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This is the text of a talk I gave at UCLA’s Information Studies department back in 2015. I think I meant to someday do something with it but my dad had just died, then I got locked out, then cancer hit my family, then cancer hit me. I’m getting my writing back up and running these days, but it’s slower going than I thought. Rather than let all that work sit forever in my dusty ol’ dropbox account, I thought I’d post stuff here in case it’s of use to anyone writing on these topics these days.Read More →

I had the enormous pleasure of chairing a panel at the OAH conference in Philadelphia last week. Here’s our abstract: I offered some framing of the conversation, which I’m sharing below. Given the structural conditions all of us face, any conversation about the production, organization, preservation, circulation, and meaning-making of “stuff” inside and outside the academy must account for the conditions of increasing precarity faced by all of us. I was so grateful for Michelle Caswell, Stacie Williams, Eira Tansey, and Michelle Moravec for the discussion they enabled, and I hope the conversation continues. Good morning, and thank you for getting up at 8am onRead More →

So many thanks to Karen Nicholson and Maura Seale for inviting me to write the foreword to their fantastic new collection, The Politics of Theory and the Practice of Critical Librarianship. And thanks to Library Juice Press for facilitating open deposit of our chapters! Here’s my contribution.  Read More →

There’s a material world, with actual things in it, and actual real things actually matter in it.  It feels like being rolled over by a truck because we were just rolled over by a truck.  It isn’t hard to make a bully feel bad. At the end of the day you just count it up and say it out loud and then everything is different. We were in a contract fight, and then we weren’t anymore. It was endless and then it was over.  You get to be mad at me and I still get to be me.  Words matter less than I thought theyRead More →