{"id":2653,"date":"2021-05-04T15:14:19","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T14:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=2653"},"modified":"2021-05-04T15:14:19","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T14:14:19","slug":"community-and-connection-editors-in-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2021\/05\/04\/community-and-connection-editors-in-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Community and Connection: Editors in Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

As their tenure draws to a close, Katie Arthur and Harriet Thompson reflect on their time working together as editors of the King\u2019s English Blog.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

HT: <\/b>It\u2019s funny looking back on the time when we took over as editors in January 2019; I get that strange simultaneous feeling of it being very recent, but also a quite a while ago. A lot has happened since then! We were both in our first year studying for a PhD in the English Department at King\u2019s and it was an exciting opportunity to be able to curate and commission such a wide range of writing from staff and students. Over two years later, I still have quite a lot of writing to do before I submit my PhD thesis. But having the blog to focus on alongside everything else has been a really nice (and productive) distraction. I didn\u2019t imagine that we\u2019d be spending practically a whole year inside, running the blog from our bedrooms on opposite sides of London. I think the last time we saw each other in person was in January 2020? That is so weird! I do miss the community and energy that comes with working inside the university buildings.<\/span><\/p>\n

KA: <\/b>Two years ago! I know what you mean about that odd simultaneous feeling of temporal contraction and dilation – I feel like there must be a word for it somewhere, in some language. Perhaps we should commission a blog on it! The blog has certainly been an anchor, both pre-Covid and now. Working with the department to publish publicly is really exciting, it has definitely helped me engage with the work happening here at King\u2019s in a more thorough and thoughtful way than I might otherwise have given myself time to do. Though it was more fun conducted in the physical presence of the department as you say and it is a shame to have lost the sense of community that so often is linked to space. The blog also serves as a space of connection for the department. You did a wonderful round-up of all the work we had shared around the new year that received a very touching response from the department. Do you think that the functions of the blog have changed as our needs have moved online in the pandemic? It has always been interesting that the blog reaches out to and beyond the department but, perhaps now more than ever, it is also a meeting point of sorts when we cannot do in person.<\/span><\/p>\n

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HT: <\/b>We\u2019re definitely all looking for community and closeness in new formats and I hope that the blog has helped to provide that in some small way. There\u2019s been such a lot to process and contend with on a global and local scale over the last year. And we\u2019ve seen that writing and reflecting on things as they are happening can be a useful way to cope with uncertainty. I\u2019ve been really proud of some of the work we\u2019ve shared during the pandemic. There have been some important projects launched in the last year, like the <\/span>Abolitionist Curriculum<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Thinking in Crisis Times<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>Brian Murray\u2019s article<\/span><\/a> about the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol gave a fascinating insight into the late-Victorian idealisation of the 17th-century slave trader. There has been some <\/span>lovely work by undergraduate students<\/span><\/a>, reflecting on COVID-19 and offering ways of <\/span>seeking solace in literature<\/span><\/a> during difficult times. We\u2019ve also opened up the blog as a space for creative writing. I do feel that despite everything the last year has offered an opportunity for new kinds of connection through writing. That\u2019s only a small comfort giving how difficult it has been, but it\u2019s important to seek out the little bits of light where we can.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

KA: <\/b>Absolutely, I think you\u2019ve captured it really well. Being separated the way we have been during the pandemic means we have used new modes of connection and re-evaluated our old ones. The blog has definitely felt particularly responsive over the past year, the examples you\u2019ve mentioned have all stood out to me as ways that we are trying to forge relationships and rebuild as both individuals and a university department. I have found myself struck by the ideas of solitude and street presence in <\/span>James Mumford\u2019s piece on the Strand<\/span><\/a> while <\/span>Fran Allfrey and Beth Whalley\u2019s blog on their virtual #MedievalWiki edit-a-thon<\/span><\/a> shows how we change and adapt. We\u2019ve even ventured into<\/span> podcasts with Plague Literature<\/span><\/a> and vlogs with <\/span>Ruth Padel\u2019s pandemic poetry<\/span><\/a>! Ruth\u2019s blog reminds me what a strange start to the academic year it was and makes me think how odd it is to be nearly at the end of it now. Thank goodness our wonderful undergraduate students wrote their series of <\/span>advice blogs for incoming students<\/span><\/a>. I am always impressed by the variety of work that comes out of the department but the sense of passion and companionship has seemed to surface even more for me this year. It makes me wonder how the blog will evolve in the future, in the hands of it\u2019s new editors! <\/span>
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\n<\/span>HT: <\/b>I\u2019m interested in how (or indeed if) editing the blog has shaped your research interests, methods, and future career plans? For me, the experience has revealed the importance of relationships with colleagues and the benefits of engaging with other people\u2019s work, across disciplines and periods. There\u2019s always a danger of becoming entrenched in your own specialism and not encountering much beyond your small area of expertise. We spend so much of our time working independently and attending seminars and conferences that specifically relate to our field that it can be hard to reach outside these silos. I\u2019ve found editing the blog a wonderful antidote to this phenomenon, which can be especially alienating for PhD students. Working with staff and students from all areas of the department has emphasised how community and conversation is essential to research. Before I started my PhD, I worked in communications for a museum and as a teacher in a secondary school. When I think about it now, those experiences were really foundational in shaping my approach to academic research, teaching, and even in my work here on the blog. I really enjoy amplifying the incredibly wide-ranging work that people are doing and through that gaining a deeper understanding of how my own interests fit into a broader research picture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

