How Navigating the Demands of Academia Helped Me Cope With Terrible Loss
The first summer after my daughter died, I received an email invitation to give a keynote address the next spring. I didn’t know the scholar who invited me, but she’d been told that my daughter had recently died and offered.
In the summer of 2010, the author received an email invitation to give a keynote lecture the following spring. The sender, a scholar who knew about the author's recent loss, offered condolences. The invitation initially felt confusing to the author, who was struggling to process the death of their 18-year-old daughter, Frances, just weeks before. Frances had died suddenly from a massive stroke in April 2010, days before her high school graduation. The author found it difficult to reconcile the idea of academic work with their grief, as their research focused on historical cases of child injuries and deaths, including the cowboy suit tragedy (a mid-century incident where children's cowboy playsuits caught fire due to flammable fabric). The invitation, though unsettling at first, later proved to be a turning point in the author's coping process.
The author's grief over Frances's death occurred alongside significant professional achievements. In March 2010, their book Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States was published. In May 2010, they were promoted to full professor. These milestones were documented on the author's curriculum vitae (CV), a document listing academic achievements, publications, and professional experiences. Frances, who was eager to see her name in the book's acknowledgments, expressed disappointment that she shared a sentence with her brother instead of having her own. A month later, she died. The author struggled to see how these professional accomplishments could define their life after such a profound loss, as the CV did not reflect the personal significance of Frances's absence.
After accepting the keynote invitation, the author grappled with what to speak about. Weeks later, an idea emerged: to create a braided narrative weaving together three strands—the cowboy suit tragedy, the author's personal grief, and the concept of the CV. This approach felt like a moment of clarity after months of emotional numbness. The lecture, titled Telling Stories: A Meditation on Love, Loss, History and Who We Are, was delivered in April 2011 at the annual meeting of the Western Association of Women Historians. The format of a lecture provided a controlled way to share personal experiences, as it was a one-time event rather than a published piece, allowing the author to maintain control over their words.
The cowboy suit tragedy refers to a historical event in mid-20th-century America where children's cowboy playsuits, made of flammable fabric, caught fire, causing severe burns and fatalities. This incident was part of a larger research project by the author on product liability in 20th-century America. Initially, the author hesitated to contact survivors of the tragedy, fearing they would reopen old wounds. However, after Frances's death, the author recognized the importance of survivors sharing their stories. Conversations with survivors revealed that the trauma of the injury persisted over time, challenging the legal system's assumption that injuries could be resolved or finalized. This insight reshaped the author's understanding of law and its limitations.
The author expanded their research to include the history of the curriculum vitae (CV), the document used to track academic achievements. The CV's structure and categories reflect institutional and disciplinary boundaries, often privileging certain types of training, experience, and research while excluding others. By studying the CV's history, the author aimed to expose its constructed nature and the constraints it imposes on how knowledge and careers are evaluated. The author compared this to wearing a girdle on the outside of clothing to reveal its artificial shaping and limitations. This exploration became a central theme in the author's later work, including their book Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and the Course of a Life.
In the months following Frances's death, the author wrote letters to her daily, though they did not reread them at the time. These letters later became a key part of the lecture and eventually the book. The letters provided a way to process grief privately while also serving as a bridge to understand the experiences of families affected by the cowboy suit tragedy. The author only revisited the letters in 2020 while writing the book, finding in them a raw and personal account of grief that complemented the historical research. The lecture, delivered in April 2011, was the first public sharing of these emotions, and the positive response from the audience encouraged the author to continue exploring these themes in their writing.
The keynote lecture and subsequent research became a gradual path for the author to re-engage with life after Frances's death. The invitation provided a distant goal—a date on the calendar—that offered a sense of purpose and structure during a time of disorientation. The lecture was delivered just weeks before the first anniversary of Frances's death, marking a significant step in the author's grief process. Over time, the research and writing associated with the lecture evolved into the book *Writing with Fire*, which explores the intersections of personal loss, historical trauma, and academic structures. The author came to see this work not as a replacement for Frances but as a way to honor her memory while finding meaning in their own life.
