Nora Nachumi

1. How has the pandemic changed your research agenda or writing process, if at all?
The pandemic has made me think carefully about how I move between work and the daily demands of my life. I live in a small apartment in Brooklyn with my partner, two cats and our son, a bright, verbal, loud teenaged boy who has autism and adhd. When the pandemic hit NYC in March, we suddenly all were working from home. Finding the physical and mental space for scholarship was challenging, to say the least. Luckily, however, I was already involved in co-editing two very different collections of essays, Making Stars: Biography and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Britain with Kristina Straub, and Jane Austen: Sex, Romance and Representation with Stephanie Oppenheim. The deadlines for each project gave me a sense of structure and our commitments to our contributors gave me a reason to scrabble for space. However, I also had to change how I write. Before the pandemic, I thought I needed long, uninterrupted stretches of time in order to produce anything decent. Since March I have been working on being less of a perfectionist and have been working in shorter, more frequent chunks of time. So far the world hasn’t ended. In addition to two edited collections, I hope to finish a few short pieces over the next few months. I am also going to use the time to get my ducks in a row in preparation for a monograph I am hoping to write.
2. Any recent developments/publications/interests/pets you would like us to publicize?
Yes!! The two collections I mentioned are well-worth advertising. Making Stars (University of Delaware Press) is a collection of brilliant essays that explore the mutually constitutive relationship between eighteenth-century celebrity culture and the development of a what we think of as biography in the modern world. Our contributors explore the celebrity of diverse individuals – including theatrical performers, politicians, dead heroes, “it girls,” wronged wives, criminals, vagrants and a rhinoceros – and, in doing so, show us a picture of eighteenth-century celebrity that is mediated and remediated across multiple sites with varied and sometimes contradictory effects. Separately and together, the essays in Making Stars demonstrate how the phenomenon of celebrity shatters the linear narrative of biography into multiple sightings across different media platforms. They also demonstrate that eighteenth-century celebrity culture, in Britain, is more pervasive, diverse and, in many ways, more egalitarian, than we had previously supposed.
Jane Austen: Sex, Romance and Representation (University of Rochester Press) brings together academic and creative perspectives in order to confront the conflicting ways we talk—or avoid talking—about sex and romance in Austen. In doing so, the collection zeroes in, not just on the erotics of Austen’s novels, but on the discourse that surrounds this divisive topic. Contributors to this collection include fiction writers, journalists, scholars, filmmakers, fans, book lovers and denizens of the internet. The pieces in this collection are generically diverse. Our contributors write about Austen in the ways that are appropriate to their experience and perspectives. By enabling this dynamic exchange, Jane Austen blurs the boundaries between academic and popular culture in order to see what we can learn from one another about Austen and ourselves.

What else? I recently taught a fantastic course on detective fiction and I relax by coloring in the Swear Word coloring book (thank you Sharon Harrow).
3. How can institutions change orientation sessions in 2021 to help new students and faculty acclimate to their new school, college, or university from afar/remotely?
I’m freestyling here but . . . I would point out the difference between translation and adaptation – rather than moving established components of the orientation experience online, it might be worth thinking about what the internet does well and then consider how to create an experience to meet particular goals. It might also be useful to do some research into how certain companies have translated live experiences to experiences online. For example, when my son turned 14, we found a company that did live-camera escape rooms; it was a great team-building experience and loads of fun.
4. What have you seen as effective in terms of how scholars use social media? In terms of how scholars remain productive in challenging times?
Two very different Facebook groups spring to mind. The first is the Eighteenth-Century Questions Quick Link which has been a fantastic resource for me (and probably most of you reading this newsletter). I have been especially impressed by people’s willingness to loan books, send pdfs and locate citations given the impact of Covid on research libraries and travel.
A few years ago Tita Chico founded a group called Las Titas, as a place to discuss writing, research and the vicissitudes of scholarly life. For many of us – whether junior, senior or in-between – the group became a safe haven, a place to ask questions and for advice, to be vulnerable, to celebrate and to give and receive support for our work. Recently Tita stepped back, new admins took over and the group was renamed The Writer’s Salon. The group is closed but available (to join request membership). Current members continue to use it as it serves them best. Some write regularly in a live writing room. Others ask for or volunteer as readers and share information. Some former members have moved on to a new group on Discord. It sounds fantastic but I haven’t given it a try; my son uses Discord and – to echo V. Woolf – I need a platform of my own in order to write.
5. Any advice on prioritizing work objectives, or declining professional requests/ "saying no”?
Life happens and, in my case, it has occasionally derailed my ability to meet deadlines. So I recommend realism. Decide what projects are most important to you and time them out. As for the rest, commit to slightly less than you think you can do and then do it on time (NB: in my case all this is aspirational).
6)Any suggestions for what the Women’s Caucus and its members can do to support adjuncts/instructors/junior faculty/independent scholars/K-12 teachers (take your pick)--both as an organization and as individuals?
Outreach, outreach, outreach. I have lots of ideas – including co-chairing, co-writing and co-editing work. Most importantly, however, we should continue to ask members of those groups what kind of support would be most valuable to them.

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