Writing my dissertation in my small studio apartment in Edinburgh in 2005 involved Post-it notes pinned on walls and doors, fluttering down out of order when a door was closed too quickly and too hard. I pinned this quote from John Berger above my desk. Throughout my academic life, I have been obsessed with the relationship between personal and collective histories as they become situated and experienced in the intimate, domestic, and familial. I know this question is hardly original; it powers much of the social sciences and humanities. Nonetheless, it has always felt like the needle in my heart.
I didn’t acquire this obsession at universities. Universities were places of pleasure and pain, where I discovered both that my mind could be a place of rest and refuge and that I had to learn different personas to manage my interactions with others. I didn’t invite anyone from university to...
