Research That Matters: Knowledge and Novelty
OK, I admit it. My previous post about reading and research is also disingenuous. In a university context, research is not just “purposeful reading” or “reading in pursuit of knowledge” or “reading...
View ArticleThe Unbearable Lightness of the Digital
I had an interesting chat with a colleague the other day about academic writing and publishing that shifting over, inevitably, into the changing ways we do our writing and publishing now. My colleague...
View ArticleWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Academic Blogging
Logistics and institutional issues: how do you find time for it, where (if anywhere) should it go on your c.v., and how should tenure and promotion committees evaluate it? At least, this is what the...
View ArticleThis Week In My Classes: Meetings, Deadlines, Poems, Mysteries, and Nymphs
This past week was very busy, which is why I didn’t manage to post this during the week. For one thing, one of the committees that I’m on had to do a series of consultations, which involves both the...
View ArticleBlogging and Intellectual Curiosity
Inger Mewburn, a.k.a. the Thesis Whisperer, has an interesting post up at PhD2Published about academics and social media in which she asks a question that I have often wondered about too: While I can...
View ArticleIntellectual Curiosity: True Confessions Edition
Even as I wrote my previous post about how disengagement from online discussions strikes me as evidence of a lack of intellectual curiosity, I was nervously aware that in my own ways I too am...
View ArticleIncalculably Diffusive? The Impact of the Humanities
From the Novel Readings archives, a response to early reports on the UK’s “Research Excellence Framework.” Collini’s critique (and this post) came out in November 2009 (sadly his piece now appears to...
View Article“Move it or lose it”: on stagnation and (im)mobility
Craig Monk’s column in the latest University Affairs really struck a chord with me. Energized by the presence of a new colleague, he reflects on the challenge of “elud[ing] stagnation” in academic...
View ArticleShould Graduate Students Blog?
On Thursday I’m speaking to our graduate students’ “professionalization” seminar about academic uses of social media, particularly blogging. I’ve given related talks a few times now, but this is the...
View ArticleThe May Marks Meeting: That’s What It’s All About
Today we held one of our department’s most cherished and loathed rituals: the “May Marks Meeting.” It’s called that because one of its key elements is the annual review of students’ marks in aid of...
View Article“The value of appreciation”— Harrison Solow, Felicity & Barbara Pym
I missed Barbara Pym Reading Week by just a bit. I have been keen to read more Pym and serendipitously picked up a couple of Pym’s novels at a book sale just in time for it (The Sweet Dove Died and A...
View ArticleThe Case for “Intelligent, Bloggy Bookchat By Scholars”: How’s It Looking?
On Thursday I participated in a Twitter Q&A with the members of Karen Bourrier‘s University of Calgary graduate seminar on Victorian women writers. The students had been assigned my JVC essay on...
View ArticleSome Afterthoughts on Academic Blogging
Some follow-up comments on academic blogging, prompted by comments on my previous post here and on Twitter. My main take-away at this point is that there are a number of further refinements that matter...
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