Collaboration in the Humanities: The Art of the Academic Dance

Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson reflect on how their long-standing sisterly collaborative work in literary analysis began and evolved over time. They unfold how their particular collaborative process works, enabling them to cover multiple literary periods and navigate differences in approaches and writing styles. They also discuss the nature of collaborative work in general, and the way it is often measured (problematically) by the academy as piece-work rather than as a complex, multidimensional work that is often considerably more work than a single-authored article. They call for a re-evaluation of collaborative work in the humanities and greater recognition of the benefits it can offer.