NCIS welcomes two new members, Dr. Claudia Keenan and Dr. Sarah Weaver. 

Dr. Claudia Keenan is an historian of American education and culture with interests ranging from progressive education to the symbolization of U.S. First Ladies. In recent years, her publications have focused on local history in Westchester County, N.Y., and Atlanta, and continues to research in American history and culture circa 1870–1920. After growig up in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., Keenan graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in cultural anthropology. In 1995, inspired by the story of the Bronxville, N.Y., public schools (among the few progressive school districts in the nation during the 1920s), she entered NYU’s doctoral program in History of Education. Keenan’s thesis, P.T.A. Business: A Cultural History of How Suburban Women Supported the Public Schools (2002), explored the manipulation of local PTA initiatives to affirm social hierarchy, manage flaming youth, and otherwise enforce conservative values. Subsequently, she taught at Emory & Henry College and published articles and chapters on various topics. Keenan lives in New York City and blogs about little-known historical figures at “Through the Hourglass.”

Dr. Sarah Weaver is a scholar of nineteenth-century British literature. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Cambridge in 2015 for a dissertation that examined the influence of Victorian philology on Alfred Tennyson's poetry.

NCIS welcomes three new members and one associate member!

While building a career in business, Ken Gorfkle also earned a doctorate in Spanish literature, graduating from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2014. At UNC, he focused on semiotics, poetics, and contemporary Latin American literature and gained expertise on the work of the internationally recognized contemporary Chilean poet, David Rosenmann-Taub. Dr. Gorfkle has written received a grant and multiple awards from the foundation that preserves and promotes the work of this gifted and multifaceted artist and has been reworking his doctoral dissertation, “The Intersection of Life and Death in David Rosenmann-Taub’s Tetralogy Cortejo y Epinicio” for publication. He is preparing a series of articles based on an interpretative approach to the poet’s work for academic audiences and also is preparing to disseminate the poetry to a lay audience.

Geneveive Newman, a recent alumna of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts MA program in Cinema and Media Studies. Her research interests include decolonial and Third Cinema, horror and science fiction media, transnational Irish cultural production, and critical cultural studies. An independent scholar, her current research focuses on marginalization, decolonialism, and formal experimentation in horror media and literature.

Angela E. Roe, Ph.D, is a cultural anthropologist, writer and filmmaker of Curaçaoan, Surinamese and Dutch descent. Dr. Roe’s passion is to conduct solid anthropological research and to make her academic work accessible to large, non-academic audiences. Therefore, in 2012 she launched the Warwarú ImageNation Foundation, a nonprofit research, media and event organization that spotlights (Dutch) Caribbean tangible and intangible heritage, and that pursues ideological decolonization through a wide variety of events and research projects. Her foundation's first project was the award-winning documentary Sombra di Koló/The Shadow of Color (2014), on race and racism in Curaçao.

NCIS Associate member Gary Rubin is a financial services professional with more than 30 years experience. He holds a masters degree in Applied and Professional Ethics from the University of Leeds and is a published author in the areas of financial advisers and ethics. He currently is researching applied and professional ethics with a focus on business ethics in the field of financial services.

Seven independent scholars living in six countries recently joined NCIS, and their diverse expertise includes pharmacology, psychoanalytic literary criticism and Early Modern European History.

Pintu Das has taught English at university level for more than a decade in India. In addition to his expertise in English and English literature, he is an expert in linguistics, phonetics and several European languages including Ancient Greek, Latin, German, French, etc. He teaches English Philology and Prosody as part of B.A. English Honors and M.A. courses. He has published Vibrant Voices from American Poetry, a reference book recommended for the Calcutta University Syllabus, and is writing a textbook on English Philology for several universities in India. He currently is an independent scholar focusing on research and writing.

A clinical pharmacologist, Immanuel Freedman also is a registered patent agent and systems, signals and algorithms consultant with more than 30 years experience of modeling, simulation, systems analysis, design, development and testing. Dr. Freedman has served as expert consultant providing technical analysis related to patent infringement, patent validity, and the research tax credit. He also integrated knowledge using pharmacometric models and quantitative systems pharmacology to design clinical trials by translating exposure-response relationships across diseases, phases and species. Dr. Freedman has published and presented at conferences in Babylonian mathematical astronomy.

