michelle a. taylor @scriblerian Twitter profile

Pinned Tweet

michelle a. taylor

2 months

I’m very excited to share that through an absurd twist of luck & fate, I’ll be returning to the UK very soon — this time to Magdalene College, Cambridge, as the Armstrong T. S. Eliot Research Fellow. (Below: me after I got the call)

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Hi! I'm an American! All of my emails contain multiple exclamation marks!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

I can’t believe I live here

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

In January, after over 50 years under lock and key, T. S. Eliot’s 1,131 letters to Emily Hale were made available to the public. I wrote about those letters — and the 17 years of rapture, frustration, heartbreak, and poetry they document— for @NewYorker .

The Secret History of T. S. Eliot’s Muse

For years, Emily Hale was the object of his longing and the source of his inspiration. Was the loss of their romance a boon for his poetry?

www.newyorker.com

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Being vaccinated does NOT mean you can go to the lighthouse tomorrow, James

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

It's been a rough year, but I'm grateful to have something wonderful on the horizon: for the next 2 years, from October 1, I'll be the Joanna Randal-MacIver Junior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

I WENT TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

so i submitted my dissertation

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

@oliviastowell this is unfortunately also true after graduate school

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Honored to have my little essay on all the drama in Woolf’s Freshwater win the BAMS @modernistudies Essay Prize—can’t wait to share it with you all in Modernist Cultures soon!

British Association for Modernist Studies

@modernistudies

2 years

We're delighted to say that the winner of the BAMS Essay Prize for 2022 is Michelle Alexis Taylor ( @scriblerian ) for her essay "Outside Joke: Virginia Woolf’s Freshwater and Coterie Insularity". We'll look forward to reading the essay in Modernist Cultures soon!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

smh I can’t believe I even have to say this but if you’re writing about a dead author YOU 👏 SHOULD 👏 BE 👏 DEAD 👏 YOURSELF 👏

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

@RohitaKadambi Jesus that’s brilliant

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

I don’t really have anything to say about this; I just thought other people might want to see it

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

10 months

As @alexcowan2 noted (he's locked), this is every full-time early-career academic position: junior research fellows, departmental lecturers, even (I think) some permanent jobs. This will have a devastating effect on international knowledge exchange and intellectual networks.

Politics UK

@PolitlcsUK

10 months

🚨 BREAKING: Rishi Sunak will increase the salary threshold so that EVERY migrant has to earn over £38k before coming to Britain in a major plan to slash migration He will also announce new limits on them bringing family [ @JackElsom ]

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

putting my punctuation outside of quotation marks and audibly groaning in disgust

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

@RohitaKadambi hard agree, that couch sounds amazing

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

6 years

For Emily Dickinson's birthday today, a fortuitous piece of paratext from the Franklin edition, answering a fragment's call to ballad stanza —I love this little collaborative poem

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

feeling very sentimental after achieving the thing I have been working to achieve for seven years, and remembering that "to make an end is to make a beginning" — so much love and gratitude to everyone who came to help me begin

Academiquette

@academiquette

3 years

Congratulations to Dr. @scriblerian !!!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

It's here! My article on Virginia Woolf's Freshwater as a coterie parlor theatrical (and critique of coterie insularity) was published today in Modernist Cultures!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

this is just to say that among T. S. Eliot's letters to Emily Hale there IS a photo of TSE in a bathing suit & swimming cap, clutching a large inflatable animal (species unclear) & I VERY MUCH HOPE that @johnhaffenden will see fit to include it in the book - perhaps as the cover?

