such an easy and pleasant experience exercising their constitutional right to vote, I could almost be optimistic today....

The only hiccup in my voting experience was that upon entering my polling place, I was asked:
            "What development do you live in"? 
When I answered that -shockingly for my district!- I did not live in a development, I had to seek extra help to figure out which table to check in at. The wealthy developments that are so predominant in my area unfortunately probably have something to do with how very pleasant, efficient, un-threatening, convenient, and accessible my voting experience was.

This is not the case across the nation. The American Civil Liberties Union has an excellent breakdown on how the 30 states that enforce government-issued photo voter ID laws disproportionately keep low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, and the elderly from being able to vote. While my neighboring state of Pennsylvania does have a set of guidelines against voter intimidation, the fact remains that legally almost anyone can challenge a voter's identity at the polls and thus prevent or delay them from voting. Meanwhile, North Carolina leads the nation in ever-more innovative ways to affect voter turnout along racial and class lines; this is not interpretation, but rather summary from multiple judges presiding over lawsuits against the state. Polling places in minority neighborhoods are shrinking in number, especially across the South, according to Reuters. Voting is incredibly difficult, costly, and inconvenient for an INCREASING number of Americans. This is not democracy.

Please, please PLEASE vote for candidates that will work their hardest to assure voting rights for EVERYONE. In such terrifying times, this is a perfectly valid issue to be a single-issue voter for.

• Bring identification even if it is not required, if you have it. 
• If you are in line before a polling station closes, they MUST let you vote, no matter how long the line is. DO NOT leave.
• If any question remains about whether or not you are legally registered and capable of voting, you still have the right to vote by provisional ballot. All polling places have provisional ballots on hand.
  
• Know what constitutes misconduct at your polls
• You can always call any number of voting hotlines if you see misconduct or experience trouble voting.
  
• Find out if you can legally take a ballot selfies before you do so!

​

I attended the amazing, marvelous, fantastic Food History Roundtables event at the Smithsonian on Friday. During the event, I and a few others live-tweeted it so that people unable to attend could still experience a bit of the magic on twitter -- and even submit questions there for the speakers! The hashtag for this event and all other food-related things at American History is #SmithsonianFood. (Click through and check out its mentions for a much more complete and chaotic overview of the event.) Here's a summary of my live-tweeting experimentally created on storify, for those interested in the conversations swirling around the NMAH on Friday!

Special thanks to the whole Smithsonian Staff led by Paula Johnson and Susan Evans, the presenters and moderators, and also to my co-tweeters, especially the fantastic Emily Contois!

As Mr. Bailey explains above, in World War II it wasn't just planes and munitions plants that were on a "strict production schedule," but also "our Victory Gardens--those food factories that are such vital elements of home-front industry"!

Simply planting a garden is not enough! What was called for was continuous replanting; three full shifts of production for those who had the luxury of a long growing season: spring, summer, and fall. Not only is this imperative for getting the most out of your square feet by reusing the soil multiple times in a season, but it can be the only practical way to grow some vegetables: while eggplants and peppers thrive in the heat of midsummer, collard greens go to seed and grow bitter, and other brassicas simply fail to thrive. 

Having gardened previously in the fine, but very cold, state of Wisconsin, I was determined to take full advantage of the extended, mild, mid-Atlantic growing season in Delaware -- but alas, we ran into some difficulties . . . 

How rows made succession planting exponentially more difficult: 

Each crop has different dates when they can first go into the soil, and beyond that, different growth cycles and days to maturity. In our lettuce/radish row, for instance, lettuce reaches maturity in 45-55 days and can be selectively harvested for many days thereafter. However radishes can go from seed to harvest in as few as 20 days if you want them young and tender.  Therefore, we couldn’t replace the whole row at once without letting the radish half lie fallow for a while. And trying to keep up with replacing such short-season crops as radishes can be exhausting because of how often you can replant them.
 
So why not replace them with something longer-slower growing after your first harvest you ask?
 
Well, you have to replace them with something that uses the same spacing scheme as what was in the former row. When you plant in rows for a small garden, as we did, each row is spaced differently because each contains different crops. The tomatoes needed a heck of a lot more room than the carrots, and carrots more room than the spinach. I couldn’t replace the radishes with broccoli or squash, because there wouldn’t have been nearly enough space.
 
