thanks for not being a zombie

...is this thing on?

Posted by at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your reading list:

1. "Serious Bloggers," by Jeff Rice at Inside Higher Ed
2. " To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me " (New York Times)
3. "Thank You, Professor Powerful," by Tim Burke
4. "goodbye, 15 minutes" and "please, 15 minutes -- just go" at Xoom

Jeff Rice argues that we should not treat academic blogs so seriously, and that if we do, we run the risk of stagnation:

When we become too serious about novel ideas too quickly, we deny ourselves the ability to experiment with and develop the very innovations in communication we are attracted to in the first place. In turn, we replicate processes already in circulation; i.e., we maintain a status quo and fail to explore possibilities raised by the new medium.

The NYT article had the potential to explore some of the interesting ways in which new media are affecting professor/student communication, but instead turned into yet another "Those darn kids!" piece. Meg, at Xoom, writes of her displeasure of being misrepresented in the article, and even chimes in on Tim Burke's blog to respond to his criticism of what she's quoted as saying.

One important thing that blogs let those of us in academia do is represent ourselves. Ideally, this would lead to a new image of who academics are. Of course, readers will often be able to see what they want in what they read, so that blog content will always be received by some as confirmation of the worst academic sterotypes already in existence. However, there's a great deal to be said for the way we make our work public in our blogs, not just the finished product of the syllabus, the article, or the book, but also the process by which we got there.

For example, I think the material found in the Teaching Carnivals does a great job, for the most part, of giving readers a window on the thinking behind what goes on in the classroom, and it allows for a kind of cross-disciplinary pollination that is too rarely found in other venues.

Academic bloggers also often create a persona in which the fullness of their lives is visible, from research and teaching to cooking and dating. There are naysayers in the IHE comment thread who argue that blogging about personal subject mattter is "lame," but they overlook the ways in which our personal experiences affect (positively as well as negatively) our research and our performance in the classroom. I'm not saying "anything goes" with blogs, but I guess I'm agreeing with what Rice argues about experimentation; let's not fear the unexpected in style, in content. Let's not assume we already know what's best for this brand new form.

It is not yet possible to classify and explain what academic blogging is, to create implied rules, to assume that there are neat generic boundaries that define the different kinds of bloggers. The genre is too new. We're still trying things out. If you're going to write about academic blogging, write about it as an emergent form, constantly changing, not yet (if ever) settled.

There are plenty of venues in which the only thing the reader sees is the starched shirt facade of the professional academic, and it would be foolhardy to argue that there's nothing wrong with leaving things this way. May we please give ourselves permission to explore a genre of writing where something different might take place?

Update: Links via Technorati of other bloggers addressing Rice's essay.

Posted by at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

"i don't care if it hurts.
i wanna have control."

My inside sources tell me that this video is very popular in some quarters of the Purdue mechanical engineering graduate program.

Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hands to keyboard before fully awake. Trying to break the blog writing block. Get the words out before the critical editor in your head notices what you're doing. Don't start reading. Yet. Don't get distracted. Write. What do you want to say? What do you need to say? Figure it out. Go.

Posted by at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Chuck and I will be at Teaism in Dupont Circle, probably from about 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. or so. Come on by, if you like. Dave and Natalie are running the Marine Corps Marathon, so you might want to go cheer them on, instead.

If you've never met me, this is what I look like, except my hair is short and dark, now.

Posted by at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So how about a D.C. blogger meetup at Teaism in Dupont Circle on Sunday, October 30? I'll be in the area for a conference and would like to meet up and catch up with my D.C. blogging peeps.

Since Prometheus is in the shop, and I'm heading back to Newnan for a few days, I probably won't have access to the Internet for a little while. I should be back online in time to check messages for the meetup, though.

By the way, it seems that the blog was acting up yesterday, not letting you access some individual entries. However, I've rebuilt all the pages, so things should be back to normal.

Posted by at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (2)

I'll be away from home for a few weeks, taking care of a family member who is having major surgery on Tuesday. I don't know what my Internet access will be like, so I don't know what my blogging will be like. I'll probably do some audio blogging here from time to time.

There will be cats and, eventually, cat pictures. So there's that.

Now, a friend of mine is trying to set up either Drupal or MovableType on a Neural.com account and is having some difficulty. Can anyone help him out with advice or assistance? If so, please leave your email address for him in the comments to this post.

I'm off with a trunk full of books and my laptop. For now, adieu.

Posted by at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lots of people lately are blogging about the process of writing. One common thread is that you need to write at least a little bit every day in order to be productive.

• Joe confronts his writer's block daily.
• Mel explains that in her pre-tenure days, "I could not approach my writing as a space of freedom or exploration because I felt so constrained by institutional expectations."
• Katrina-blogging led to some insights for Kathleen: "the more I wrote, the more I found worth writing about." Collin responds to and expands on this post by pointing out the value of blogging as a daily, disciplined, exploratory practice, which leads Kathleen to more observations.
• The Academic Coach shares advice from Tara Gray: "Write Daily. Share Weekly."
• Nels finds that a coffeeshop and timed writing can lead to productivity, and I suspect he's not alone.

