Posted 2:23 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Writing in Global Cultures and Languages
The Write Here, Write Now blog invites writers from the University of Wisconsin and La Crosse communities to respond to a series of questions that shed light on their writing lives. As readers of the blog will discover, learning to write is an ongoing, life-long process and all writers, from first-year students to career professionals, benefit from reflecting on the writing process and sharing that process with others.
Name and Title: Dr. Dany Jacob, Assistant Professor of French
Department, Speciality Area, and Classes Typically Taught: I am in the department of Global Cultures and Languages, in the French section. My areas of academic interests are dandyism and the construction of non-traditional (male) identities and performances from a comparative literature and media approach, as well as affect and fetishization.
As part of a two-person team, I teach across the board: Second Language courses such as beginners French (FRE 102) and intermediate French (FRE 202), skill-oriented courses like French for Professional Communication (FRE 307), Practice in Translation (FRE 317) and advanced French and Francophone cultures courses with special emphasis on literature and film, such as French Cinema (FRE 351) and Literary Voices in English (FRE 395).
Current Writing Project: I am preparing on project descriptions a small exhibition on the Francophone world using student artifacts from the last two semesters for International Francophone Day on March 21. I am also working on a conference proposal for a paper on masculinities and the creation of communities.
1. What are you currently reading?
I switch genre and books according to my mood and level of alertness/exhaustion. Right now, I am finishing the French novel Ce que jour doit à la nuit (What the Day Owes to the Night) by Yasmina Khadra for one of my French classes.
For my personal pleasure, I usually go for humor, murder mysteries or fantasy. I have started The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Before bed, when I am in the mood for something a little wittier and lighter, I pick up Wow, No Thank you. by Samantha Irby or A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke. During my road trips, I am currently in the middle of Lost Empire audiobook, the second installment of the Fargo Adventures by Clive Cussler.
2. What type(s) of writing do you regularly engage in?
Right now, I would say mainly academic writing linked to teaching or research: grants, project descriptions and instructions, articles, book chapters, manuscript. I haven’t been able to dedicate myself more to my creative writing in past few years (after having published my collection of poems in 2013). I oscillate between writing in French and in English, depending on who the audience is.
3. When/where/how do you write? What are your “writing necessities”?
My absolute must: a banging playlist! I have curated several playlists for the different types of writing needed in that moment. It helps me to get immersed in writing mode pretty much anywhere (at home, at a coffee shop, on campus, etc.). At the campus office, when it comes to emails and putting together student assignments, I work on my standing desk, and I have a jazzy playlist in the background. It helps me to remain mobile (going from my office to the printer for example) and to keep the workflow going. When I need to hunker down for bigger academic pieces, I dedicate usually 3-to-4-hour segments in my weekly planner. I use headphones and put on a bouncier playlist. I piggyback on the lively rhythm to weave and connect my thoughts as I put them down. To keep the energy up, I always have a mug with hot coffee or tea at arm’s reach. For bigger projects, I go back to old-school paper and pen to jolt down ideas and key points I want to make, then I go on my laptop to make sense of it all.
4. What's the best writing advice you've received?
I think, the most common answer is often “just write” but I remember how I used to freeze up because it wouldn’t give me concrete ground to latch on. Instead, one of my roommates in grad school gave me this trick: start your paragraph with “I am writing this because…”. As you develop the “why” in a paragraph, you are slowly warming up your brain for writing (and are low-key drafting your intro). This will help you to find your groove, and once you have it, keep going as you are now ready to develop what you’re attempting to express in writing. To that, I would also like to add this premise: “waste none”. After your conclusion, come back to your “I am writing this because…”-paragraph and see what you can use for the reworking of your intro. Chances are you might have to delete a decent chunk but there might also be some good lines that have their place in an intro. Et voilà, close the loop and you’re all set!
5. How has your work experience influenced how you write?
Early on in undergrad, I was taught that every essay in French must be structured by the “Holy Threes”: besides the macrostructure (intro, essay text, conclusion), you need three main arguments for your essay. For each argument, you have three sub-arguments; and for each sub-argument, you need three examples. The tripart argument setup allows for a more sophisticated agency of arguments and to avoid your typically rote “pro-and-con” debate. To that structure, each essay must be set up in an hourglass shape: open with a broad intro and you slowly guide the reader to the core argument and examples, and then you recontextualize your argumentation in a broader perspective. The conclusion should invite the reader to engage in dialogue with you and move it forward by asking new questions.
6. What is your best tip for getting started and/or for revision? How do you avoid writer’s block?
In my field, the goal of each written piece is to get as close as possible to the “perfect” French 3-3-3 structure. To achieve that, it is vital to start with a core question and then map the answer out before you get started! For me, I like to doodle and put down the different ideas and arguments on a notepad or a white board before I try to order them in a cohesive 3-3-3 essay line. It is not a hard rule, and it does not always work since the argumentation differs from topic to topic and from writer to writer. Once you have mapped it out though, I find it a lot more approachable and achievable. Each sub-argument becomes a goal in it by itself so instead of focusing on the big picture, which can be rather daunting, you move from one little goal to the next and slowly build up to something bigger.
7. What do you think students need to know about academic writing?
What a lot of people don’t understand is that academic writing in the Humanities is not finite and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There is no one “correct” answer to the question, it doesn’t aim to declare one truth about an issue. Rather, the goal is to share unique perspectives and to open yourself to a dialogue with other peers. That being said, as creators of such crafted pieces, it is hard not take it personal when the dialogue leads to criticism and feedback. But that is precisely the point of academic scholarship: to push questions and issues in new directions and discover what different facets have yet to be added for a more complete conversation.
8. For whom do you write?
That is the golden question, isn't it... The audience differs quite a bit as well as the gola of your written communication. As a PhD candidate, I feel that we are mainly taught that you are writing for your future peers and your main audience, the dissertation committee. Nothing else matters. However, once you are in the field, your platform takes on many shapes: it is colleagues in your unit, it is your departemental and college supervisors, it is your students, it is your administrators, it is mansucript editors and reviewers and it is your friends and family.