Furthermore, you want to be sure that your succession crops are of a different family than the plant that preceded them in that patch of soil; that way, soil diseases, pests, and other nuisances are ‘kept on their toes’ as it were, by the continual variation.

Diagnosis of our operational problem? We did not plan for our third (or even second!) shift ahead of time and were caught sorely unaware. We didn’t have a strict timeline, in part because the weather has been unpredictable and different from years past (thanks global warming!). Indeed, nearly all of our early replanting efforts failed in the extreme heat of late August and early September -- a lonely brussels sprout stands where the potato patch was, instead of a mighty forest, alas!
​
However, the embarrassing truth must be told. We didn’t plan for replanting mostly because the plan we selected didn’t do it for us; it didn't come with provisions for replanting and succession-planting. And I was cutting corners. I assumed that with the whole summer looming ahead of me, I’d have plenty of time to ‘figure it out’ on the fly. Not so.
 
So only at the very tail end Summer, the weather has been cool enough that the heat won’t stop our cool-weather crop seeds from germinating. But now I have fears that anything we start in the soil won’t have a long enough growing season to come to fruit before the first frosts hit – even with the unseasonable heat. It is quite the conundrum.

In the end, the arugula and other odd survivors of our September plantings became our only third shift, plus some beans and radishes  we planted in late August. We are still hauling in tomatoes somehow, so we've let those be. We only recently tore down the popcorn stalks (we were supposed to let them stand until dead), and our kale and broccoli kept seeming like they were on the verge of making a comeback from the mid-summer slump, so we never yanked them or replanted! 

The name of the game for the rest of the season is slowly ripping out and harvesting everything we can, then replanting with a cover crop that will hopefully have time to germinate and become green manure over the winter, fixing nitrogen and replenishing the soil. To be frank, another major factor keeping us from doing more is simply that with the full onslaught of the semester -- visiting scholars and talks by friends, research trips, family visits, drafts due, grant and fellowship applications, and scheduling/preparing your own talks can make it difficult to do as much with the garden as you want to!

When you remember that Americans across the country being overwhelmed with garden produce of all sorts over the summer, it's less surprising that they looked for ways to incorporate their harvests into the dessert course as well. In fact, with the rationing of sugar on the home front, looking for alternate sources of sweetness--whether it be sorghum syrup or sweet potatoes--was more important than ever if you wanted a sweet finish to the meal. But there was another, classic parenting motivation at play; the recipebelow reads "Desserts form the Victory Garden? [...] Their good taste hides their secret, of course . . . no one would ever guess they're just bursting with vitamins and came right out of the garden."

While carrot cake and pumpkin pie are popular and widely-accepted vegetable-based desserts today, I wanted to try something a little  . . . bolder.

• 1.5 cups flour
• 2 t. baking powder
• 0.5 t. soda
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 0.5 t. cloves
• 0.5 t. nutmeg
• 0.5 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten light
• 1.25 cup tomato soup (1 can)
• 1 cup chopped nuts

Sift the dry ingredients together. Cream the shortening. Cream in the sugar. Add the eggs and beat until blended. Add dry ingredients alternately with the tomato soup. Strike in the chopped nuts. Empty into small greased sheet cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees, 25 to 30 minutes.

Well, I forgot to take pictures of the finished result, but here's what was left after we got back from a potluck dinner with friends.

The glaze was whipped up out of bourbon, vanilla extract, butter (screw it, this would be worth saving up ration points for) and confectioner's sugar. We thickened it up over heat and poured it over the cake, after which I topped it with more crushed walnuts and some shredded carrot for garden-like effect.

At our dinner, the carrots were a dead give-away that it was some sort of veggie cake, but the front runner guess was actually sweet potato until someone finally guessed that it was TOMATO cake! 

Which is to say, this did not taste like a vegetable cake. It tasted sweet and spiced and covered bourbon. The garden-acidity actually balanced the sugar and sweet so that it faded away. The umami notes of tomato added surprising depths to the simply spice blend. You didn't think "tomato"!

It wasn't my favorite recipe -- I'd experiment with adding oats for more texture and nuttiness next time, and definitely try to increase fluffiness. And two layers is always better than one. Nonetheless, I encourage everyone to try a tomato cake sometime -- you just may be surprised at how good it is!