It's a good thing for writers to share their experience of writing, because I suspect that for most of us it's pretty damn hard. It's reassuring to know that we're not alone in the struggle. When academic (and non-academic) bloggers write about these things, it not only makes us reflect upon our own teaching practices--which almost inevitably involve teaching writing--but it also demonstrates to the students who read our blogs that we are engaged in the struggle, too. There's no magic pill that makes writing effortless: it's work.

I had to pull myself out of the blogging path I was starting because it was not helping me get done the work I need to get done this semester. The increase in readers (my traffic more than doubled) and the feeling that I was writing about something important were both addictive, but in the end, that's not why I'm here.

Disciplining myself to instead write a blog entry about the study of sound was much more helpful because explaining my research to a general (though mostly academic) blog-reading audience requires me to understand what's at issue for me. Additionally, not only did it get me back to thinking more fully and more richly about my research, but it also garnered two responses in just a few hours.

I realize now, living a thousand miles away from my job for a semester, that the "institutional expectations" mentioned by Mel have kept me frozen in fear and hesitation. In particular, being told again and again and again by my university's grant-awarding program that what I am on working just isn't up to snuff kept me in an unproductive spiral of worry. However, when the National Endowment for the Humanities told me something different, I began to realize that perhaps the problem is not with me.

I think that overcoming the anxiety of these expectations has to involve putting them out of your head and connecting yourself, psychologically and literally, to a wider group of scholars than the ones at your home institution. This is one of the valuable things about academic conferences. And about academic blogging. If I get two responses to a blog entry on my research so quickly, that's likely to catapult me into a productive afternoon at my own local coffeeshop.

There are a few gaps between academic blogging and academic publishing, though:

1. The length of your average blog entry is much, much shorter than an article or a book chapter. So how does one translate blogging the research into writing an article or chapter?
2. Second, the pace of feedback in academic publishing is practically glacial. So how do you ignore the addictive qualities of instant feedback for the delayed gratification of print publication?
3. Third, blogging does not involve much, if any, revision. Most of my non-blog writing lately is revision and expansion of things I've already written (though much of that expansion is brand! new! stuff!). So how do you simultaneously embrace the discipline of daily writing and the necessity of constant editing and revision?

Dear reader, I welcome--nay, I long for--your thoughts on these questions.

Posted by at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Sometimes it feels like we wake up every morning only to have the same arguments over and over and over again as if the arguments we had yesterday had never happened.

Case in point: John Unsworth's 1994 essay, "Electronic Scholarship or, Scholarly Publishing and the Public," should be required reading for any future columnists who want to address academic blogging in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

In many quarters of our profession, and among some of its immediate neighbors, the electronification of scholarly communication has become the occasion of more than a little anxiety over the past five or six years. This gradual but apparently inevitable change in the way we go about our business is affecting scholars and students in many different disciplines of the humanities and the sciences, as well as academic and commercial publishers, tenure-committees, university administrators, MLA policy-makers, private and government funding agencies, and librarians. The change that is taking place has profound implications, implications that are ethical and philosophical, economic, formal and generic, legal, and--sometimes overwhelmingly--practical and procedural.

Our responses to this change and its implications have covered the full range from despair to rejoicing, but for the most part they have focused on the local effects of the situation, rather than on understanding our circumstances as a limited and special case of a much more general shift in the culture as a whole. With few exceptions, academics have not successfully addressed the public on the more global effects of computers, networks, and electronic communication, and where they have, their discourse has generally fallen prey to the impulse to celebrate or to condemn the imagined, rather than to analyze or even extrapolate from the real.

People, he wrote this in 1994. It's one thing to disagree with what scholars have been saying about electronic communication and academia for well over a decade. It's another thing altogether to just ignore--a la Ivan Tribble--what they've said.

Posted by at 8:19 AM | Permalink

Do you know, dear reader, if there is an easy way to create RSS feeds of different categories of a blog? In this way, you could subscribe only to my posts about "language and literature," for example. Can you do it in MovableType without too much fuss? Can you do it in WordPress?

Technorati: blogging, rss

Posted by at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Last night, I was IM'ing with Weez, who's currently attending HCI 2005 in Edinburgh, about this and that, and we were looking for other bloggers who might be at the same conference. We came upon one computer scientist whose blog is all business, which led to the following exchange.

Continue reading "crackalackin'" »

Posted by at 11:07 AM | Permalink

Poor Ivan Tribble. So misunderstood. He's back to defend his original column on why it's a bad idea for academics to keep blogs.

Bill Tozier thinks Tribble may have a point:

if I wanted to work in a slow-witted, risk-averse, tyrannically hierarchical, self-importantly pompous, committee-burdened, navel-gazing hidey-hole tucked far away from the world and its concerns ... well, I'd be in trouble then, wouldn't I?

Collin Brooke reveals the (small) kernel of advice at the heart of the columns:

I suspect that CHE isn't paying a whole of money these days to folks writing essays about "How I Hate Blogs." So you've dressed it up as market advice, a column "to help some people land tenure-track jobs." And if your point was "Don't blog; it'll get you in trouble" then even though I disagree, at least there was some point to your essay. Of course, that point, as you seem aware, requires more evidence than a "trend" (?!) identified from a single search in a single discipline at a single school. Originally, you seemed more than willing to make that particular leap in the interests of poking at the blogosphere.

If your basic point is "Be careful what you say," then I'm looking forward to seeing whether or not CHE bothers to pay you for a third column. Because that's not a warning that will help people land jobs--it's a bumper sticker.

