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Why did you write Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women’s Rituals in Roman Literature​? Although I had researched women’s roles in literature in my previous work, I wanted to take a closer look at women’s roles as represented in the broader spectrum of Roman...

I wrote Before Queer Theory: Victorian Aestheticism and the Self to account for an experience that I think is fairly common, but which has not often been described in academic queer theory: the act of discovering an empowered, socially oppositional sense of...

Will Colleges and Universities Exist in 50 Years? I have posed this question to several groups of undergraduates at different colleges, and their answer is always a resounding Yes. Naïve, right? These are college students, after all—the ones who made it. How...

My opening proposition: Peer review at its finest is an act of extraordinary generosity and is capable of engendering generosity in its wake. Before I go further, though, let me acknowledge that I have, like all academic authors, been on the receiving end of...

I have to admit that I’m new to the celebration of Peer Review Week, now in its fifth year, but not new to peer review or the concept of Quality that’s the focus of this year’s observance. I have always held great respect for the process of peer review and...

If you wish to send a chill through an audience of graduate students and young scholars, just mention the custom among academic tribes known as “Publish or Perish.” Horror stories of punitive departmental and campus review committees often extend to the infamy...

The age-old academic adage of "publish or perish" still exists. Publishing a book can play a critical role in the future of any academic. However, one piece of that important puzzle plays an important role in the journals published by the JHU Press. Book...

“Do not publish this book!” This is the shortest peer review I’ve ever received, and by far, the most direct. In five short words, it spoke volumes. I can’t tell you who wrote it—that would violate a trust—but I can tell you the book never saw the light of day...

Water scarcity affects four of 10 people around the globe. Ninety percent of all natural disasters are water-related. The year is 2019, and we live in a highly connected world with endless technology at our fingertips, yet more than two billion people lack...

Somehow, without quite meaning to, I’ve become a sort of de facto travel agent to the (literary) stars. It all began in 2010 with my sixth book, Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain, which concerned the...