The Keener @gradling - Tumblr Blog

I’m going to add social media links/other places you can find me as I remember them. I don’t use most of these platforms super often but at least they’re there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jamiethekeener.bsky.social

StoryGraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/jamiethekeener

Mutuals can DM me for Instagram

#jam posts

fforsythiaaa

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

I’m in some Facebook groups for advice/tips/answering questions for [redacted life event], and so many of the posts are like “girls, what are we doing about xyz personal taste-related thing?” What do you mean “we”? Like I know that you want advice but there is no “we” here. This is YOUR event! You’re allowed to do whatever you want!!

#free yourself from making decisions based on the most ‘popular’ option #jam posts

frenchiepal

01.06.26 🍀 not doing super well. there's so much to do and so many deadlines, everything stresses me out. the only ray of hope is that the worst will be over by next week, and that i got to attend a frog party 🐸

darlingofdots

the european academic experience of being on a bus in random part of a random city when your phone suddenly connects to a shitty wifi signal for roughly three minutes because you passed by a random university building

#this is how I usually navigate Europe without having data 👍#my phone doesn’t like esims for some reason

headspace-hotel

I don't even bother hardly to orrect my typos anymore. It is just affirmation that these words were typed by the hands of human being and not extruded by a fucnking AI

headspace-hotel

one of my professors was like (paraphrasing) "AI makes you sound the same as everybody else. The idea of a single "correct" English is racist and flattens the diversity of people. I don't care about grammar outside of the writing being understandable. I want to hear YOUR voice, Your dialect the unique way you communicate."

I have been more appreciative of the rough edges of human communication since chatGPT came to be. The misspellings and turns of phrase that real people produce.

The inherently flawed nature of an alive thing vs. the empty perfection of something that never had life in it at all

maniculum

Reblogging because I tell my students exactly the same thing. Good to see other instructors are making that same point.

(At least I hope that’s the case, because the terrifying alternative is that there’s an overlap between “people i follow on tumblr” and “students i’ve taught”.)

blue--period

assorted snaps from the first 36-ish hours in london~~

The books from last month~

#jam posts

ofrabjousnight

fellow academics! when you’re at a conference, and you see on the schedule a panel organized by University X in which all panelists are from University X, are you more or less likely to attend that panel? assume all other factors are neutral. feel free to explain your answer in the notes!

Are you more or less likely to attend a conference panel consisting of scholars from a single university?

I am MORE likely to attend that panel.

I am LESS likely to attend that panel.

This factor has no effect on my likelihood of attending that panel.

Voting ended onJun 3

#I put that it doesn’t have a factor in whether or not I attend #bc I pick panels based on whether the topic is relevant to my research or if I know one of the panelists #but if I pick a panel that happens to have all scholars from one university I do note that #and hey maybe it is interesting bc they’ve been in closer dialogue! you never know

greenekatgrey

Oh yeah 😎

bibliophilecats

Summer treat

perplexingly

I'm learning lots about historical gardening during my trip! (The second picture was a plan for maximising crops during ww2)

welcometothehole

this trend of shitting on peer-reviewed academic studies in favor of tweeting “we already knew this was happening” is so soul-crushing. not to be an elitist cunt, but we have got to open the schools again. people genuinely seem to have forgotten that their personal lived experience isn’t indicative of the larger population, AND IF IT IS…… then you need researchers to support these assertions from a relevant data pool instead of a blog post from 2013 💀