Tribble thinks the bloggers who responded to his original column were missing his central point:

As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don't "get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.

Here are a couple of other things I'm sure Tribble doesn't "get":

• del.icio.us links for "tribble" (add your own if you have an account)
• Technorati links for "ivan+tribble"

Tribble assumes that "many in the tenured generation" think just like him. "Many" is a useless word to job seekers. "Many in the tenured generation" haven't kept up with the scholarship in their field, either. Should job seekers try to appear to be equally clueless about the latest developments? "Many in the tenured generation" don't like people who drive imports. "Many in the tenured generation" have model train sets. Who cares?

The fact of the matter is that "many in the tenured generation" will be turned off by job applicants with a dismissive attitude towards academic blogging.

Matt K accumulated examples of the benefits of blogging. What has Tribble accumulated? Anything outside his own experience and opinion?

*crickets*

It's one thing to be ignorant. It's worse to be incurious. But worst of all is to be smug and willfully ignorant. Whether you blog or not, you'd better hope the hiring committees considering your application can't figure it out if the third of these describes your intellectual profile.

Posted by at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I got yer bunny right here!

Update: Rana's watching critters, too.

Posted by at 5:12 PM | Permalink

Max enjoys the sun streaming through the kitchen window onto this ledge. (Those are his cremains in the box.) He's been here for days.

Posted by at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

To answer a question from Jason: If you already have a Blogger account (they're free), then it's very easy to use Audioblogger.

Posted by at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I returned the cable modem today, and now I'm blogging to you on one of the six wireless signals that saturate my apartment. I plan to audio blog over the next few days at this location, so check in there if you want updates on the cross-country move. The packers arrive tomorrow. I don't know what my Internet access will be like before Tuesday, but we're supposed to have the new service hooked up on that day at some point.

Posted by at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've just downloaded a new software application called Ecto that allows me to compose blog entries on my desktop and then post them to my blog.

Update: Hmm. Still trying to work out the bugs...

Update 2: Has a built-in iTunes function that automatically specifies what you're listening to while you compose your entry. e.g. "Sway" from the album Paint It Blue: Songs Of The Rolling Stones by Alvin Youngblood Hart.

Also has something for uploading photos to your blog from your iPhoto collection.

Update 3: And a built-in Amazon function to find books and insert links to the relevant Amazon page. e.g. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Update 4: Trying out the iTunes thing again. "Spanish Harlem" from the album The Best Of Aretha Franklin by Aretha Franklin.

Posted by at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

After thinking about the Tribble issue for several days now (and about some of the responses which seem sympathetic to some of what he has to say), I think that underlying the argument against academic blogging is some combination of the following:

1. You are inherently unlikeable. There is something (and there are possibly several things) wrong with you. If people find out about the real you, they will not want to hire you or tenure you. So keep your mouth shut. Reveal as little as you can get away with.
2. Your potential future colleagues are so narrow-minded and cranky that they are likely to reject you for any sign that you are a real, flesh-and-blood human being.

I do not believe in either one of these assumptions. And if they were widely held, who in their right mind would want to work in academia?

Another underlying assumption is that bloggers are on one side of the academic power divide and everyone else is on the other, as if only those without tenure-track jobs and without tenure are blogging. This is demonstrably false.

Careful. If you keep blogging, you won't land a tenure-track job. Not true.

Careful. If you keep blogging, you won't make tenure. Nope, not true, and not even close.

Let's say you've applied for a job, and I'm on the hiring committee, or any one of the bloggers who are tenured or in tenure-track jobs.

Do you really think we're going to say, "Blogging?! Why in the world has this person been wasting their time blogging?"

Please.

Four more thoughts concerning assumptions about academic blogging:

Answer: No they don't. Or rather, correct me if I'm wrong. What blogger has ever said this?

2. If you are spending your time blogging, then you are not working on publishing in peer-reviewed venues.

Answer: Many blogs function in part as launching pads for ideas that will later appear in peer reviewed venues. The initial thoughts are posted, feedback is solicited, an article is written, and publication ensues. Matt K has blogged portions of his forthcoming book from MIT Press. The writers at Crooked Timber, have, from time to time, discussed the ways in which blogged items have turned into peer-reviewed publications. A couple of things like that have also gone up at the Valve, as well.

Answer: Right. So don't blog. And don't wear a wedding ring in your interview. Don't give them any hint you might be gay. Don't talk about your kids. Don't order the only vegetarian item on the menu. Don't speak with any sort of accent. Don't wear anything but the blandest clothes. Don't talk about what kind of music you like, or the movies you recently watched. Don't express any opinion that anyone anywhere at any time might disagree with. In short, behave as much like a humorless robot as you possibly can. Job offers are sure to come rolling in because if there's one thing academics are looking for in a colleague, it's humorless, paranoid fear. We just can't get enough of it.

Answer: Come on. Someone who would say this is not even paying attention. The comments in Matt K's entry on the subject reveal that blogging has had many professional benefits for people. The Tribble piece sparked quite a conversation: over 300 posts and counting, according to Technorati. This conversation should make clear, there is an academic network that has been established by blogs (just as an academic network exists around listservs, around journals, and around conferences). Those who participate are part of that network, graduate students included. Being a part of this network has value, whether everyone outside of this network realizes it or not.