Ellen Yutzy Glebe, Ellen Yutzy Glebe holds a B.A. from Guilford College in history and German studies and a Ph.D. in Early Modern European history from the University of California-Berkeley, where she focused on the history of religious dissidence in Germany during the late Middle Ages and Reformation. Since completing her doctorate in 2008, she has transitioned into a career as a freelance translator (German>English) and editor of academic texts. To learn more about her professional qualifications and the modern-day fairy tale (including a castle) that led her from her native North Carolina to her current home in central Germany, please visit www.writinghistory.de/about-me. 

John Holland is an independent scholar and French-to-English translator working in the social sciences and humanities. His research focuses on Lacanian psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic literary criticism. An American living in France since 1994, Dr. Holland has taught courses in French and American universities and has pursued his research at a variety of psychoanalytic schools. His recent projects include editing the 2015 issue of S: Journal of the Circle of Lacanian Ideology Critique and upcoming projects include a presentation at the European Society of Jamesian Studies conference in October, 2016. Dr. Holland holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton and a D.E.A. (Master’s level) in Psychoanalysis from Université Paris 8.

Freelance musician Valerie Langfield is a teacher, accompanist, composer, writer and editor. Her primary research interests are British music of the 19th century and early 20th century, especially opera and song. Dr. Langfield’s Ph.D. thesis/biography of the English song composer Roger Quilter established her as the authority on his life and work. Her editions of numerous British operas have been recorded or performed; and in addition to publishing numerous articles, she has contributed to leading music dictionaries and national biographies. She is a founding member and trustee of Retrospect Opera, which records British operas representative of their period, and is also a trustee of the Carl Rosa Trust, which promotes research into the leading British touring opera company of the late 19th and early-20th centuries. Current research projects include an edition of the diaries of the Cambridge musicologist Edward Dent, and one of Dent's letters to Jack Gordon, staff producer at Sadler's Wells Opera between the two World Wars; and the life and music of Dora Bright.

Joshua Matacotta earned his doctorate in clinical psychology with an emphasis in health psychology. He conducts research and program evaluation at the Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Los Angeles, and manages a team of senior and junior research analysts. He is also a member of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the American Evaluation Association, and the American Psychological Association. His current research areas include: Behavioral health & health psychology; the impact of technology on health and social issues; public health/mental health and policy; chronic disease and quality of life; LGBT and gender issues; psychology of men and masculinity; data science, and replication science.

Masato Okamoto worked for Japanese statistical offices for 36 years, most recently as Director and Lecturer of the Statistical Research and Training Institute (2005–2015). Prior to that post, he was charge of compiling the family budget survey and the Consumer Price Index (1997–2002). He studied several statistical issues as the population-subgroup decomposition method of the Gini coefficient and analytic expression of the Gini coefficient for lognormal and double-Pareto-lognormal (dPLN) mixture distributions were published as articles in peer-reviewed journals. I will continue research activities after leaving office.

NCIS is crossposting the following discussion from our Facebook page which reflects upon Julie Enzer’s article in Inside Higher Ed, “What Shall I Call Myself?”

As Enzer writes:

"Many people use Independent Scholar. Perhaps I will settle on that designation as it seems to be an emerging convention for scholars outside of academia. For now, however, Independent Scholar feels like a statement of defeat: independent, because I was unable to secure an academic position. Though, of course, it is accurate."

[Enzer’s full article is here.] To add your comment, please visit the NCIS Facebook page.

Here is the ensuing comment thread on the NCIS Facebook page:

Freda Blake Bradley: I understand this author’s sentiments. I teach college history, yes, but they do not fund my research. That isn’t 100% bad, though, because they also have no vested interest in the outcome. In American history right now, gender history and “racial” histories are the most popular. Neither of those are my “passion” although I’ve taught in both areas. My passion is Appalachian history and environmental history—but it’s hard to find funding for the latter in my region. The former, however, is relatively easily funded by my state SHOULD I wish to do that and they don’t care if you’re a professional, have a PhD, or have a high school diploma IF you fit their needs.

