Reflections on Collaboration

Abstract

This chapter reflects on our experiences in deciding to forge a collaborative team in the context of an individualistic culture in the humanities at large, both historically and in terms of contemporary protocols in hiring, promotion, and tenure. We offer some insights into both sides of the question–to DH or not to DH?–while highlighting what MAPP has given us. We speak to the opportunities and challenges of this new kind of academic work and list some practical tips for those who decide to embrace it.

So much of the enormous labour of proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely labour thrown away but labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and blotting out the light of the conception. The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? (Virginia Woolf, ‘Modern Fiction’, 1925b (1984, p. 160))

Our whole system of book publishing, which rests on the premise that we promote people who publish, is spiraling out of control. Indeed, the whole system needs to be changed. (Lindsay Waters, ‘Rescue Tenure from the Tyranny of the Monograph’, (2001, para. 1))

On or about Labour Day Weekend, September 2015, Mary Carmichael sat in the glow of a campfire in Napa Valley, enjoying a camping trip organized by her child’s daycare leaders. With the children nestled safely in their tents, one attendant adult keeping watch, the other partners gathered around the fire to do what adults in Silicon Valley do best: swap stories about their workplaces; their histories; their journeys west. In no time, they were in the thrall of a Facebook employee, dishing on office life with ‘Zuck’ (as intimates refer to its famous founder, Mark Zuckerberg). Soon enough, the circle talk got around to Mary; when asked what her work was about, she launched into a synopsis of her monograph, as if this were a job talk not a campout. Whether this was the reason for what followed was not clear, but some communication had misfired, something had been lost in translation. ‘What’, said Mr. Facebook, ‘exactly is a monograph?’ Alarmed, she found herself trying to describe this mythical beast, without actually using the word ‘book’. This just confounded matters. After a meandering and obfuscating attempt at some definition, the spell was broken. ‘Oh’, he replied, ‘I get it! A monograph is a book that never gets written!’

With thanks to Virginia Woolf for inventing Mary Carmichael in A Room of One’s Own (1929).