4. Academics should admit to doing nothing but work.

Answer: One can do things other than work and also complete an impressive amount of one's work.

I refuse to believe that we have reached the point in the academic workplace where one risks unemployment by answering yes to the following question: "Do you do things other than work?"

The strong negative reaction to the Tribble essay comes for the most part not from a sense that blogging should be considered serious scholarship, but from a sense that the Tribbles seem to consider everything you do besides work on your scholarship as an excuse not to hire you. It certainly doesn't make sense to list a very informal blog on your CV, but Tribble makes it clear that he'll use Google (and the Google cache, if necessary) to find out what you've been up to. That's pathetic, frankly.

But let's say you should heed his advice. Let's say that you hide as much about yourself as you can in order to get hired. And let's say you do get hired at Tribble University.

To land this job, you had to hide many aspects of yourself from your future colleagues. You had to make sure that you did nothing online that the people who apparently go to Google to look for dirt on you would find inappropriate. Now what?

Do you think suddenly your new colleagues are going to turn into warm and fuzzy, supportive friends?

You've got six years to make tenure. Those will be six long years of keeping your mouth shut, refraining from any discussion online that might come back to haunt you, refraining from doing anything that Tribble could use to deny you tenure, which seems to be just about anything.

Have fun.

On the other hand, let's say you didn't get hired by Tribble. I'd say you dodged a bullet.

And finally, let me make this statement (sorry if it sounds inappropriately grandiose): If I am ever on a hiring committee for a job to which you have applied, and you have included your blog on your CV, or I happen to find out that you have a blog, or I already read your blog...I pledge to treat you fairly as a job applicant and not to use the mere fact of your blogging as an excuse to discard your application.

Update: Thanks to everyone for your comments.

On a related note, today, Dooce links to this BBC News story: Digital Citizens: The Blogger.

I like that phrase Digital Citizen. It conveys a certain dignity to what we do in our blogs, and (as Kari points out) on del.icio.us, on Flickr.

You know who Dooce is, right? She's the blogger who inspired the term "dooced." She also talks a lot about poop, which I guess throws off the whole "certain dignity" thing, but what the hey.

She does offer some good advice in a sidebar to the article:

If you choose to blog under your own name never write anything about anyone in your life that you wouldn't say to them face to face.

I also think she's right on to say

The power of personal publishing is only going to get bigger. It's intoxicating.

Posted by at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

I realize that in saying that blogging makes our work (the teaching, the research) public, I am implying that blogging itself is not the work we do. I'm saying, in effect, if I blog about writing an article, then I'm making my work public. However, if I post a blog entry about an issue related to language and literature, then that's just blogging.

Hmm.

Clearly that's an arbitrary boundary I'm drawing between blogging and work.

I thought about this after reading a thoughtful post by The Little Professor concerning historical fiction, a post that is both about the work that she is doing, but also an example of the work that she is doing.

One might say that the question should be something like, Will your blogging count towards tenure? or perhaps Can you list this blog on your CV? If so, then what you blog is, in fact, your work.

No, those questions aren't really satisfactory, are they?

Posted by at 3:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Scott blogs about writing up the research he did in the British Library. This, too, is something I've said before about academic blogging: making public the work we do is important. This, dear reader, is how it goes.

Scott describes his use of OmniOutliner for working on his article, making the application sound very attractive to me, as my cognitive wires are such that I tend to get lost in the ocean of words before me on the screen in a traditional word processor. I had downloaded the application before, but didn't really give it a solid tryout. I'll give it another spin.

Posted by at 7:04 AM | Permalink

Matt K once asked "Will blogs kill listserv"?

As with blogs, academics have been using listservs for many years to exchange ideas, argue, rant, ask and answer questions. Would any hiring committee in their right mind look upon a job candidate's use of a listserv as a reason not to hire them? Hopefully not; the electronic exchange of ideas is one of the best features of academic life on the Internet.

Yet in a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Bloggers need not apply," the pseudonymous "Ivan Tribble" writes of those foolish, foolish academic bloggers who shoot themselves in the foot by putting their thoughts online.

The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one's unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It's not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it's also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.

Let's do a bit of cut and paste, shall we?

The pertinent question for [users of academic listservs] is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one's unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It's not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it's also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.

Interesting, no?

Are listservs somehow exempt from the worst excesses of blogs? Hardly. Take a look at the July 2005 archives of C18-L (a listserv ostensibly devoted to all things eighteenth century) for discussions of this week's bombings in London.

I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, and to be understanding of one's need to vent from time to time. If hiring committees think that weeding out all the bloggers is going to keep the hard-to-handle folks out of their candidate pool, they are being hopelessly naive.

Attention world: I use my blogging powers for good.

But come to think of it, I need to start working on some sort of "Blogging statement of purpose" so that new readers coming to my blog can get a sense of why I do what I do...you know, I'll work on that in all my free time.

(via Bitch PhD. See also The Little Professor, Planned Obsolescence, and Acephalous, who links to many other bloggers' observations.)

Update: Here is what Technorati says about links to the essay.

Update 2: For an alternative take on academic blogging (i.e. informed and non-technophobic), check out Ralph Luker's "Were There Blog Enough and Time." (via ScribblingWoman)

Posted by at 3:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay, our software is up and running, except that comments are disabled at the moment. All should be back to normal before too very long.

