As an undergraduate, I wrote about food. In the course of my early graduate career, I learned that people were food in some instances in early America, so I decided that I needed to write about cannibalism. Somehow cannibalism became the topic of my first peer-reviewed article. In my preliminary run through the gantlet that is submitting one's work to a scholarly journal, I realized that although writing can be an intensely solitary experience, the process of editing, revising, submitting, and preparing for publication is one that is much better done collaboratively.
It all started when I was in college and my history adviser assigned a comparative essay on John Smith and William Bradford. I became so intrigued with the references to food in their writings that I almost ran out of time to finish the work. That paper led to another on food, and then another, and before I knew it I was writing a thesis and applying to graduate school.
Like many graduate students, I came into a doctoral program thinking I knew what I wanted to study—in my case, post-Revolutionary foodways. My first year was accompanied by the realization of my intellectual shortcomings, and after a semester, I was very aware of my ignorance regarding food in early America. After some independent reading with my new adviser and a course on Native American history, I wrote a research paper on foodways during what is known as the Starving Time of 1609-10, when colonists supposedly killed and ate one another.
And then, suddenly, I was pinch-hitting at a conference. The professor who had taught the Native American history course I took was commenting on a panel about Indians visiting London, but two panelists had dropped out. She contacted the conference organizers, who got in touch with me. I received great feedback from the people who attended my panel. It was my first conference, and giving that presentation was the most fun that I'd had in graduate school. That's when I decided that cannibalism in Jamestown was going to be the subject of my master's.
I encountered a few hazards in writing about cannibalism. I became aware of one of them when a professor asked me in a seminar which part of the human body was tastiest. That query presented me with two problems: The first was that I was not (and am not now) a cannibal and was uncomfortable speculating. The second problem was that the consensus seems to be that the tastiest part of the human body is the butt, and there's no proper etiquette for saying those words to your Oxford-educated professor.
Without intending to, I had become Cannibal Girl.
Despite those points of concern, I plugged away at my thesis. By spring of my second year, I had a behemoth of a paper that contained every thought I'd ever had about the Starving Time but was in no way publishable. I decided to leave it alone for the summer and see whether I could turn it into an article that fall.
When the first semester of my third year began, I met with my adviser to discuss how to winnow my thesis. She encouraged me to publish some sort of article because, she said, revising the piece would help me to practice scholarly writing. Submitting it to a journal, even if it was rejected, would familiarize me with peer review. And if the article was accepted, that would give me a chance to publish some work that would not become part of my dissertation—a definite positive, since graduate students are frequently cautioned against publishing chunks of their dissertation research before they are sure of their argument.
I began to edit. I called on everyone I knew for help in reading drafts, from fellow students in that seminar where I was forced to confess that rear ends were tastiest, to other graduate students who had already published articles. I had become good friends with three people who had become my graduate-student superheroes: one who studied hot-air ballooning in Brazil, one who was interested in drugs and medicine in the Atlantic world, and one who was thinking about pornography in the British Empire. Conversations with those three—Balloon Boy, Drugs Man, and Porn Girl—enabled me to push my disciplinary boundaries.
Once I decided where I wanted to submit my article, I met, on my adviser's suggestion, with members of my comprehensive-exams committee and workshopped the piece. I set about incorporating their suggestions. Then I sent the manuscript to another grad student-turned-superhero—Free Trade Man—whose outsider's perspective on late-19th-century economic history was good for making sure all of my colonial history made sense. Finally, I tailored the piece to the journal's formatting and submission guidelines, sent it off, and began the waiting game.
The editor e-mailed within a week to say that he would give me an answer in two to three months, once readers' reports were in. More than three months later, I hadn't heard anything, and decided to send a polite e-mail.
In case you haven't noticed, I have an oddly spelled last name. Far too many consonants. It turned out that the editor had responded to me, but the e-mail was lost in cyberspace. My article had been accepted with revisions, and after a week of intense editing, a celebratory glass of wine, and a nice meal, I had a contract. I remarked to a committee member that I was officially signing myself up to be Cannibal Girl. He was amused, perhaps because he knew how far away I still was from becoming Cannibal Girl in print.
The fall of 2010 witnessed a slew of copy edits and page proofs for me. The managing editor asked questions I did not anticipate. I'd written about people who were lords and earls. She wanted to know whether they were the fourth or seventh earl, and if they were only children. Her thoroughness alerted me to my many mistakes, but that experience with constructive criticism once again necessitated outside support. Professors reassured me that copy editing could be grueling, but that I would appreciate the absence of errors in my paragraphs. Friends approved when I said I was editing the paper for what felt like the 20th time. And Twitter was good for keeping apprised of the world of history outside of Colonial Virginia.
In the midst of this editing process, I found myself in real-world Williamsburg, Va., where I had the opportunity to meet with a Jamestown scholar. Let's call him "John Smith." He asked me what I was working on, so I rattled off my 30-second dissertation blurb, and mentioned that I was working on some edits for an article about Jamestown.
"Oh, I do Jamestown, you know," he said in a delightful British accent. I had footnoted him extensively in my paper and replied, "Yes, I know."
"What about Jamestown?" he queried.
"Oh, some things on the Starving Time, and cannibalism."
He looked at me quizzically: "That sounds very familiar. Was I your peer reviewer?"
Momentarily astonished, I let out a decidedly unscholarly giggle, and responded, "I don't know; the reviews were anonymous."
"Well, I can't imagine there was more than one submission on the Starving Time and Jamestown. I think I took issue with the way you used one of your sources," he said. He paused and asked, "I did recommend publication, didn't I?"
We both seemed relieved when I assured him that he had, indeed, recommended publication. His reader's report and the journal editor's comments were mainly responsible for the changes I undertook. If they hadn't offered such astute criticism, I would have published a much less nuanced argument.
My article was due out in January 2011. By December 15, I was visiting the journal's Web site every few days to see if it had switched over to its January issue. By January I was checking it every morning upon waking. And by the middle of January, anyone sitting behind me in the archives was probably wondering why I compulsively refreshed the Web site, because it hadn't changed. Needless to say, the article came out eventually.
Over the course of the last year and a half, I have become reconciled to the fact that, at least for now, people will think of me as Cannibal Girl, even though I'd now describe myself more as Starvation Girl, or Food Diplomacy Girl. Which is to say that the monikers we adopt in our early careers need not be permanent and need not define us. Balloon Boy does not look like a balloon, Porn Girl does not have an Internet addiction, Drugs Man doesn't shoot heroin, and I neither starve myself nor eat people. Since my article's inception, half of us have changed our research interests. Our support of one another, however, has continued unceasingly.
Having gone through the submission process, I can see why professors discourage some graduate students from publishing early. The criticism can be disheartening, and once the article is out, you can no longer change it. On the other hand, I have learned exactly what goes into pushing one of these pieces of academic prose out into the world.
The most helpful thing for me to remember is that those 28 pages are the product of approximately five years of thinking. They look so polished only because they have been finessed by me, my friends, my teachers, my sometimes not-so-anonymous peer reviewers, and the editors at the journal, who guided me through the editing process.
That information is comforting now when I look at the raw, disorganized ramblings of my dissertation. When I feel panicky and unsure of myself, I realize that others in my department feel the same way, and that they will be there to save me from the errors I might make. Then I make myself a noncannibal snack, call on some graduate-student superheroes for support, and continue chipping away at my research.
