Johanna Shapiro, PhD
in my generation, there was a saying, “The personal is the political.” It meant that nothing that happens to us as individuals is only about our small, singular lives; rather, our private lives also reflect and comment on events occurring on a larger stage. I would extend this to include the possibility that the personal can also be the academic, in the sense that what affects us in our personal lives can also profoundly influence how we engage as academicians and scholars. This was certainly true for me.