Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴) @travisclau Twitter profile

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

1 year

At very long last, my chapbook VAGARIES is in print. My love and thanks to @SteveBellinOka and @rhettmcneil for investing in my work and believing in it enough to inaugurate Fork Tine Press.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Cleared my throat and coughed in an elevator today and got my first ugly look from someone who clearly was afraid I had coronavirus. Because I'm petty, I decided to cough some more, and as they were leaving, I yelled "racism is more contagious."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

The editor's "helpful suggestion" that I don't go by my full name because it "confuses readers" and "messes up citations" really isn't landing how you think it lands.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I am incredibly proud to announce that I will be joining the English department faculty @KenyonCollege as an Assistant Professor of Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Apparently unpopular opinion: the best thing I ever did in graduate school was begin writing for public audiences and not seeing peer-reviewed and paywalled academic journals as the only space where urgent conversations happen.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 month

I know I'm a shit grant application writer but to get feedback that "research on disability just isn't as relevant now that the pandemic is over" truly is astounding to see someone with a doctorate and critical thinking skills say to me in writing

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

How I imagine peer review to look like.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

First day as assistant professor. Serving baby blue linen.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Received some devastating news and had to teach just a moment after. Sometimes, this profession demands a fortitude and willpower that you have to really find the effort and energy to summon up.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

I have the most dramatic cat: "Excuse me, dad, while I retire to my divan, for I have the vapours."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

6 years

THE SHADE OF IT ALL:

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

Sometimes it just hurts being a disabled faculty member and attending orientations where ableist language gets used even in presentations about microaggressions and other faculty handwringing that they shouldn't have to make their decades-long class accessible.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Arrived home to my contributor copy of Disability and the University: A Disabled Students' Manifesto featuring a brief essay of mine on the culture of academic hyperproductivity and what crip time can do.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

6 years

To the person who just DM'ed me saying that disability scholars are just theorizing convenient ways to explain away their laziness and inability to keep up: shame, shame, shame.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Young poets of color are doing the fucking work.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

At last, proofs for a piece that was both painful and difficult to write, but the one I wish I had had before entering the job market. Also an essay I thought would be one of my last if I didn't get a job.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

I made the really difficult decision to move all my classes online. I did anonymous surveys in each of my classes and the care and thoughtfulness expressed among the students for each other and for me just made me cry.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

A true gift for the holidays: finally holding my author copy of my chapbook. I'm a bundle of feels, and I can't wait until you all have your copies too. Thank you to everyone who helped to bring this book into the world.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

THE WIZARD AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

To all the new followers and folks who wanted a copy, please reach out and I'm happy to send you a pdf!

Dr. Millie Hizer

@millieh27

2 years

I just read @travisclau ’s chapter,“Slowness, Disability, and Academic Productivity.” This is one of my new favorite pieces challenging ableist norms in academia!

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

Just over three hundred pieces of hate mail sent to me since my piece on COVID-19 racism in 2020. I've been keeping count ever since. Don't ever underestimate the capacity for hatred and the time people will spend to harass you.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Quite frankly, I'm glad some senior scholars are threatened by social media savvy, community-oriented, public-facing scholars who don't give a fuck what they think. While you gatekeep, we'll be finding ways to let more folks in.

Devoney Looser

@devoneylooser

5 years

Editors gave this essay the subtitle, "Social media has made scholars impatient, vicious, and dull." Because before that, scholars were patient, kind, & interesting! Just ask anyone who attended a faculty meeting or conference a decade ago #academictwitter

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

I'm honestly dreading the beginning of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and the layers of deferred and unprocessed grief ongoing in our communities that will be dredged up and then sidelined by performative visibility, reading lists, and virtue signaling.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Has this been made into a meme yet? (From Life Magazine)

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Me at the keyboard trying to write just one sentence.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

Not me crying over my pre-tenure review letter because my departmental colleagues were just so damn generous and kind about my work and my place in this department. This was precisely what I needed right now.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Ah yes, another person DMing to tell me my Pushcart nomination doesn't mean anything because any pub can nominate people. Yes, that's the way to create community in an already toxic environment that pits poets against each other rather than celebrating each other's work.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

The irony of discovering scholars who once said to me illness and disability aren't "literary enough" and "too morbid" for study now publishing opportunistic hot takes on COVID-19 as if they've just "discovered" the field.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

6 years

#academicmood

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Grief returns, and I am again with this poem:

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

For folks who may have missed my talk, "Putting Disability Studies and Pain Studies in Dialogue" for Brown's Politics of the Prescription Pad working group:

Putting Disability Studies and Pain Studies in Dialogue

A lecture by Travis Chi Wing Lau.Friday, Nov. 4 at 6:30 PM ETIn person at the Watson Institute, Brown University and online on Zoom. This talk considers how ...

www.youtube.com

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

Let me be clear as to what the editor is presuming to "help" me with: they think people won't know how to cite me correctly (I.e. "Chi Wing Lau, Travis" vs. "Lau, Travis Chi Wing"), which happens a lot, but telling me my "choice of professional name" is confusing is not an answer

