The altruistic scholar

Kara V publicly thanked those whose
feedback kept her from a wild goose chase

I want my students to realize how energizing and interesting it is to do research and reading -- for others.

Writing an academic research paper is typically lonely, and often feels like drudgery. Wouldn't be cool if, out of the blue, someone came to you with a great source that really supports your thesis or advances your thinking? And then -- think about it -- once you'd received that help, wouldn't you feel a bit more serious about your project?

So, go ahead and give that very experience to someone else. Call it karma, call it whatever, but see how very efficient and enjoyable it is to be an altruistic scholar.

What, you don't have time? You can only budget time for yourself and your own heavy load? First, you don't realize how much a very little goes a long way, and you may not yet have faith that such other-oriented thinking results in tangible benefits to you.

But have some faith, take some chances. I find that when I take chances on people, the way that parents and many others have taken chances on me, I rarely regret such reaching out. Think I'm giving a Sunday School lesson? Think whatever you like. But all I know is that it works.

A Quick Example
Let me model to you my own process for doing this by showing you how simple it was to help someone else out.


Early this morning Richard posted briefly about "Fact and Fiction," raising the important issue about the liberties taken by Shakespeare with his historical sources (in this case, with Julius Caesar). My own interest in this topic at the moment? Frankly, so-so. But I also thought to myself, "You know, Richard hasn't posted much and he could use some encouragement." Here's what I did.

First, I visited our library's home page. Note the link to eBooks. That's what I went to

From among the options for eBooks on the next page, I selected eBrary, a subscription eBook service that carries lots of current scholarship:

Now, on the eBrary page, I typed in some keywords based on Richard's post about fact and fiction:

A nice list of books popped up. Not irrelevant was the fact that scrolling through these books got me thinking about some of my own research directions with Shakespeare. Well, what do you know, helping someone else bumps me into stuff that I might not have otherwise, but which is actually very pertinent to my own directions. Call it serendipitous altruism. Anyway, I zeroed in on one book in particular, about Shakespeare and appropriation:

Clicking on that brought up the full text of the book. I searched within it for "Julius Caesar." This led me to a paragraph describing a symbolic scene from that play. It's rather graphic (someone getting their body pulled apart) but the comparison is arresting:

The critic here is talking about Shakespeare's "body" of work getting torn apart by those who exploit and appropriate it piecemeal. Wait a minute -- if that seems wrong to do with Shakespeare, why wouldn't this be wrong for Shakespeare to do with his sources?

Suddenly, because I was led to this simple, symbolic reading of that play, I feel a potential thesis coming on -- something about the violence to Shakespeare's integrity as being no more problematic than the violence Shakespeare did to his own sources. In fact, perhaps Shakespeare teaches to us a sort of civil disobedience against the "state" of other texts. Whoa. Now, I'm thinking that the plot of Julius Caesar, the story of conspirators overthrowing the Roman republic, is an allegory for Shakespeare's own legacy. Those adapting Shakespeare to new settings or media are rebels, putting the text at risk as much as Brutus and Cassius put Rome at risk. That puts a new spin on the way Brutus claimed killing Caesar was because he loved Rome more. Do we kill Shakespeare in the name of keeping him alive? Did Shakespeare kill or at least violate history by keeping it alive through the deformity of his adaptations of historians like Holinshed?

Okay, Richard may or may not want to follow this line of thinking, but he may feel glad that I'm caring more about his general topic. And, unlike at the first, I really am caring more about it -- not surprisingly, due to the fact that I've invested even just a few minutes into thinking about it.

Writing up this blog post took a few minutes more, but actually doing that research for Richard was a five minute task, tops. I hope he appreciates it. But whether he makes use of it or not, it sure felt right for me to do it.

Have you been the recipient of another researcher's generosity? If so, pay it forward. If not, why not jump start this virtuous cycle of altruistic scholarship?