So, as the author said, do I negotiate my title or leverage my topic? I’d prefer to leverage my topic. Therefore, I choose to “title myself” with a third option. I tell people I am a “professional historian” because that’s what I am. IF they ask who funds my research, I tell them that although I teach in higher education, they do not fund our research at my institution. (then I follow with, “. . .but I do accept donations to my work” which is usually followed by crickets—lol).

However, I’m also a historic reenactor. For many years, I’ve been researching and presenting two first person characters….begun before my degree. Many historic reenactors are not professional historians…….they are hobbyists. I’m also a genealogist. Many genealogists “feel” they are historians, but they are not….they are hobbyists. Again, do I leverage my degree or my topic? In this case, I DO leverage my degree. It’s necessary to set me apart—especially in the reenactor field.

What do I put on MY taxes? I use “adjunct faculty” because that’s where the lion’s share of my income comes from. To the IRS, that’s what’s important….they don’t care what my “title is.” All they care is does my blank on the IRS form match my W2 or 1099….and adjunct faculty matches.

So, I think the answer is what do you need to leverage and why? Am I professional? Yes. So, I choose professional historian. It fits all my needs currently. Am I an independent scholar? Yes, but that doesn’t leverage me in the boxes above, so I don’t use it. I WILL use it when I need it, but for the boxes above, other things fit better.

Joan Cunningham: I first came upon "Independent Scholar" when Googling the term "Private Scholar", encountered in a book by Alexander McCall Smith describing a female anthropologist character, who had no visible means of research or even personal support. As is typical of Smith's writing, she was treated gently and with respect, and I was endeared to her. Finding myself sometime later formally retired from academia, I thought that maybe I, too, could be a Private Scholar. The term has a certain dignity and sense of freedom from the politics and perversities of the academy. Of course this side of the pond the term turns out to be "Independent Scholar", which somehow does not have the same dignity.

But as I hear about more scientists,frustrated and disgusted with academic research, forming their own research companies and competitively obtaining funding from sources INCLUDING THE NIH, the term Independent Scholar becomes not one of defeat and failure but rather of, well, independence and pride. The meaning of the term should come from us. If we feel "less than", then we are. It is up to us. But for Independent Scholars to be respected by academics from the academy, we will need to uphold very high standards for our work.

Karen Garvin: Yes, "Independent Scholar" should be a badge of honor, not embarrassment. No one owns you, and as Freda Blake Bradley mentioned, if the current "hot topics" in your area of scholarship don't interest you then you can steer your research in whatever direction you want to go.

Of course funding is always an issue. I'd love to hole up in the British Library for a few months but it's unrealistic for me at this point in time. But I'm not writing the idea off!

Amanda Haste: Well said, Joan Cunningham. For me it's all about professional integrity. And as I used to tell my music students, you need to be professional, a term which has nothing to do with whether you're paid but has everything to do with how you conduct yourself, and how you approach your work, whether that be
performance or research.

Karen Garvin: I haven't really given much thought to a title. I suppose "Historian" is all I really need. I am an independent scholar, but that doesn't have to be my title.

I don't accept "Independent Scholar" as a defeat, though. Not everyone can or wants to work in academia, and the rarefied atmosphere can quickly become suffocating if you find that you don't meet others' expectations of what you should be researching -- or the conclusions you draw from your research.

So, "independent" means exactly that. Free to follow your own interests, research the sources you want to delve into, and ask questions -- and even question the ivory tower, too. Perhaps it's not a way to win friends in academia, but academia does not own scholarship. At least, it shouldn't.

Amanda Haste: I teach several courses at a university as a vacataire (equivalent to adjunct faculty) but as they're not really connected to my research, and as I have no job security and no funding for my research I still choose to describe myself as an independent scholar. And I'm proud of it! As you say, it represents freedom. ☺