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Just got a journal rejection with reader reports that described my work as "undisciplined and ill-defined." Really really hurting right now because it was a piece from my diss I was particularly proud of.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

I've never felt so attacked.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

The shade of getting rejected for a collection and then being asked to review it for free as if they didn't know I had submitted and received a rejection from them.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Past semester's evals are in, and this one really hit me in the feels: "Dare I say, but to whoever reads this, please give this man tenure. He is one of the most deserving, earnest professors in the department and he has the potential of changing English at UT for the better."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Thanks to the Disability Policy Consortium for calling out how disability still gets left out of academic diversity and inclusion efforts. What a mess of a job posting: "must be able to access non-ADA compliant building."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

*the* poem i keep returning to as i try to make sense of everything. (Mary Oliver, "We Shake with Joy")

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

Disappointing to see colleagues in my field laughing about large-print editions of books because disability remains a joke even among scholars who should damn well know better. None of this is surprising, but these are supposed to be models for our profession.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Thinking of all of us processing unspeakable amounts of unspeakable grief as we move into a new year. Instead of condolences, I wish us the time and space to process that grief safely with those who can honor our grief with care.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

One of the worst aspects of academic culture is how precarity and broken structures make competition and comparison part of every relationship. We have every opportunity to celebrate each other and the labor we do. Use this thread to shout out a colleague / new work:

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

I couldn't bear to watch The Chair but witnessing scholars of color reacting to it only showed me how common it is that BIPOC faculty have experienced sabotage, professional undermining, and gatekeeping on top of microaggressions and inequitable labor.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

Provost letter with the tenure and promotion committee's full report just making me break into tears. I feel seen in ways I didn't even know I could be.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Are you red-y for me (to make bad dad jokes and 90s references in class)?

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

We lost her last night. I didn't even have a chance to try to say goodbye.

Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Some of you know that my grandmother has been in hospice care for well-over a year now. She has been rapidly deteriorating, and I feel terrible being unable to provide care and comfort because of the pandemic. All I can do is wait for a phone call I will never be prepared for.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Thinking today of my former boyfriend who passed away from AIDS-related complications in 2017. I wish he could witness the profound political changes happening right now and the unexpected joys of possibility (and responsibility) we have before us.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

I've been particularly frustrated with a form of academic pettiness where scholars who share a subfield or topic are presumed to be in competition with one another in a race to be the "voice" of that particular subfield or topic.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

Deep exhale.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Someone just sent me this, and I will now make this the cover of my health humanities course and make a replica for my office.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

The academy's ableist practices, especially expectations of neurotypicality, are ensuring futures of higher education without disabled scholars. #MakeAbleistsUncomfortable

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

Did my best not to cry when I received my award for Faculty/Staff Advocate at @KenyonCollege 's Lavender Graduation this year. To be recognized by my students in this way is truly one of the greatest joys of being a faculty member. To my LGBTQ+ students: I love you.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

6 years

Annual reminder that what makes the academic Twitter community such a valuable place is not only sharing your own work and thinking but signal boosting others, especially those that frequently aren't heard. Collegiality is wanting to promote more than just your own work.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Thank you to folks who reached out today. The notes mattered a lot to me. I just can't shake the sound of my mother's voice when she called me last night about the news. To feel helpless in being unable to do for them what my parents have always done for me: make them feel safe.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

32 on 2/22/22. For my birthday, I'd like everyone to send at least 2 notes to people that they admire, respect, and care about. Or you can send me 2 pet pictures, bottles of wine, or bags of chips (or other unmentionables).

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

The white orchid that I thought was dead for sure has bloomed again, and I am cherishing this sign that things might end up okay.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Proud to be part of this cohort of new faculty at @KenyonCollege !

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Speechless to learn from @j_fuller that my piece for @laphamsquart was included in this list of notable essays and literary nonfiction for Best American Essays 2020. A huge honor.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

One of those beautiful moments of being vulnerable in class as a disabled professor: a student encouraging me to take care of my body in pain over hurrying to get grades back for their first papers. Grace in the pandemic classroom does not have to be one-sided.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

This is precisely what concerns me about the way scientists and physicians understand themselves and the way they train their students to see themselves: it's not only ahistorical but also simply untrue that science was ever apolitical or free of ideology.

The New Yorker

@NewYorker

4 years

For decades, Anthony Fauci has maintained a simple credo: “You stay completely apolitical and non-ideological, and you stick to what it is that you do. I’m a scientist and I’m a physician. And that’s it.”

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Fully vaccinated and reunited for a proper brunch. Emotional to be with family in this moment and in good health.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

First day of teaching. (Of course in my favorite blue suit.)