I'll keep this brief; first of all because there are so many other important reads out there on this topic, and second, because I am in mid-writing-binge and need to get back to the dissertation.

In the spirit of Mental Health Awareness week and calls to live #stigmafree, I have absolutely no problem sharing a part of me so close to my core it feels weird to admit to: I have had and continue to struggle with mental health issues. Unfortunately, this hardly makes me unique among academics at large, and even puts me almost in a majority among grad student populations.

In fact, this is what truly prompts me to write here: a long-standing obstacle between me and achieving the mental health and balance that I enjoy (and work hard for) today connected to my identity as an aspiring academic. I can tell you the year I first saw a therapist or first started on medication, but I cannot tell you when the sadness first started -- when was it normal people-sad and when did it turn into clinical depression? Who knows. But as long as I can remember, I learned that mental illness could be positive and something admirable and/or tragic in society --
IF AND ONLY IF it accompanied genius.

This myth is everywhere; from depictions of savants in movies and television as in Rain Man or A Beautiful Mind, to the haunted reputations of creative artists like Van Gogh, Beethoven or Edvard Munch. The correlation even carries over back into the land of mental-health stigma, like how people love to point out that the Unabomber had a ridiculously high IQ. Perhaps most influential of all for me, though, was the predominance of authors for whom their mental illness is an important part of their sanctification as a brilliant genius. Admittedly, I did and do have a predilection for Russian literature and French existentialists. The suicidal Hamlet has always been my favorite Shakespeare character. My favorite romance went from the uplifting Jane Eyre to the much more morbid Wuthering Heights almost as soon as I picked it up in seventh grade. Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, and Kate Chopin's The Awakening . . . I didn't have a lot of positive role models insofar as brilliant female authors of positive outlook and sound mind went. Besides, wasn't feel-good literature all just pop-fluff? I wanted to read the real geniuses.
The depressed ones.
They made sense to me, and made me feel less freakish.

I think that for years, I was actually scared of what would happen if I lost the comforting blanket of depression, anxiety, and whatever else was going on. I wanted to not be in pain, but I was also scared to death of life without mental illness. What if I was no longer special? What if the depression and my academic successes were coming from the same root source, and I couldn't have one without the other? I would be that much less like so many of my tortured, miserable, suicidal intellectual heroes. 

But here's the truth. I am well now. I am getting ever better all the time with continuing support, love, exercise, good eating, mindfulness, and tackling my problems one by one, just as everyone should do. My dissertation is getting written.  

Recently, I had the opportunity to organize and throw the exact workshop that I wish I could have attended during the first month of my first year of grad school. 

When I arrived at grad school, I had no coherent note system besides home-made binders of one-side-printed paper foraged from recycling bins on campus, with recycled cereal boxes (also foraged) to use as dividers. I didn't have any particular work ethic besides "read what looks interesting to me" because I only took classes that were absolutely fascinating and had professors that worked hard to make even the dull points seem intriguing. I had an intense social network of friends who also valued schoolwork, so there was always quiet peer pressure to get work done (even if only so we could party hard later!).

All this changed when I moved to Delaware. I felt really, truly, alone, with more work to complete and information to process than I had ever been tasked with before. I spent the first two months reading every word of every book assigned until I finally couldn't and collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep. I want this experience for no one. 

Once the first Professor opened my eyes to bibliographic software, once I was first told I shouldn't be getting bogged down in every word of every book, once the first upper-year grad student confided in me that there were better, smarter, systems of getting work done, life improved by 1000%, as did my productivity and comprehension. With each new phase of my career in history, I've had to adapt again, growing new skills, strategies, and tools for reaching my goals. The time has come to pass on my tiny pile of accumulated advice and knowledge to all who may need it, as I once did.

Nota Bene: This blog post represents nothing original to me; I have groveled at the feet of many wise mentors and confided in many sage peers, who together have built this archive of productivity-making-strategies. Thanks to all of you.

Yes, you can make it to graduate level studies in the humanities and not know how to read a book. I know I did! I knew how to move my eyes from right to left, from top to bottom, make sense of the words, take some notes, and even come up with some analytical thoughts, questions, or critiques. But I didn't really know how to most effectively and critically read a book for academic purposes. You need to talk to your mentors, peers, and others in your department and discipline about best practices for you. I will simply pass on my primary introduction, which shaped my reading from then on: How to Read A Book by Susan Strasser. (Go to Section 2/page 3.)

