Why Publish, and Why Publish in Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English?

In this editorial, I discuss the reasons why students would want to publish their academic work, as well as the benefits of publishing in Leviathan: Interdisciplinary journal in English specifically. I then introduce the articles in the first issue

Obscurantism in Academic Writing: What It Is and Why It Is Bad

Obscure academic writing is vague, ambiguous, jargon-filled, or otherwise difficult to interpret. Obscurantists use such writing to hide the shallowness or incoherence of their ideas. There is value in being able to see through their attempts so that one does not waste one’s time on, for example, the psychoanalytic verbiage of Jacques Lacan. Therefore, this article identifies five recognizable characteristics of obscure—and especially of obscurantist—academic writing. Specifically, obscurantists tend to (1) fail to distinguish between truistic and radical versions of their claims, (2) employ paradoxical formulations, (3) avoid giving examples of their ideas (4), overuse abstract nouns, and (5) insist on their own lucidity. The article concludes by suggesting that the deepest problem with obscure academic writing is that it insulates arguments and theories from criticism

Studying English at Aarhus University: The Unknown Unknowns

This editorial offers some tips for first-year students in the Department of English at Aarhus University. It advices students to get organized, hack their habits, use the library, and write shitty first drafts

Narrative video game aesthetics and egocentric ethics: A Deweyan perspective

This article argues that video gaming allows for player-focused (egocentric) moral experience that can be distinguished from the other-focused (allocentric) moral experience that characterizes literature and film. Specifically, a Deweyan perspective reveals that video games aff ord fi rst-personal rehearsals of moral scenarios that parallel how, in real life, individuals mentally rehearse the diff erent courses of moral action available to them. This functional equivalence is made possible because the aesthetics of video games bear unique affinities to the human moral imagination. However, whereas the moral imagination may be limited in terms of the complexity and vividness of its analog imaginings, the ethically notable video game may draw on the medium’s digital capacities in order to stage elaborate and emotionally compelling ethical rehearsals. The article concludes by applying this perspective to the ethically notable video game Undertale

Gregory Currie: Imagining and Knowing: The Shape of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020

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