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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Collaboration

I really feel a deep need to collaborate. Nevertheless, I have to examine my own motives here and figure out exactly what I want.

In the first place, a collaborator would have to be more or less my equal. We would have to be compatible in our outlooks, but sufficiently different in what we know. In other words, ideologically overlapping enough to co-sign an article, yet bringing at least two separate areas of expertise into play.

One motivation I have is that I have too many ideas for me to develop on my own. Another is that I want to mitigate the solitariness of scholarly writing. A third is that I want to learn from others. Fourthly, I want to be able to teach others what I know and maybe help someone else get out some publications. I envy people who can be in close collaborative relationships.

1 comment:

Clarissa said...

I'm planning to write an article in collaboration with a senior colleague who is a Germanist. One worry that I have, though, is that our beautiful relationship will be marred as a result.

I tried writing an article with my best friend a few years ago, but we had to abandon that idea when we realized that we were on the brink of severing our friendship because our vision was completely different and we kept having passionate arguments about it.