I use Zotero, made by historians, for historians, for free. I love it dearly and it is one of my gods. That said, people use a lot of other tools. You should talk to people in your department, discipline, and library, as well as watch demos online to figure out what is right for you (and your budget; some will require purchase of software, and some might require a subscription fee). Other popular options used by peers of mine include: EndNote, EverNote, Mendeley, and RefWorks.

• ASIDE: The marvelous instructor and brilliant scholar David Suisman is to thank for introducing me to Zotero; thanks to him also for presenting in last week's workshop and always having a moment to lend advice to the grad community.
  

There is another set of closely-related programs that can also be used for note-taking, but prove their real worth when helping you write and make new material out of the source material you've assembled. Some people use one software from the above category for all their needs and Word for writing (like myself), some people use software from this second category exclusively, and some people use a citation software from above and one of the writing softwares listed here (I am thinking about making this transition.) In this category are: Scrivener,  Idea-Mapping softwares (link to an inventory of several in this category), LibreOffice, and FocusWriter.

"Things that get scheduled get done."
While I have settled on old-fashioned pen-and-paper to-do lists (preferably held within a Slingshot Organizer), there are many ways to skin this most-crucial-of-all-cats. You NEED to know what you have to do, in order to do it. I've heard personal testimonials about other list-making-systems including:

• Bullet Journals  -- Deceptively, this is a method, not a product. It helps you organize, prioritize, and visualize. You buy into it or you don't. By the time I discovered this, I had developed a very informal system of symbols for accomplishing the same, but if you have no system, check it out.
• Productivity Journal -- Is prioritizing your main problem? Do you know exactly what needs to get done, but find yourself cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry, or even working on academic side-projects instead? Then this is for you. While it is a product, you can also just photo-copy your version of the template onto a notebook of your own making (with materials scavenged from one-sided printed paper in library recycling bins, right?!?!)
• ​Sticker charts -- My friend and fellow-scholar Darcy Mullen is all about the stickers, and that is AOK. If you just have problems with motivation alone, invest in some awesome stickers and shamelessly reward yourself for your productivity-achievements by affixing them one by one to a chart or location of your choosing. 

If digital organization is more your thing, here are a variety of apps and online options for you to organize your life:

• Habitbull -- This app is fantastic for visualizing your progress toward completing your goals. Build habits one day, one week, one month at a time, with myriad options for customization, color-coding, and adjusting your goals to suit your schedule. If you thrive off 'streaks,' this may be for you.
• Trello -- Taco, the canine mascot of Trello, is your guide to the best to-do list application that may be out there. You can have multiple to-do lists for different segments of your life, share to-do lists with group or team members for collaborative projects, and instead of disappearing when a task is done, you get to shift items over to a DONE list that you see grow before your eyes! So rewarding!
• Workflowy -- If multiple to-do lists and all the complexity of Trello is overwhelming for you instead of relieving, Workflowy has a beautifully simple, straightforward aesthetic and functionality to help you compile (and complete!) your to-do lists. 

So you have the software and notes ready, you know what you have to do . . .  and sometimes the writing and working still doesn't happen. (If this isn't true for you, keep it to yourself and be frickin' grateful, please). I've discovered first and foremost that I am a socially-motivated, socially-oriented creature. I deliver best on things when I run the risk of disappointing people if I don't come through, and impressing people when I do well. Peer pressure has almost always served as positive force in my life, thanks in no small part to the excellent people I have been able to surround myself with. So here is my working tool-kit:

