Category Archives: Books

Particularism as a Big Idea

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One of the interesting points about Jared Diamond’s books that has come up recently at Savage Minds is that cultural anthropologists don’t write “big books” much any longer, that the disciplinary vision of cultural and social anthropology is now so … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 10 Comments

On Diamond (Not Again!)

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Timothy Burke

I don’t really mean to get drawn into recurrent arguments about Jared Diamond’s work, because my actual feelings about the actual books are rather mixed and indifferent. Guns, Germs and Steel reads well, it’s a useful teaching book for fueling … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Generalist's Work | 4 Comments

Pictures From an Institution 6 (Course Design)

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I usually spend time in the last half of the summer, somewhere around the end of July onward, working on the design of upcoming courses. I think I’m probably at one end of a spectrum as far as making more … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore | 3 Comments

Seven Days in the World of Books on Fire

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I said it on Twitter but I’ll say it here. The relief for a stupid book review in which someone says something that is not only evaluatively stupid but actually empirically wrong is to say so. It’s not a 65,000 … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 10 Comments

Some Weeds

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I got into an unedifying dispute some years ago about the term “Eurocentric”. Some conservative cultural critics seem to think that any mention of the term marks you off as a crazed member of Sendero Luminoso or some such. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Generalist's Work | Comments Off

A Generalist’s Work, Day 4

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Timothy Burke

The concept of fieldwork fascinates me and vexes me all at once. I didn’t really grasp how much fieldwork outside of formal archives is a significant part of the study of modern African history until I was several years into … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work | 2 Comments

A Generalist’s Work, Day 1

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’m still feeling rankled by various casual dismissals of generalism and synthesis as a mode of academic and intellectual labor. It’s particularly odd coming from humanists given that the cultural work that many humanists study has frequently been created by … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 2 Comments

I Would Have Had My Great Books, Too, If It Weren’t For Those Meddling Hippies

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Mark Edmundson complains, again, that the dirty hippies screwed up the world and killed literature in the process. Rather than a dreary point-by-point response to everything objectionable in the essay, I want to focus on one issue in it that … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Popular Culture | 22 Comments

Geeking Out About Dragons and Alt-History

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I’ve talked about Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series before, which is an alternate history focused on the premise that many of the major governments of the world between 1600-1800 have had access to intelligent dragons as military, economic and cultural resources. … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Popular Culture, Sheer Raw Geekery | 3 Comments

Fantasy Bests

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Timothy Burke

It’s a New Year, so I’m going to get back in gear on this blog, which I’ve had to leave a bit moribund for a while as I concentrated on some other things and did some travelling. Many entries to … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 13 Comments