Between April 3-6, 2025, I attended the 2025 Annual Organization of American Historians (OAH) Conference. I presented my academic work during a graduate students’ lightning round entitled “Emerging Voices in Queer and Trans* Histories and Histories of Sexuality.” I discussed how police brutality in Memphis, TN, affects Black women and Black queer people, as well as how impacted communities reacted to such violence by enacting racial and social change. The presentation was well-received, and I smiled joyfully, remembering how hard it had been to craft a five-minute summary of the research I had been conducting for the past two years.
OAH was a transformative experience for me. I met scholars who shaped not only my scholarship, but fields like sexuality history (i.e., Dr. John D’Emilio), Black women history (i.e., Dr. Deborah Gray White), and history of police brutality (i.e., Dr. Elizabeth Hinton and Dr. Treva B. Lindsey). However, the most impactful part of the conference was that my brain was functioning again, and my neuroplasticity was almost back to normal.
In the summer of 2024, I was diagnosed with treatment resistant depression. I had already been diagnosed with major depressive disorder almost a decade before, but between Fall 2023 and Spring/Summer 2024, my mental health severely declined. It was one of the hardest times of my life, perhaps the hardest, and my brain became incapable of producing any kind of scholarship. For more than a year, I did not touch my dissertation, because I mentally could not.
The way I describe what I went through to someone who is not as familiar with mental health illness, is to imagine my body as an old car model, with my brain as the battery. They stopped manufacturing the car and its parts decades ago, and it is impossible for me to get any other car, or replace the battery. During those months, my battery slowly but inexorably stopped functioning, until I could perform basic functions like turning the radio or the blinkers on, but it would not drive. It could not drive. I felt stuck, and defeated, because if my brain doesn’t work, then who am I?
I had a therapist not too long ago who challenged me any time I identified my sense of self-worth with my ability to “produce.” She asked me that question over and over, “who is Paola without her brain,” and I could never answer her, because not being able to read and write and research and make connections and and and… was such a foreign thought that I never indulged it. And then it happened. And it was terrifying. I felt like all I had accomplished in 36 years was now meaningless, because I had lost the ability to do more.
Thankfully, I had friends who did not allow me to self-isolate and disappear in my misery, I was able to find a treatment that fixed my battery, albeit slowly. For the first few months of Fall 2024, I could only read and process information for about 1 hour. Then the hours became 2. Then 3. I stopped attending lectures because I could not focus. I have always been a fast reader, but I found myself looking at the same page again and again as my brain retrained itself to comprehend and summarize.
Presenting at OAH and being able to participate in scholarly conversations was a huge accomplishment. I had set a goal for myself: no matter how long my recovery took, I would present. I still tired myself more than I would have before, but my ability to fully engage with other scholars and students still represented an incredible milestone. I felt accomplished, and relieved, and I almost cried a few times out of incredulity and gratefulness. My brain was coming back, and so Paola was coming back, too.
Although I had several friends who supported me, none of them were part of my cohort. I began my PhD program in August 2020, and thus it was hard to form a community of graduate students I could share my academic journey with. Those I became close to were either almost at the end of the program, or they enrolled during my second or third year. I had heard before that graduate school can be an isolating experience, and I definitely felt the disconnect between my peers and me as my depression worsened. Thankfully, my professors understood my situation and have been in my corner, supporting me in any way they could. But it was not until I attended OAH that I realized how much I miss belonging to an academic community.
The exchange of ideas and the passionate discussions stimulated my mental agility for the first time after months of neuro-immobility. I remember talking to a scholar and delineating ways in which to find sources about the topic we were discussing, on the spot, without consulting any kind of literature, instead retrieving information and methods already stored in my brain, something I had not been able to do in so long. I almost broke down in front of him, realizing what I had done. Instead, I smiled and continued with our conversation, comforted.
It is almost June 2025, and I still don’t have an answer to, “who is Paola without her brain?” What I do have, however, is a newfound awareness of the importance of connections during one’s scholarly career. Everybody’s academic journey is different, as everyone’s struggle is different. However, there is solidarity in shared experiences, and the reawakening of my faculties I experienced at OAH made me long for a sense of belonging that can only be found amidst a cohort of graduate students. My wish is for my story to reach someone who might experience a similar struggle, and my hope is for them to find healing and embracement among their peers, so that they can comfortably seek and find the help they need, knowing that they are not alone as they battle with themselves.
Paola—Bio
Paola Cavallari is an Italian history PhD candidate at the University of Memphis, and a cat mom to Muffin and Mouse. She also holds two master’s degrees, one in Public Service from the Clinton School of Public Service, and one in Public History from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Paola’s research focus on the impact of police brutality on BIPOC communities, and on how those communities responded to the violence and enacted change. When she is not working on her dissertation, Paola loves traveling, reading, writing poetry and prose, and cooking for her friends.