KA: <\/b>Definitely: I think the word \u2018impact\u2019 can seem particularly formidable to a subject like English Literature but we see it all the time. The blogs often share ways of reading and thinking about texts that all come to bear on how we understand ourselves in relation to history: I\u2019m thinking specifically about the blogs by our Post Graduate Research peers Lizzie, Pavan, and Jamie on the <\/span>concept of time in WW1<\/span><\/a>; <\/span>queer identity in Singapore<\/span><\/a>; and t<\/span>he many insights that arose from the Configurations of Empire conference<\/span><\/a>. The blog has definitely encouraged me to look beyond the confines of my subject area but it has also given me some incredible opportunities to delve deeper into it. Fiona Anderson and my supervisor, Mark Turner, had a cheerily nostalgic <\/span>discussion on queer studies, cruising, and Queer@King\u2019s<\/span><\/a>. I interviewed King\u2019s own Sebastian Matzner and the founder of ParaPride Daniel Lul on the new <\/span>artist-in-residence scheme by Queer@King\u2019s<\/span><\/a>. The wonderful Victoria Carroll shared <\/span>a piece on Jerome Caja <\/span><\/a>for the Queer@King\u2019s collaboration with KCL Chaplaincy. And I even wrote a blog on my trip across the Eastern coast of the US in search of <\/span>archive materials on the obscenity trials of William S. Burroughs and John Waters<\/span><\/a>. Writing for the blog format is a different challenge to the doctoral thesis. My background is also in Communications and in Policy the goal is to be as accessible and succinct as possible. I try to do this in my academic writing, to varying degrees of success! How have you found it?<\/span>
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\n<\/span>HT: <\/b>I have found at various points that the blog has resonated with my own work in both form and content. My research is concerned with the ways in which technology produces new kinds of subjectivities and ways of thinking in nineteenth-century literature. I look specifically at the electric telegraph, the new kind of labour it produced, and how this was represented in literary fiction. I wonder if our role as editors, facilitators, and communicators for the blog has some parallels with the Victorian conception of telegraph work, and telegraph operators as mediums who channel messages across the ether? Perhaps that\u2019s a bit of a stretch, but I am intrigued by how our contemporary understanding of different kinds of technological labour still bears the imprint of our nineteenth-century predecessors. I wrote something a while back about <\/span>telegraph literature<\/span><\/a> and telegraphy\u2019s imaginative association with the spiritualist movement. I was also struck by the resonances between my research and Imogen Free\u2019s work on telephony in the twentieth century, which she wrote about in her blog on the <\/span>Telepoetics Symposium<\/span><\/a>. Now that we\u2019re logging off from the King\u2019s English blog for the final time, do you have any exciting plans for the future? I\u2019m going to the British Library in person this week, which is one of the most thrilling things to happen in months. That reminds me of Nell Prince\u2019s blog about the <\/span>joy of reading in a library<\/span><\/a>. Now that we won\u2019t have the blog to productively distract us, I suppose I\u2019m going to have to finally focus on writing my PhD.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

KA: <\/b>The blogs by Imogen and yourself are so fascinating: I have always enjoyed hearing both of you talk about your work. It will definitely be harder to justify the procrastination without the blog as an excuse. The future still feels more intangible than it did before lockdown, so I think I am leaning into a summer of fewer plans… I do miss the smell of a library though! I know both of us will miss working on the blog and I suppose there is just time to thank all our contributors, readers, and colleagues in the King\u2019s English Department and beyond for their hard work, enthusiasm, and support. I\u2019m so excited to see where our two new editors will take the blog and look forward to sitting on the other side of the Content Management System.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blog posts on King\u2019s English represent the views of the individual authors and neither those of the English Department, nor of King\u2019s College London.
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