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

In a little over a month, Orlando & I will be moving to Atlanta to spend the academic year @FoxCenterEmory , where I’ll be a postdoctoral fellow (alongside my friend @cspaide —incomprehensibly good luck!) I hope to meet my Atlanta mutuals before too long & welcome any Atlanta recs!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

A bittersweet full circle moment: today I taught my last section at Harvard, for a course on Virginia Woolf. Eight years ago, almost to the day, I had my last class as an undergraduate at Yale. It was on Virginia Woolf. In my end is my beginning, etc.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

My AP US history teacher died today. In class he lectured us from memory, from Roanoke to Reagan, picking up each day where he left off. I never needed my textbook: I sat the exam on the basis of my 100s of pages of notes, peppered with his quips, filled with his wit & warmth.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

10 months

11 years ago today I wrote a poem about the Oxford comma for the Yale Daily News and the president of Yale emailed me about it

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

proofs!!!!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

"I would suggest they not read my first book, unless they want to feel contempt." — Louise Glück, but also every poet ever

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

For @PoetryFound , I wrote about the extraordinary life, mind, and work of Kathleen Tankersley Young, an American modernist poet who sustained herself — and effaced herself — with her poetry. My review of her collected works, from @sublunaryeds @EmpyreanSeries :

Jeremy Lybarger

@jeremylybarger

2 years

"For nearly 90 years, her poetry was virtually unread, tucked away in little magazines and fragile pamphlets ... THE COLLECTED WORKS provides a record of her experimentation." — @scriblerian on the lost Modernist poet Kathleen Tankersley Young

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

Met with my thesis student today for the last time this semester — we’ve been preparing for this meeting, as tomorrow I will join my peers in @hgsuuaw on strike. He had a gift for me — a handmade print with a quote from Virginia Woolf’s essay, “The Narrow Bridge of Art.” (1/4)

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

At the end of this long and not really over week, Orlando did something he’s not really ever done before: he decided to try being a lap cat!!!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

On the radio they are talking about "cracking down on" degrees that don't make students high earners, as if studying some subjects is a crime??

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

I found a cat sitter so I deleted my post but I didn’t want this squish face not to be seen and appreciated forever

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

Can't get enough of the intimate details of T. S. Eliot's personal life? Enjoying the Emily Hale story, but wishing it had more weird homosociality? Consider reading my article on Eliot's coterie verse, out now in @CollegeLitJrn !

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Hi friends! I am a bit in shock, but on Friday at 10 AM EST I'll be defending my dissertation on Zoom. If you'd like to come, shoot me a message, and I'll send you a link after I've polished off this bottle of Suze and a pint of ice cream.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

she died as she lived: searching for her third of a 3 for 2 at blackwell's

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

On my way to London to give my first ever lecture at @TSEliotSchool (TOMORROW!)!! Excited to see old friends, make some new ones, and talk about TSE’s privates (poems, that is)

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

@AmyClukey Oh! This is so moving — what a lovely thing. The next bee I see I'll think of your father.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

one thing that really frustrates me is the idea that people who choose to be child-free live to follow their own whims without obligations to others. nobody is a creature of the whim outside of manic pixie dream fiction. there are other bonds besides those of the trad family

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

My favorite part of The Waste Land facsimile and transcript is the line "Then we lost Steve." Oh no! Poor Steve! and we never see him again :(

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Was sad I didn’t get a job but then I remembered that Oxford is getting a Popeyes in September

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

took orlando for a stroll in the garden and he made an enemy

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Took Orlando for a birthday walk (he was 2 yesterday)

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

A shampoo company called Jonson & Johnson. Instead of making shampoo they clean your baby's hair with blistering criticism and satire.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

I am now a person who puts a hot water bottle under my covers 15 minutes before bed, which I believe means I have earned UK citizenship

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Oxford! Today is the last day you can see my little archival display on the college’s Woolf collections. If you want to visit this afternoon, let me know and I’ll let you in!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

holy shit holy shit holy shit it's real

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

Been going through old screenshots to make room for more cat photos on my phone and I came across this gem. I love dating men

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

10 months

JK already have the photo pls make me woman of the yr

michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

10 months

who is going to help me recreate this photo with Orlando

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

May morning

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

“Wait, you wrote about ME?” Orlando encounters himself in the UK’s only magazine, @The_Fence_Mag

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

I live here now

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

actually, it's only a "coup" if it comes from the coup region of France; otherwise, it's just a sparkling illegal, unconstitutional seizure of power

