gary Zabel

In the academic world, it's necessary to publish in professional journals in order to get tenure. The articles must be "jurried," which means evaluated by other academics. Of course, some journal articles are valuable contributions to their fields, but most are rather uninspired acts of conformity to the opinions of one's "peers," in other words, the professors who review journal articles. This might not be so bad if the writer were able to reach an audience through journals. A professor in my graduate school disabused me of that notion when she told me that the average journal article is read by two people. One of the advantages of giving up the pursuit of tenure is the freedom it gives from the system of academic journals. My hardcopy pubicatons have been in books, art, music, and political magazines, and one museum catalogue, though I also publish electronically on the Web. If you are interested in reading my writings, you can follow the links on the right.