Posted by at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's a sunny, cool Sunday morning here in Manchester. The weather up north is not as warm as it was down in London, and that's just fine with me. I'm working on fulfilling Laura's suggestion regarding local pix. A local coffee shop features a free, 30-day trial of their WiFi service, allowing me to check in periodically. I had ethernet in my room in London, which is why I was blogging (and reading online) more.

Yesterday I became the last person in the world to buy a copy of the (so far very enjoyable) Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell. I also saw Batman Begins. My verdict? Best. Batman. Ever.

You know what? I feel good. Although L is currently several thousand miles away, and we will have spent a total of eight weeks apart this summer, I am made quite happy by being in the archives, reading otherwise inaccessible materials, and writing rough drafts that will (with any luck) appear as articles and/or as a book.

Happiness is not something I've blogged about a great deal. And happiness runs the risk of being boring. I believe it was Tolstoy who first observed that "Happy bloggers are all alike; every unhappy blogger is unhappy in his or her own way."

Continue reading "happiness is a warm blog" »

Posted by at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This weekend I will likely do a good bit of walking around Manchester. If you suggest a theme for some photographs, I will do my best to create an interesting set of pix on Flickr.

The cows are gone, alas.

Posted by at 3:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Obviously I've been running on some kind of deficit: I was out cold for 15 hours last night.

In other news, within about 20 minutes of each other, I ran into two American bloggers yesterday at the BL: Scott and Meg. Add that to the list of advantages of having a Flickr account and relatively unusual hair.

Sundays are my only days off--the other days you'll find me hunched over a desk in the library, reading at breakneck speed, ruining my back--which means laundry and some sightseeing. Unfortunately for me, Westminster Abbey and Wesley's Chapel are not open for such shenanigans on Sundays. I'd like to see the stained glass window at W.A. commemorating eighteenth-century novelist Frances (Fanny) Burney, but that will have to wait for another trip. Maybe I'll head to the Tate Modern, instead.

I'll meet Meg for a beer later this afternoon.

Posted by at 3:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it looks like we've found a place to live in the city to which we will be moving in August. Close to the university, 60% of our current rent, a house in a subdivision. I have never lived in the suburbs before. No, really.
2. I've added a list in my sidebar called "This week's 10." It's a list of blogs I intend to visit and comment upon relatively regularly for a week through web browsing (rather than an RSS feed). Someone--I've forgotten who now--suggested doing this in a recent blog entry.
3. I'm going to paint myself into a blogging corner with promises of two forthcoming posts:
   1. A post on working in the archives.
   2. A post in response to Scott Eric Kaufman's on teaching literature and history.

Off to the library...

Posted by at 3:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

What would you like me to blog about? Are my research updates boring you?

Continue reading "okay, y'all" »

Posted by at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I've uploaded a bunch of my pix from last year's trip to England and France. I think I'm going to go ahead and get a pro Flickr account ($24.95/year) because I've already exceeded my month's allotment of free bandwidth, and I'm inclined to take a lot more pictures if there's an easy way to share them online with others.

I bought a bottle of 18-year-old single malt Scotch in this shop at one of the London airports (Gatwick, I think, although I also used Heathrow).

I am still in love with Flickr, by the way.

Posted by at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Inspired by Jill, I've created a feed that comines my blog entries with my Flickr pix and my del.icio.us links. Alternately, you can subscribe to my Flickr photos as an RSS 2.0 feed or an Atom feed

Don't know what I'm talking about? Read this.

Posted by at 10:36 AM | Permalink

On Wednesday, the 'herders and friends gathered in D.C. (I was not among them, alas).

Last night, after spending a few hours with a friend from out of town (from D.C., coincidentally enough), I patronized Harry's Country Club Bar with some KC Bloggers.

Social software meets flesh and blood...

Posted by at 8:26 AM | Permalink

Okay, as previously mentioned, I'll be in Annapolis October 27-30 for a conference, and Weez says she'll be visiting her folks in D.C., so let's not let the May meetup participants have all the fun. Why not meet at the Dupont Circle Teaism at some point? It's too soon for me to know exactly when a good time would be (since the conference schedule is not finalized, yet), but perhaps Sunday?

Posted by at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[Edited for clarity of dates.] In the near to not-so-near future I will likely find myself in

• London, England: June 3-27 that's 13-27
• Manchester, England: June 27-July 16
• Charlotte, North Carolina: August to January
• Annapolis, Maryland: 27-30 October
• Charleston, South Carolina: undetermined visiting
• Savannah, Georgia: undetermined visiting
• Atlanta, Georgia: undetermined visiting
• Columbus, Georgia: undetermined visiting
• Macon, Georgia: undetermined visiting

Please plan accordingly for the festivities to celebrate my arrival.

Alternately, let me know if you live in or near one of these areas and would like to meet for coffee or a meal or a night of drink and debauchery.

I know of a cluster of D.C.-area bloggers and Atlanta-area ones. I am looking in your general direction. If you are anonymous, I promise not to blog meeting you so that your location can remain secret.

That is all.

