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The Scholarly Letter

A weekly publication for the examined intellectual life.

Masthead:

San Choudhury and Reece Barlow

Featured Posts

Commentary

On Becoming 'Disgustingly Educated'

Jun 11, 2026

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6 min read

On Becoming 'Disgustingly Educated'

It’s no longer sexy to simply have your nails done or your hair styled. What’s sexy now is the performance of how much you know.

Essay

The On-lightenment

May 29, 2026

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12 min read

The On-lightenment

It is the experience of sensing that we know things in a light shaped by the structural conditions of our chronically online lives.

Fiction

The Man Who Killed The Library

Apr 23, 2026

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22 min read

The Man Who Killed The Library

"They said you have committed a crime against knowledge, just like when the Library of Alexandria was bur- ."

Essay

The Scholar Manifesto

Apr 20, 2025

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13 min read

The Scholar Manifesto

We produce and discard knowledge like the way clothes get produced, consumed, and discarded in fast fashion.

Archive

Essay

+1

Let’s talk public scholarship.

Jun 25, 2026

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7 min read

Let’s talk public scholarship.

In many ways, this arrangement is not entirely new: it resembles, in important respects, how intellectual work was supported before the rise of the modern university.

Essay

Intellectual FOMO: Feeds and Feelings

Jun 18, 2026

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9 min read

Intellectual FOMO: Feeds and Feelings

Why does a feed full of intelligent people and intelligent ideas make me want to open Instagram less and less?

Submission Calls

Call for Submissions: Scholarship in the Age of the On-lightenment

Jun 14, 2026

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3 min read

Call for Submissions: Scholarship in the Age of the On-lightenment

We are inviting personal non-fiction essays that examine scholarship under the conditions of the On-lightenment.

Commentary

On Becoming 'Disgustingly Educated'

Jun 11, 2026

•

6 min read

On Becoming 'Disgustingly Educated'

It’s no longer sexy to simply have your nails done or your hair styled. What’s sexy now is the performance of how much you know.

Essay

The Devaluation of Writing

Jun 4, 2026

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6 min read

The Devaluation of Writing

We had already spent decades building a world organised around writing more and more, faster and faster, until abundance itself began to change what writing was worth.

Essay

The On-lightenment

May 29, 2026

•

12 min read

The On-lightenment

It is the experience of sensing that we know things in a light shaped by the structural conditions of our chronically online lives.

Commentary

On Loving a Discipline in Decline

May 21, 2026

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5 min read

On Loving a Discipline in Decline

We both love the disciplines we have devoted ourselves to. We both tell stories about their decline, each of us locating the causes in ways that no doubt contain blind spots of their own.

Review

Fixing Academia Without Reimagining It

May 21, 2026

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4 min read

Fixing Academia Without Reimagining It

The gown becomes almost tragicomic in this context. Rather than interrogating why symbolic hierarchy matters so much in academia, the solution becomes extending access to its ceremonial symbols.

Fiction

The Man Who Killed The Library

Apr 23, 2026

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22 min read

The Man Who Killed The Library

"They said you have committed a crime against knowledge, just like when the Library of Alexandria was bur- ."

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