An Open Call for Guest Blog Posts

Written by Bryné Hadnott

This could be you, writing a thought-provoking blog post in an idyllic office with macarons, tea, and fresh cut flowers. #workspacegoals

Are you known for your razor sharp wit and dry sense of humor? Are you that person in your friend group who has a hot take on literally every topic? Do your posts get retweeted by random celebrities because something about your opinions just "rings true" with people? Then, good news, everyone! The Women in Astronomy Blog is looking for your thought pieces, glow ups and glow downs, and any other thoughts rattling in your brain that can be arranged into a guest blog post of around 500 words or less.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of blog post ideas to get the brain juices flowing: 

Take a look, it's in a book review (e.g., The Disordered Cosmos)

Rotten Tomatoes-style movie critique (e.g., Don’t Look Up)

I went to a cool conference talk/panel/plenary/poster session!

A week or day in the life of …

What my institution is (or isn’t) doing to address ___________

What ______ gets wrong about _______ 

Since this is the Women in Astronomy Blog, all posts should highlight folks or issues related to underrepresented gender and minority groups in physics, astronomy, and related fields. We are here for intersectionality (shout out to Kimberlé Crenshaw, J.D.) and welcome posts that recognize and address the complexity of how gender is intertwined with any and all other identities. 

Hate speech and any language used to discriminate against or maliciously target a particular group of people—particularly on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion—are not welcome. 

With all of that in mind, to pitch a guest post, click the link here and let us know what you're thinking. 

Or, feel free to send an email with a short (< 300 words) pitch for your guest blog post, your name, and your affiliation to wia-blog@lists.aas.org. Anonymous posts will be considered on a case-by-case basis. 

Crosspost: A physicist’s lessons about race, power, and the universe

Written by Neel Dhanesha for Vox

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and a core faculty member in the women's studies department at the University of New Hampshire. Credit: Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

When Chanda Prescod-Weinstein was a 10-year-old growing up in East Los Angeles, she came across the Errol Morris documentary A Brief History of Time, which chronicled the life of the physicist Stephen Hawking. Watching it, Prescod-Weinstein says, she realized Hawking “was being paid to use math all day to solve problems Einstein hadn’t worked out.”

For a queer Black Jewish kid from a working-class neighborhood who liked doing math, that seemed like a pretty good deal. “That was really where I got my first taste of the idea that math is kind of like the language of the universe,” Prescod-Weinstein told me.

She’s now an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire, where she studies dark matter and particle physics. She’s also on the core faculty of the university’s Women’s Studies department — a seemingly unusual combination that hints at the multifaceted approach she brings to her work.

In 2021, Prescod-Weinstein published The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, & Dreams Deferred, a wide-ranging book that is both a scientific explainer and an argument that unjust power structures shape the world of physics. She tells stories of subatomic particles like baryons, which are the building blocks of atoms; she critiques a trend she’s seen, in which writers compare the mystery and invisibility of dark matter to the lived experiences of Black people. In a chapter called “Rape Is Part of This Scientific Story” — a chapter that grew unexpectedly out of her writing on the dark universe, and that she debated including in the book — she writes about how her own experience of sexual assault shaped her understanding of injustices in her field.

Read Dhanesha's full and fascinating interview with Dr. Prescod-Weinstein at:

https://www.vox.com/22880089/physics-race-chanda-prescod-weinstein-disordered-cosmos