Posted by at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Following the example of a number of fine bloggers, I offer you the eyes (click for the full face featuring newly bleached hair):

The Friday cats (not mine):

The random ten:

1. "Starla," Smashing Pumpkins
2. "Under the Influence (Follow Me)," Cee-Lo
3. "Xplosion," Outkast
4. "Ticker-Tape of the Unconscious," Stereolab
5. "Some Catch Flies," Kristin Hersh
6. "Warm Love," Van Morrison
7. "Modern Romance," Yeah Yeah Yeahs
8. "I'll Stick Around," Foo Fighters
9. "Dead Man: 2 Sonatas," John Zorn
10. "Blow Up the Outside World," Soundgarden

Posted by at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It occurs to me that I've only ever met two Miriams in my life, and they're both English professors who blog. I wonder: Am I the only person to have met both Miriam Jones and Miriam Burstein?

• MJ in London.
• MB in New York.

Posted by at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I'll be honest. I know that the vehemence of my response to the Crooked Timber post and thread was out of proportion to the attention it deserved. But here's the thing: Look at that list of bloggers under "literature, language, culture" on the "Academic Blogs" page CT maintains. How many times have you ever seen a CT post that references or responds to something one of those bloggers has posted? That's why I wrote that crack about CT getting $5 every time they mention Scott McLemee. And that's why I am incredulous when Farrell writes, in comment 10 on the aforementioned thread, “Why is it that you aren’t creating a competitor blog to us?”

Hey, that's a great idea! Why don't we start up our own blog? If we did, then you'd be able to read

• Matt on plagiarism, the web, and contemporary media culture (Feb 2003),
• Jason R on Gibson's Pattern Recognition (March 2003),
• Kari sharing a chunk of her dissertation (June 2003),
• Chuck on film and Lev Manovich (June 2003),
• Dave on politics and teaching composition (June 2003),
• Jason J on recent nonfiction (September 2003),
• Tanya on the Isabella Gardner Museum (August 2003),
• Ryan on his dissertation defense (August 2003),
• CJ on “Sylvia Plath’s Ekphrastic Poetry” (July 2003),
• Brandon on participating in a Renga (June 2003),
• Jeb's prospectus for jeblog (August 2004),
• Marc on the body as avatar (October 2004),
• Me on Walter Benjamin (March 2003).

Please. Do tell me more about this blogging you speak of.

Posted by at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Apparently, I am annoying; I have no idea who this person is, but it looks like she's from Nebraska and is currently attending school (Johns Hopkins?) in Maryland, majoring in math.

She appears to prefer Nebraska to Maryland. I'll let my east-coast readers fight it out with my midwest readers over the significance of this preference.

Posted by at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently started up a blog called Wired Campus. I wonder what motivated them to do this. Chronicle-competitor Inside Higher Ed adopted a blog-like structure from the beginning, providing accessible, date-based archives and the ability to comment directly on each news entry.

However, by creating a blog solely about technology issues, the Chronicle is not very likely to insert themselves successfully into the blogging fray that now permeates online academics' lives. They do allow trackbacks, though, and this is an important feature that Inside Higher Ed lacks.

Posted by at 8:10 AM | Permalink

Good lord, can I write about anything but myself? Here are a bunch of entries from when I had a brain:

• "Reading readers reading: what can we know?"
• "The dreaded theory question"
• "Metallica: some kind of monster"
• "More on Derrida"
• "What do we call this?"

I'm sure my brain will return before too long.

I'd unravel ev'ry riddle
For any individ'le
In trouble or in pain
With the thoughts you'd be thinkin'
You could be another Lincoln,
If you only had a brain.

Posted by at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Don't take my word for it. Just ask Heather Armstrong. If you're going to mock someone and call them stupid for expressing themselves on the Internet in a way that puts their job at risk, don't do so on the Internet (using your real name and telling people where you work) in a way that puts your job at risk. Moron.

Posted by at 10:15 PM | Permalink

Since January 4, my blog ads have earned about $3, which is a small amount but not bad, frankly. How about you remember to click on an ad every once in awhile for a product that interests you? All proceeds are pledged to BlogAid.

Posted by at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today's a combination research/teaching prep day. I'm wrestling with some issues of language, history, and genre, so consider this entry an example of that wrestling. I hadn't really intended my original entry on blogging awards to spark such conversation; it was really just an offhand observation. But now I think it might help me think through some other issues.

Questions to consider:

• What makes a form of communication truly new?
• What makes a form of communication truly unique?

My stock answer is that no form of communication is ever truly new or truly unique. New forms tend to be conceived at first in terms of the old, as I've written before. And old forms are reconceived in the face of the new. Still, for whatever reason, I find myself arguing that we should reserve for blogging some unique features. In response to my blogging awards entry, Matt writes that he doesn't see my criterion of "the textual intervention of others" as key to the definition of blogging.

So what caused me to make that assertion? Well, when a bunch of us academic bloggers were asked about famous bloggers, like Wonkette, I responded, "Oh, that's not really blogging." And I still believe that. It's just the same old content you might find in, say, "The Reliable Source" in the Washington Post, but it's updated more frequently. If Wonkette is a blog, then when I pick up my phone and say "Breaker 1 9, I got a smokey on my tail" I'm using a CB Radio. If you channel old media content through a new media channel, is it new media? I say no. You might, however, think I'm wrong in characterizing Wonkette's content as old media.

In his comment, Matt writes,

To me, blogging is much more about the creation of a persona; all bloggers do this to an extent, even when they blog under a true name (like I do). The persona is created in all kinds of mundane ways I suspect we'd agree on--style and tone, subject matter, decisions about what to include or not to include, etc.