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 month

I love how this doesn't understand basic research 101: you don't always go into the archive knowing what to find, especially when the archive itself is inaccessible and barely preserves disability history in the first place.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

11 months

I shared recently my neighbor across the hall passed away. She used to leave us gifts from time to time. I found this note with a bottle of wine by our door a few days after, and I was stunned to silence because I thought she had left us this somehow in death.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 months

Back to teaching after about eight months off trying to take care of myself, heal, rest, and recenter. Be gentle with me, y'all.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Just saw a fellow academic say he doesn't retweet other people's work because he doesn't want to make his Twitter into a bulletin of advertisements. While I think critiques of self-promotion are valid, I'm fascinated by this resistance to circulating the work of others.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Annual reminder to use your twitter space for more than hot takes and doomscrolling: amplify and signal-boost the work of your colleagues, especially BIPOC, queer, first-gen and disabled scholars.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

It's always a little hard when Pride Month and Scoliosis Awareness Month coincide. So much of my experience of queerness has been a reckoning with disability and its incommensurability with our community's fantasies of physical beauty and fitness.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Because I'm so often in pain, I alternate between sitting and standing while teaching. Very thankful to Joshua Guenther from The Daily Texan for this great of me joyously in discussion with my students.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Really struggling tonight: students have written to me in fear, and as someone who has studied the social and cultural problems of contagion and illness for most of my career, I feel totally unable to reassure them, let alone myself.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 month

Another gem: "it is unclear to me why the applicant requires archival access given the supposed dearth of sources -- is disability everywhere or nowhere? It is unclear what the applicant is seeking to find."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

A special day: I'm very proud to announce that my book PARING is available for pre-order with @FLPress :

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Just before I ugly cried in the restaurant. This is my maternal grandmother, 98 years old. She is losing her hearing and her short-term memory. She keeps shouting for joy that I finished my PhD. "A professor in my family!?" I wish grandpa were here to witness this.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

The special kind of joy when you realize 10 of your former students have enrolled again in your course.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

The adorable older lady across the hall leaves us gifts and cards at every holiday. I last learned she loved Romantic poetry, so I gifted her an anthology. This was her card to us for Easter.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

I am overjoyed to be able to share that my new chapbook VAGARIES will be published this month with Fork Tine Press under the editorial leadership of @SteveBellinOka .

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

Just learned I survived my pre-tenure review. These have been trying years beginning this job, but I'm proud of what I've done and all the folks who supported me in the pursuit of it in challenging conditions.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

Love that this profession thinks the following is okay: Me: "I've been struggling to manage my responsibilities and care work + grief work in the wake of losing two family members within the past 6 months." Them: "k this is still time sensitive and you signed up for this so"

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

31. Maybe not how I'd hope to celebrate the past year of such transition and success after so much sacrifice, but here's to thriving and new joy.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 month

@gracenbrilz This solidifies for me all the ways in which I've witnessed institutions talk about disability as an afterthought, as an extra, as a tacked on item in the list of minoritized identities, as the thing put off despite explicit legislation, as the charity we fund with what's left.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

I've never been territorial about the fields/subjects I work in because I don't believe in claiming that kind of ownership, but it still hurts to see folks working in similar areas who I've cited and signal-boosted but then bypass me entirely on their way to claiming expertise.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

6 years

I want to be extremely clear: we should not be cultivating an academic culture that imagined no place for disabled scholars. Scarcity or crisis rhetoric does not justify ableism. Period.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

New wool suit on a snowy day.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

Celebrating my graduating seniors and the official beginning of sabbatical.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

Received some unexpected good news this morning: got some grant money for my book project (though admittedly not sure when it will be safe / appropriate to go to the archives in the UK.)

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

It's about time for some updated author photos! Thanks Dee (Darren) Miller for giving them fall Columbus vibes 💞

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

@thelongviewtom I'm vain but not that vain

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

10 months

Back to silver, and it feels right.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

I just lost my uncle suddenly, and I'm at a loss. He passed while abroad, so I don't even know if I can lay him to rest. A death of a family member to start each of my semesters. This feels cyclical, cruel. I'm heartbroken.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

As a book review editor and reviewer myself, it has been just appalling to me that certain presses are refusing to send hard copies to reviewers even after those reviewers have disclosed access needs. A press just questioned why an electronic copy "isn't accessible enough."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 month

@gracenbrilz has written extensively on this and the experiences of disabled scholars in often unwelcoming and non inclusive archival spaces. As disabled scholars, sometimes we're looking for traces, ghosts, residues that escape research guides and finding aids.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

In the midst of a hectic move, I'm really excited to be joining the Literature and Medicine team as their new Book Review Editor. So grateful to be working with scholars I've read and admired for years and to amplify new work and voices.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

1 year

He hates me.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

2 years

It's honestly fucking surreal as a scholar of smallpox vaccine history to be receiving a smallpox vaccination for monkeypox.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

5 years

Been prompted to think about #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut and I keep coming back to a question a reporter for our campus newspaper asked me: "Do accommodations exist for faculty?"

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

Had a conversation with a colleague about break, and I shared that I was writing rec letters for students. They expressed concern about whether my letters would have weight because I'm a contingent faculty member, and that I might suggest my students find "stronger letters."

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

I applied to a graduate program in English, and I received an email from the department secretary asking whether or not I had native English fluency because my application noted I was born in Hong Kong. I called and spoke to her directly: she laughed, I didn't.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

4 years

2008-2020.

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)

@travisclau

3 years

I just received a revise&resubmit with minor revisions and two of the most generous reports that map out very clearly how to revise and how to extend the reach and access of the piece. It saddens me that this has happened but two other times in my academic publishing experience.

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