Dan welcomes Leah Rubinsky, PhD candidate at the University of Washington and podcaster, to dive deeply into the grad student experience, confronting academic writing genres and styles, writing workshops and feedback, and the challenges of subverting the dissertation style to fit one’s research. Leah also talks about her research on “bad” mothering in Colombian and Caribbean women’s contemporary fiction, who she is writing her dissertation for, and why. Read and download the full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this post.
Leah is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington where she is finishing her dissertation on “bad” mothering in Colombian and Caribbean women’s contemporary fiction. Her research interests include examining themes of migration and Colombian-American identity formation. She is passionate about writing pedagogies, and in particular, bringing multimodal pedagogies into her college composition courses. She looks forward to defending her dissertation in the summer of 2023 and beginning a position as an assistant professor educator at the University of Cincinnati in the fall. Check out her podcast Grad Share, dedicated to supporting grad students through the unique challenges we face.
People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode
- Hannah Alpert-Abrams
- Humanities Commons’ Academic Job Market Network
- Stephanie Renée Payne
- “On the Art of Writing Proposals” by Adam Przeworski and Frank Salomon
- Amanda Lock Swarr
- Vernacular Insurrections by Dr. Carmen Kynard
- “Should Writers Use They Own English” by Dr. Vershawn Ashanti Young
- Naropa University
- Dr. Steven Mentz
- Dr. Ganter
- Grad Share a podcast created & hosted by Leah Rubinsky
“As graduate students, we engage in different forms of academic writing. The big one, of course, is the dissertation […] but we also write […] fellowship[s], proposals, job applications, which include […] cover letters, teaching statements, diversity statements. So we work in a lot of different, and also very specific academic writing genres.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
“I’m very interested in supporting graduate students and centering the voices of graduate students.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
“The other insight for me as a graduate student is let’s share our successful writing materials with each other.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
“My tone in my dissertation, I struggle with that, because I don’t like the academic tone to express the work that I’m trying to express because my work is about Colombian mothering. My mother is Colombian. I want her to be able to read and understand my dissertation. So I wanna write for her.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
“Podcasting is interesting in that you get to capture accents and phrases and things, and I think that’s hugely important maybe to a more authentic voice that you might lose in writing.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
“It’s very vulnerable […] to give a draft to someone for feedback.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
“Feedback should come from a place of care, I think is the first thing. And the second thing is not all feedback applies.”
Tweet
-Leah Rubinsky
Episode 99 Transcript
This episode was recorded on May 18th, 2022. The theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher, join the newsletter for a bunch of extras (a Note From Dan, episode-specific writing prompts, and book recommendations, & follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod & Instagram @WritingRemixPod.
Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases
Writing Remix Podcast 