1 Academic Harassment
They say, we’ve never seen him behave like that, so you must be lying. (Chanel Miller, Know My Name)
Dear Madam Chair,
Thank you for agreeing to see me and for agreeing with yourself throughout our protracted and unpleasant interview. It was indeed consoling to learn that I have imagined the whole unhappy affair; now I can make an appointment with my doctor and ask for a referral to the psychiatric services. Your confirmation that Dr. X. has never bullied you was particularly reassuring; had he raped me, the fact that he has not once raped you would certainly serve as a very useful witness statement in his defense.
Permit me to congratulate you on your tactics. Pretending total ignorance of the circumstances was a masterstroke (although, for future reference, it might have been more effective to have maintained the pretense consistently throughout). I shall always be indebted to you for your invaluable advice, applicable to so many difficult professional situations. Above all, I will remember the golden maxim that when two people have a conversation behind closed doors, either one of them is free to deny anything that was said afterwards. In this context, I am assuming that your belittling and patronizing comments would, if repeated by me, be added to the list of things I have imagined.
Finally, I would like to thank you for pointing out to me how grateful I should be for the privilege of being associated, albeit in the remotest possible sense, with the Faculty, and for clarifying my position in the University as an official non person. I shall take care to refer to myself in future as “non persona non grata,” a title that does honor not just to me but to the wider academic community.
Yours etc., etc.
2 Academic Collaboration
One of my greatest research pleasures has always been collaborative projects. My first was with two other women. We investigated the presentation of men and women, from literary and social perspectives, in a medieval poem. Afterwards, I heard myself referred to at a conference as “one of those three weird lesbians.” (Why else would women want to work together?) I have to admit that in persisting, and going on to publish with one of my fellow-“lesbians” a paper on Renaissance love poetry, I was asking for trouble. (Isn’t that what women do?)
My next two collaborative research ventures happened to be with a man. This did not improve matters. First of all, the editor assumed we were a couple and sent a single set of proofs to my home address. I had to photocopy them and mail them, as my supposed “partner,” far from living in my marital home (which might have come as some surprise to my husband, especially after the “lesbian” revelation) was in another country. After our second joint publication, my head of department at the university (a woman) called me in for some career advice. I was to cease and desist from research collaboration with a man, because everybody would assume that the results were all his own work; none of mine. (Really?)
Over the years, I have gone from bad to worse, collaborating with people who self-identify in various ways. One thing they have in common, though, is that they do not use gender or sexual identity as insults or even grounds for suspicion.
Note to the Reader: Please don’t imagine that you have to sleep with your research collaborators. You can, if you like, of course. As it happens, I didn’t.
3 Academic Milestones
Publisher’s Note
The author’s identity is anonymized for this chapter. Brill is aware of the real identity of the author. The inclusion of anonymized chapters has been permitted by Brill in view of risks to the general security of the author.