Fair enough, but there are many forms of writing through which a persona is created by these techniques: diaries, newspaper columns, first person fiction. So creating a persona is not unique to blogging, but I'm willing to admit that doing so is key to a good blog.

Matt goes on to list other features that "[facilitate] the construction of a recognizable persona":

• "its database back end (useful for sorting and searching entries)"
• "its date and time stamped organization"
• "peripherals such as blogrolls or bloglines (which situate the persona in a social network)"
• "Trackbacks and comments do this too of course, and they can be a powerful way of creating an identity for oneself online--but I don't see them as essential to [the] process, nor would I rush to privilege them more than other means."

First, why should we only note these features to the extent that they are involved in the creation of a persona? Second, I concede that the database backend that many (but not all) blogs have allows for multiple points of entry and rearrangement that are unique to this form of writing. Certainly there are other archives of text available via databases, but no other (that I can think of offhand) that features writing created specifically for that database--and in fact using the database as the word processor itself--by one or a small number of writers. Online news sources don't provide the same ease of searching and sorting, for example, and many websites published by newspapers are basically the print information put into HTML.

Date and time stamps? Been there. Done that.

Situating an author in a social network? Printed books have footnotes, cover blurbs, acknowledgments pages, and works cited pages that fulfill the same function.

Take the case of Justin Hall, who I know you've followed for a long while--many would cite him as the "first" blogger, but he did it all without *any* formal software, and with no comments, etc.

I first came across Hall about a year after he started. I would argue that he's in a class by himself, though, and not a representative blogger. Of course, he started using MovableType about two years ago.

They are seductive, though, those comments: the endorphin rush that comes from the contact can become an end in itself, I suspect, at least before one becomes jaded from the attention (that hasn't happened to me yet ;-).

Yeah, see? That's what I'm talkin' about. Comments/trackbacks are a vulnerability, and they do provide that rush as much from fear as from excitement.

But blogging is about masks and windows, a flirtation with self and other sustained through the rhythms of update, update, update--which play into our insatiable appetite for the new, the novel . . . with a touch of the voyeur, to keep us honest.

Word.

Posted by at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've noticed that various blog award competitions are underway, and I have to admit that I haven't paid close enough attention to understand how these awards are decided. However, I have been thinking about what kinds of criteria one might use to judge good and bad blogging.

During this conversation, I said that one of the key characteristics of a blog is that it is vulnerable to the textual intervention of others. If what you write online is not, then you're not really writing a blog. You might be an amusing columnist using blog software, but you're not a blogger. You might be a talented essayist using blog software, but you're not a blogger. And while I am on this particular soapbox...

• If you don't allow comments and trackbacks, then you're not a very good blogger. (Restating the above point.)
• If you (like me) don't interact much with the people who leave comments on your site, then you're not a very good blogger.
• If you (like me) don't leave a great many comments on other people's blogs, then you're not a very good blogger.
• If you don't rely for rhetorical or stylistic punch now and then on the surprise waiting at the other end of an otherwise innocent looking hyperlink, then you're not a very good blogger. Hypertext != print.

Being a good writer is not necessarily the same thing as being a good blogger, although the two categories are not mutually exlusive.

Posted by at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Did you already notice these changes, dear reader?

My old blog design had tons of links to other blogs right on the home page. Now, however, I've put everything into my Bloglines subscriptions, to which I've provided a link on the right-hand side of the home page under "About You."

I've also been maintaining a side blog called "Clip Job," and you'll find a link to it right below the other oone.

Posted by at 7:56 AM | Permalink

Posted by at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We're heading home today, and I'll post more when I get there. For now, dear reader, you might like to read this article, by Scott Jaschik of the new Inside Higher Ed, on last night's blogger meetup.

Posted by at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Don't forget about the proposed blogger meetup at MLA. Email me (ghw {at} wordherders {dot} net) if you want to participate.

If you happen to be wandering around New York or Philadelphia over the next few days and see someone who looks like this, be sure to say hello.

Posted by at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Like Chuck, my blog is listed on Amazon.

Posted by at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...gender and blogging, part 3. (See part 1 and part 2.)

Much gnashing of teeth is taking place in the comments section of this Crooked Timber entry.

The Little Professor asks, "[I]sn't putting abstract speculation before data collection sort of like, oh, putting the cart before the horse?" My thoughts exactly. To put it another way, we cannot have a debate about the causes for X until we have established that X exists.

Some of the comments to this entry suggest that a drug is needed for the irony impaired.

Posted by at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dear MovableType,

The 'herders recently dropped $100 on getting the latest version of you (and I paid another $40 to get my own higher education version to use on CHLT), and now we're starting to think that what we have now is actually worse than what we had before.

Your comment function doesn't seem to work right. The TypeKey authentication system, which ought to be easy peasy, is confusing and apparently buggy. You encourage people to download and install MT-Blacklist, but when it doesn't work (and trust me, there are lots of problems), you respond to questions with "We don't support 3rd-party plugins." Note that this particular plug-in is only available on your site. Why would you tell people to download and install something from your site and then refuse to help them when it doesn't work?

