Sophie Pinkham, Turning to the Public: Reimagining Your Academic Research for a Popular Audience

 In this workshop, we will consider how scholars can conceive essays, articles, or reviews that present their areas of research to non-academic publications. Participants should arrive with at least one idea for a potential piece (either a free-standing article or essay or an essay-length book review) that they might like to pitch to an editor. We will workshop these ideas, discussing how to choose a topic, how to pitch to an editor, and how to navigate the transition from an academic to a more public-facing style. 

Sophie Pinkham has written for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist 1843, The Nation, The New Republic, and many other publications, most often about Russian and Ukrainian culture, history, and politics. Her writing career began while she was a PhD student in Slavic Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine (2016, W.W. Norton), and is currently at work on a cultural history of the Russian forest, with the support of an NEH Public Scholars grant. 

This workshop is designed for graduate students in the humanities, limited space is available.  

RSVP to Alex at ahm253@cornell.edu by Friday, January 27.

Dinner will be provided.