Author Archives: Timothy Burke

Sovereignty Is Bunk

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Timothy Burke

During the run-up to the Iraq War, I remember a few hot conversations among opponents of the war about whether there was such a thing as a “sovereignty left”, e.g., a tendency towards seeing the achievement and maintenance of inviolable … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 12 Comments

Canary in the iTunes

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Timothy Burke

A thought about the media industry’s antipiracy efforts, seen in retrospect back to the beginnings of the digital age. In the NYT today, the question comes up as to whether consumers would pay to watch more movies in digital players … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 14 Comments

Read the Comments

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Timothy Burke

I keep coming back, obsessively and neurotically, to the question of what a liberal arts education is good for. I do think it helps with the skills that pay the bills. I do think it can make you a better … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Miscellany | Comments Off on Read the Comments

Frame(d)

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Timothy Burke

High Anxiety In modernity, dread only takes a holiday once in a while. Right now Mr. Dread is hard at work all around the world, and he’s not just sticking to the big geopolitical dramas or some single-issue fear. He’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Swarthmore | 8 Comments

Nervous Conditions

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Nick Kristof’s call to cloistered, monastic faculty to come out and speak to wider publics has already been lambasted, dissected and critiqued by a wide range of academics. My knee jerked pretty hard as well when I read it, for … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Blogging | 3 Comments

Who’s the Boss?

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Timothy Burke

In the current wave of online ill-will between contingent and tenure-track faculty (which of course most faculty in either group will never see, know about or care about), one of the common sentiments that produces some modest degree of agreement … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 20 Comments

Now I’m In For It

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Timothy Burke

So I’ve overhauled my survey course on the history of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa this semester as an experiment in “flipping the classroom”. I’m not quite flipping the way that some do, with lectures as homework and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Defining "Liberal Arts", Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Heroic Measures (The Modest Proposal Remix Edition)

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Bill Keller has spent the last two years in a dull and very public exasperated talking-to with the rest of the world for not being enough like Bill Keller. Since the New York Times helpfully selected him among all the … Continue reading →

Posted in Cleaning Out the Augean Stables | 2 Comments

Unplanned Obsolescence

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Solidarity and sympathy in online culture and social media are fleeting things: you are only as good as your last response rather than a lifetime of responses, and only as welcome as you are permitted to be within a particular … Continue reading →

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

Yesterday, All Our MOOC Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Everybody remember the expectation that a smart, professorial President would hire an equally smart, skilled staff who would prove that a well-run government can be quickly responsive to the needs of the society, efficient in the execution of its duties, … Continue reading →

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