Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Work of Criticism

Jumping straight out of my Twitter feed about THATCamp Games, I want to work a bit more on a reaction I had to a morning panel on teaching games in a higher ed class. I heard a pretty strong strain … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming | 5 Comments

A Way To Think About Online Courses (By Apple, For Example)

So Apple’s big education-oriented product announcement has come and gone. I’m going to tread softly here about what it might lead to, because I’ve been wrong before on tech rollouts (both overestimating and underestimating impacts). In general, most of what … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 3 Comments

There Is Nothing You Possess That Power Cannot Take Away

…to paraphrase what Belloq says to Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The problem with a rights-based liberalism is precisely that it is not and never can be the end of history, that it is never secure or … Continue reading

Posted in Intellectual Property, Politics | 4 Comments

Just Because You’re Paranoid

Last month, I had a really interesting opportunity to participate in an open peer review for the project Writing History in a Digital Age. Somewhat to my dismay, I found myself falling into old-fartism in various ways as I made … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities | 2 Comments

I Endorse These Messages

Remember when people used to use blogs mostly just for shout-outs to other bloggers? Ok, they’re often still for that purpose, but it seems to me that Twitter serves that function far more efficiently. Also, with my own bloggorhea, I’ve … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 5 Comments

Pictures from an Institution 9 (Visitors)

Catching up here with some photo sessions from the fall. Broadly speaking, my theme of the visual documentation of faculty work always has two accompanying problems. The first is that some of the work of faculty makes for a lousy … Continue reading

Posted in Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore | Comments Off on Pictures from an Institution 9 (Visitors)

Discovering the Template

I’m very restless with my syllabi and with the courses I teach: I do new preps fairly often and tend to overhaul substantial portions of existing courses equally often. In thinking about new classes, I tend to ask myself: 1. … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | Comments Off on Discovering the Template

The Author Is Human

Stanley Fish’s NYT response to Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Planned Obsolescence is actually a pretty useful provocation in several respects. As I read it, Fish basically moves to identify digital humanists as playing out the next move of postmodern politics and epistemology. … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities | 4 Comments

Saying It Again

From the department of pointless but compulsory exercises: every single time Rick Santorum or anyone with similar views says the following two things: a) What, you want gay marriage? What’s next, legitimating polygamy? and b) The only form of legal, … Continue reading

Posted in Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Politics | 1 Comment

Brinkmanship

Victor Ferrall’s short overview of the circumstances facing small liberal-arts colleges (SLACs) in the United States is an interesting read for anyone who works for such an institution and for any student past or present. Ferrall’s the former president of … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 3 Comments