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

9 months

the self-citation will continue until my employment situation improves

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Went berrying today for the very first time!!!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

deciduous tweet

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Orlando Purrioso, Coterie Poet

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

April — and I cannot stress this enough — is the cruelest month

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

10 months

For @FTMag , I wrote about my love of grape scissors — but also about culinary history, Victorian etiquette, grief, Oxford, Britishness, class, and the drama of sharing and eating grapes gracefully

Bring back grape scissors

An American at Oxford stumbles across the best unitasker ever invented

www.ft.com

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

MY MOM IS GETTING VACCINATED TOMORROW!!!!!!!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 month

About to begin my third international move in as many years. In tow: about 220 lbs or luggage, 1 mystery companion, 2 carry on bags, 1 backpack, and 1 precious angel (Orlando)

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

I wrote about the insanity of bringing my cat Orlando to England for @The_Fence_Mag . It was very good fun putting this together — I hope you have fun reading it!

The Fence Magazine

@The_Fence_Mag

2 years

'‘Does he have medication?’ my seatmates kept asking, with passive-aggressive concern. ‘Yes!’ I would sob. ‘I have drugged him! But he is too powerful!’ Here is @scriblerian 's wonderfully funny piece about travelling across continents with her cat.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

some personal news

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Will probably delete this but: having a cat is good

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

hey twitter, is there classical music that will not make me think of death?

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

I thought today couldn’t get any better, but I was asked upon entering the clinic if I was over 18

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

8 months

The mouse I wrote about in this essay — whom I nicknamed "Jill" — passed away recently, after four happy, ranging years with her person. An extraordinary little life.

An American Tail

Our story begins in March 2020, in one of those cities where the rent is too high…

www.the-fence.com

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

dark news tonight — mourning and solidarity to everyone at WVU and everyone who should be, who deserves to be served by the university

Lisa Di Bartolomeo ☮️🇺🇦🌈

@LMDiBartolomeo

1 year

The Department of World Languages at #WVU is recommended for dissolution, eliminating ALL programs, grad and undergrad, and reducing faculty to ZERO.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

Ten years ago today I turned in my undergraduate thesis! You might be able to tell from this photo that on some ludicrous whim I put my own picture on the cover (the thesis was on Hope Mirrlees’s Paris; the picture is me outside the Notre Dame)

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

I just went to check my mail and found a postcard, meant for a different apartment, in my box. It was a picture of the Eiffel Tower, and on the other side the sender had just written "Ah, what could have been!" and signed their name.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

wow my dissertation prospectus was bad and also wrong. cool

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 month

Before I pack them away, some mail from home, courtesy my mom’s recent visit. She didn’t realize that they were contributor copies & when she found out she was so excited that she tabbed my essays with post-its 🥰 (cc brilliant editor @QuigleyMM )

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

If you had to start a sentence with, "I have read enough Henry James to know..." how would it end?

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

Almost two years ago, I made an arduous journey from Boston (USA) to Oxford (UK) with my cat. I wrote about it for @The_Fence_Mag : Today I began that journey in reverse: Oxford to Atlanta, via a Heathrow hotel and France. Here begins our first chapter…

Orlando’s Odyssey

Two continents, one precocious cat, and an owner determined to risk it all.

www.the-fence.com

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

;)

T. S. Eliot Summer School

@TSEliotSchool

1 year

You definitely want to hear @scriblerian Michelle Taylor's lecture at the Summer School this year, "A Public Poet's Private Parts"! Register here:

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

this tweet is the reason England and the USA tied

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

In my 32 years on this earth I have only ever once seen a men’s bathroom line longer than the women’s bathroom line, and that was tonight, after a screening of Oppenheimer

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

The only mouse Orlando has ever caught

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

here at harvard we love formatting and design

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

So grateful to Johanna, who helped me through the difficulties of writing this essay as an editor — a guide and interlocutor, an asker of the best questions — and as a friend. If her brilliant mind shaped the content of this essay, her presence and support are what hold it up.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 month

I went for a walk in the woods with @dan_sinykin to talk about Big Fiction. I wore heels and lived out my West Wing walk and talk fantasy.

