Monthly Archives: August 2014

On the Salaita Decision

I wrote a short note to Chancellor Wise when this story first broke expressing hope that she would find a way to delicately undo the decision. I didn’t join some of the collective statements for a variety of reasons. But … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 15 Comments

Turning the Camera Around

Through an improbable chain of events, I had an opportunity as an undergraduate to work as a summer intern at the Los Angeles Times. It was a great, life-changing gig–I found that I both liked journalists a lot and yet … Continue reading

Posted in Miscellany, Politics | Comments Off on Turning the Camera Around

History 82 Fall 2014 Syllabus

Here’s the current version of the syllabus for my upcoming fall class on the history of digital media. Really excited to be teaching this. ——————— History 82 Histories of Digital Media Fall 2014 Professor Burke This course is an overly … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Popular Culture, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

Conduct Unbecoming

A campus Title IX coordinator recently made some interesting comments to Elizabeth Nolan Brown at the Dish about the problem of sexual assault on college campuses. A lot of the national debate, such as it is, about what’s gone wrong … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 13 Comments

The Potential Condescension of “Informed Consent”

Many years ago, I was involved in judging an interdisciplinary grant competition. At one point, there was an intense discussion about a proposal where part of the research involved ethnographic research that concerned illegal activity in a developing country. We … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Oath for Experts | 1 Comment

Feeling For You

Just about every day, my social media feeds surge at some point with anger at judgmental comments, sometimes specific comments by a public figure, sometimes collections or assemblies of common forms of implied or ‘polite’ judgmental remarks directed at entire … Continue reading

Posted in Miscellany, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Popular Culture | 4 Comments

The Listicle as Course Design

I’ve been convinced for a while that one of the best defenses of small classes and face-to-face pedagogy within a liberal arts education would be to make the process of that kind of teaching and coursework more visible to anyone … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Digital Humanities, Production of History, Swarthmore | 3 Comments

On The Invisible Bridge

I’ve been following some of the discussion about Rick Perlstein’s new book on the 1970s. I agree with many scholars that the basic problem with online endnotes is the persistent danger of the main text and the sourcing becoming disconnected … Continue reading

Posted in Politics, Production of History | Comments Off on On The Invisible Bridge