• Pomodoro Writing-Dates -- I'm writing this as part of one right now! (A warm-up before launching into dissertation writing, something I've discovered helps me.) Pomodoros are a method of working where you set a timer for 25 minutes; at the end of this work sprint, you have a five minute timed break before the next cycle starts again. After four 25-minute work sessions, you have earned a 15 minute break. I make this work for me by connecting with writing peers through online messaging. Every week at the same time and day, my partner(s) and I start the timer at the same time and go. On the breaks we discuss what we accomplished, check in on each other's personal lives, work through any tricky ideas or exciting finds, and/or set goals for the next segment, and repeat. If you use the marinaratimer.com program that I linked to, by sharing the link with your partner, your timer is the same. Another perk of marinaratimer is that you can customize your work-break patterns to find what fits best for you.
• Write-on-Sites -- Sometimes even better than cyber-writing is group writing in person. The write-on-sites I've attended and organized tend to work on similar principles as Pomodoros, but use a half-hour of work with ten minutes of break, if only because there are more of us to go around in the circle when we share our goals for the next work session, and more brains to pick when you need advice. I try and seat myself so that my screen is potentially visible to other people, because then I have another subtle motivation to stay off the internet, and just keep typing. [If you are in Newark DE, and I the other Grad Student Representatives have organized formal Write-on-Sites at 77 E Main from 9AM-12PM on Wednesdays and Thursdays, in the front room or back conference room if we have enough people]
• Daily Writing -- I have become convinced that this is absolutely imperative. No weekdays off from working on, touching, interacting with, and doing minimum of typing on the dissertation. Have I accomplished this goal as an actual yet? No, but I'm working on it! Already just striving toward this, simply not being ok with taking a day off to just read is helping me tremendously. 
• An Internet Blocker when necessary -- but it often is. When I'm working at home without any peer support, this can be crucial. I use Self-Control, which works great and is absolutely, 110% un-reversable once you start it going, even if you reboot your computer, quit and uninstall the app, anything. What I like is that you can operate on two settings: either a black list (list of sites you cannot visit) or a white list (a list of the only domains you can visit). This allows me the freedom of accessing online articles and research while still blocking all the most pernicious rabbit-holes of research and recreation the internet allows.

My way is not the only way however. In talking to peers, mentors, and other academics, I've uncovered a whole host of other ways people work -- some of which I am considering or trying to add to my arsenal, and others of which are not for me. Here are some of those practices I don't use right now, with the reasons people have told me they like them:

• Other forms of academic peer pressure -- when I hosted this workshop, people shared motivation tools ranging from snap-chatting peers photos of empty library desks to pressure them to get out of bed and to work, to weekly skype dates with a long-term work buddy, where you set and check in about weekly goals for your professional lives and projects. 
• Figure out your daily 'best work times' and schedule your most important work for those slots. I find my schedule subject to too many things out of my control to rely on this method. My husband works sometimes irregular hours at the hospital, events and life stuff happen. . . . and I'm pretty bad at noticing patterns like this. For now I'm trying to figure out how to work at any time, even if it doesn't feel particularly 'natural'.
• Write First Thing -- Some people in particular emphasis 'free-writing' first thing in the morning to just get your thoughts out for a minimum of fifteen minutes. Some people say shoot for a minimum of a half hour. Some people say just do all your writing for the day then, even if that means two hours. Have an 8AM meeting? Then get up earlier! My sage (and productive) friend Michelle Anderson often invokes Mark Twain to explain this philosophy:

The Graduate Caucus is pleased to announce its call for participants for the 5th annual Graduate Student Writing Workshop to be held at the ASEH annual meeting in Chicago in 2017. Selected writers will join in small discussion groups with other graduate students and a faculty mentor to workshop pre-circulated pieces of writing. These small working groups will be organized by type of material - thesis/dissertation proposals; conference papers; journal articles (including Gallery submissions); and thesis/dissertation chapters. Please note that a 15-20 maximum page limit will be enforced. Applicants are invited to present their most current work.


The purpose of the Graduate Student Writing Workshop is to provide a forum for graduate students in environmental history to develop their writing and research skills. Guided by the faculty reader, each participant will read and comment on the work of fellow participants. The workshop will emphasize all aspects of the writing process, from cultivating the first germ of a project, to chapter organization and revision, to shaping proposals and abstracts. Groups will be encouraged to discuss writing style, voice, and mechanics, as well as practice how to get and give good feedback. Confirmed faculty participants include Andrew Case, Finis Dunaway, Catherine Dunlop, Stephen Pyne, and Kendra Smith-Howard.


To apply, submit a one-page (double-spaced) summary of the work that you intend to bring to the writing workshop. Note in your application the subject matter of your work as well as the format and potential audience. In addition to the one-page summary, include a one-paragraph bio indicating your research agenda, educational affiliation, and current contact information. Applications should be sent via email to Anastasia Day (aday@udel.edu). The deadline for applications is December 1, 2016. Please note that, if accepted, the final version of your work must be submitted to your faculty reader and fellow participants no later than February 27, 2017.