Dan Sinykin

@dan_sinykin

1 month

Emory's Academic Production Team has launched a video series called Take Note and they generously invited me to talk about Big Fiction and @scriblerian generously agreed to walk in the woods on camera as my interlocutor and asked great questions

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

honestly the design feels more vanessa bell to me than picasso but it's a good bug

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

We live in strange times. Instead of summoning ghosts, the ghosts summon us.

Houghton Library

@HoughtonLib

5 years

For 51 years, we've been keeping a letter by T.S. Eliot about his romance with Emily Hale unopened in our vault. Today, you can read it on our blog. cc @PrincetonRBSC

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 months

Are you or is someone you know interested in doing some research in the Rose Library (or in Atlanta) this summer? I need a cat sitter for Orlando from around June 21 to July 9 — my usual one is moving — and I can provide an honorarium for your troubles. Please retweet!

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

I'm on my way to the Big Apple for MSA! Let's hang out! And if you're around Friday at 2, it would be a real PLEASURE to see you at my panel with @becimay @vcwiet & @Kate_Hext , "What Pleasure Knows: Queer Intimacy and Modernism":

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Defended my diss on Friday; helped my mom get a new phone / sent my laptop in for repair yesterday; threw a baby shower today. I don’t want to sit on the couch; I want to become the couch

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 month

Now that I'm moving onto my second UK postdoc and third total, I'm happy to talk privately & offer what advice I can about the differences between UK & US jobs. As with all things academic job market, it's 99% luck. But understanding the different systems can help a bit, I think.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

My philosophy for my time at Oxford has been to try to say yes to as much as possible here, including, unfortunately, top-ups of my wine.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

A guy cycling on the sidewalk whistled at me so I spat on him. I’m not ready to return to a country with firearms.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

With his winter coat coming in Orlando is now shaped like a Hershey’s kiss

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Literally every time I open the bathroom door

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

I need to have a big cry. I have works of lit that make me tear up to think about but I think in this instance it needs to be a new thing. What can I read or watch to have a very big cry?

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Was standing at the mirror cleaning off some stray mascara and my cat took a swat at my face.

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Sometimes when I'm giving my most careful feedback to friends, I wonder how much really good prose even matters. Do ppl care if sentences are awkward, words are used imprecisely, or syntax builds well? If it's clear enough that ideas & methods are good & novel, is it good enough?

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

Stubbed my already injured toe and yelled a LOT of obscenities VERY loudly and Orlando ran in and here’s how he looked at me 😭😭😭

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

1 year

Oxford friends: In 2 weeks, I'm giving my Principal's Research Seminar (a lecture) on May 24th at 5:30 pm @hilda_beastoxf . Come hear me talk about modernism, coterie, & my research on Richard Bruce Nugent & his circle. Reception to follow! RSVP here:

Please fill out this form

forms.office.com

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

hahah who even has one of these

hannah

@hannahkateboast

4 years

academics can only have two: permanent job live near friends and partner reasonable workload

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

sentence I unfortunately cannot use in any of my actual scholarly writing: "my first book project exposes the soft, squishy underbelly of modernist literary production: coterie culture and practice"

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

4 years

"Yes, of course you can go to the archive, if it's fine tomorrow," said Prof. Ramsay "But it will not," said Dean Tansley, "be fine" "But it may be fine. I expect it will be fine," said Prof. Ramsay "Nonsense. There will be no going to the archive tomorrow, James," said the Dean

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

2 years

Favourite poems about friendship?

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

5 years

Hi everyone I've just read a letter from Beckett dated 4/7/56 in which he records "Eating fresh pineapple for the first time in my life with ferocious enjoyment." so now we can date with good certainty the year & month of Samuel Beckett's first pineapple, y'know, for scholarship

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michelle a. taylor

@scriblerian

3 years

my dissertation started with detailed analysis of fart jokes, and by golly, it's going to end that way, too

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