ABSTRACT
Writing in Covid-19 times has created challenges for everyone, but it has also unveiled opportunities. This chapter is written from the perspective of two women academics about their complementary experiences of writing for scholarly publication. Drawing from the concept of ‘slow, caring scholarship’ (Xu, 2020), we reflect upon how the pandemic has impacted the way we write and the way we support the writing of others. Using Hochschild's ‘second-shift’ thinking (Hochschild, 1989; Blair-Loy et al., 2015) alongside Macleod et al.'s (2011) adoption of containment theory, we use the material and conceptual notions of ‘home’ to explore the more gendered aspects of writing in terms of time, space and responsibilities, as ‘home’ creates additional complexities when time is stretched, space is shared and responsibilities are expanded. We also discuss how the home as a more visibilized and accepted part of people's lives offers less power-imbued ways to connect with others and gives a type of permission to be human in ways we have not seen before. The chapter concludes with policy and practice recommendations, including what we are calling ‘primer tasks’, to help shape the legacy of Covid-19 as slow, caring scholarship and to make writing for scholarly publication more rewarding and inclusive in academia.
