Livermush and Scholarly Production

I have never tried livermush, but it sounds gross.  I would do anything possible to avoid having to eat it. 

Two Western Carolina University professors have challenged each other to produce five scholarly articles before Memorial Day.  The loser will have to eat livermush. 

This is one way to avoid scholarly procrastination.  Here is some more information on their bet, courtesy of an article in Inside Higher Ed:

The idea arose when Kreuter, a first-year assistant professor in the English department, and Byrnes, a second-year assistant professor of sociology, were drinking and talking about how much scholarship they needed to get done this year. That talk escalated into a sort of dare. “I threw out the number five as kind of a bluff,” Kreuter says. “And she called me on it.”

After the two established a finish line, they tried to figure out what the punishment should be. “We kicked around things like indentured servitude, but in the end we wanted something we both thought we would absolutely detest,” Byrnes says. “To us, the idea of livermush was just the most horrifying thing.”

While the meat has numerous fans, Byrnes and Kreuter are not among them. Neither has ever tried the dish, and both say that while they respect Appalachian culture, they are not fond of organ meat, particularly when it is processed.

They wrote up a contract, got the chairman of the English department to witness it, and set about cooking up papers. Throughout the year they would occasionally send each other small taunts about how they would cook the dish should one of them lose.

Read the entire article here.

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