If I were just starting out blogging, I'd be dropping you like a hot potato right now and asking for my money back (and perhaps going with Expression Engine or WordPress) because your software looks like it sucks: it's not working right, the instructions are inadequate, and your customer support abdicates responsibility. Back when you were free, I was understanding, but we paid money for you. What happened? I have hundreds of blog entries stored in MT format, so I'm hesitant to switching to something else.

However, I'm not completely opposed to the idea, either. So are you gonna help us out or what?

Sincerely,

GHW

Continue reading "movabletype, you broke my heart!" »

Posted by at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

The 2004 meeting of the Modern Language Association will take place in Philadelphia, 27-30 December. I would like to repeat my suggestion that academic bloggers who will be at the conference get together at some point.

Interested? Let me know.

Please also consider putting a notice on your own blog.

Update: Participants so far

• Matt Kirschenbaum
• Chuck Tryon
• Amardeep Singh
• Ryan Claycomb
• The Other Miriam

Posted by at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Some time around the start of the new year, this blog will be remade as semi-pseudonymous. I had been planning on doing this for some time now, even before the discussion in the previous two entries.

There are just some cans of worms that need opening.

The first time I lose I drink whiskey.
The second time I lose I drink gin.
The third time I lose I'll drink anything
'Cause I think I'm gonna win
--Gram Parsons, "Ooh, Las Vegas"

Then again, maybe those cans have whupass in them. I can't tell from the outside.

And there's only one way to find out

Posted by at 3:00 PM | Permalink

In the comments section of Profgrrrrl's entry on gender and blogging, Rana writes

I don't blog on personal things that involve the personal lives of other people. One of my hard-and-fast rules is that none of my friends should have to learn something about our relationship from the blog -- either we talk about it first, or I don't blog it.

My thoughts, exactly. I've always thought of one of my rules as I don't blog other people's lives. This means that many of my most important interactions, past and present, do not get blogged, although I do talk about them with friends and family.

It's tempting for many to apply essentialist stereotypes about gender to blogging, but I don't think the stereotypes hold up. For example, if I'm talking through "intimate" issues (Profgrrrrl's second definition of the term) in venues other than the blog, it would seem to follow that I'm less likely to talk about them through my blog: why would I need to? But the essentialist stereotype says that, as a man, I shouldn't want to talk about them at all. Conversely, a woman writing about "intimate" issues on her pseudonymous blog could be doing so because she is not comfortable doing so with her friends and family. An observer might look at these blogs and say, "Aha, those stereotypes are true," when the behaviors from the whole of a person's life point to the exact oppposite conclusion.

Frankly, I don't know why I'm reacting so strongly to the assertion that there are fundamental differences in the way men and women blog, and that men are less likely to be "intimate" in their blogs. I remain unpersuaded that such a difference exists:

1. Something other than our impressionistic sense of the blogs we like to read is needed.
2. How "intimate" can a blog written under a pseudonym really be?
3. How can we be certain that pseudonymous blogs written by people who claim to be women are written by people who are, in fact, women?

Posted by at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A new blog. Go read it.

Now.

Posted by at 6:00 PM | Permalink

Having recently read this entry by David, this entry by Geoffrey, this one by Chuck, and this by Jason, I was surprised to read this:

Does anybody else find it sort of odd that academic blogs (or at least the ones I am most interested in.... the pseudonymous variety) seem to be heavily dominated by female voices whereas more "serious" blogs that don't really address personal stuff (political, or the academic blogs like Crooked Timber or non-pseudonymous ones) seem to be more male dominated?

Why do pseudonymous academic blogs seem to be mostly by women? The way to get at the answer is to ask academic bloggers why they blog pseudonymously or under their real name. I've addressed this question a little in the past.

Why do women tend to write about more personal stuff than men do? The evidence doesn't bear out the premise of the question. Do I not write about personal stuff here? (Hint: what do you think you'll get if you follow the link to the category of posts labelled "Story of My Life"?) Do the male writers I link to above (among others) not write about personal stuff, too? Wtf?

Posted by at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In no particular order:

• BoingBoing
• Household Opera
• Chuck Tryon
• Dave Eubanks
• Kari Kraus
• Matt Kirschenbaum
• Critters & Spectacles
• Jason Rhody
• Amardeep Singh
• Bob Mould
• Arete
• Crooked Timber
• Earth Wide Moth
• Edith Frost
• Geoffrey Schramm
• Frogs and Ravens
• Marcia Hansen
• Me, Myself, and Infrastructure
• Michael Berube
• New Kid on the Hallway
• Planned Obsolescence
• Playing School, Irreverently
• Quo Vado
• Scrivenings
• Deb Schwartz

Posted by at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'll be heading back east to visit family and friends in December. And yes, I'll be in Philadelphia for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association at the same time as many of the folks who read this blog. I'd be happy to meet as many of you as want to get together at this annual shin-dig. Last year, I met up with Chuck and Kathleen in the hotel bar (and I met Steven Shaviro briefly).

This year there seem to be many more likely-to-attend-MLA bloggers who are aware of each other. With that in mind, I've taken the liberty of creating MLA Bloggers. If you'd like to contribute, send me an email.

Also, let's all write to the organizers of the MLA to ask them to put the entire conference program online, so that misrepresentations of the work we do will not be quite so easy to get away with. What the heck, let's all write MLA President Robert Scholes.

Bonus Links: " The Academic Job Interview Revisited," by Mary Dillon Johnson (via Prof Grrrrl).