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Author Archives: Timothy Burke
The Unbearable Weight of Reference
Playing World of Warcraft a month or so back, I was in what people call a “pick-up group”, some strangers who had agreed to team up to accomplish a specific short-term goal. The group chat channel was all business until … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Popular Culture
5 Comments
History 61 The Production of History
This is one of my favorite courses to teach, and it’s very hard for me to resist packing it with too much material. I’ll have to whittle this draft down a bit. The fundamental idea behind the course really comes … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
35 Comments
That Sinking Feeling, or the Art and Science of Lecturing
No matter how long I’ve been doing this job, I still have days where I start up a lecture and know almost from the first moment that there’s something fundamentally wrong with it. The public at large sometimes thinks of … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
9 Comments
A-hem.
I direct your attention to this report on bias in Pennsylvania universities and colleges.
Posted in Academia
4 Comments
History 62 The History of Reading
Here’s the full draft of the syllabus for my spring course The History of Reading. I’ll polish it a bit more before I teach it, in all likelihood. I’m still looking for something on the 18th Century dissemination of the … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
19 Comments
The Bérubéan Moment
The general argument and specific claims of Michael Berube’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? are as comfortable for me as a well-worn chair. I’ve been reading them at his blog for some time, adopting and using many of his … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Politics
46 Comments
Making Elections Work
I have to say that my allergy to conspiracy theories in general is starting to get a healthy dose of antihistamine when it comes to elections in the United States. There’s little things to be irritated by: we just switched … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
16 Comments
Only At Swarthmore
A new round of chalkings, in subtle and clever reply to the last two rounds. Seen already this morning: “Free the quarks!” “The marginalia I wrote were not for you, they were Fermat.” “K/S forever!” I guess I could add, … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Miscellany
9 Comments
Free Speech Kabuki
There’s a lot of discussion on campus this year about the annual “chalkings” that coincide with Coming Out week. They’ve been controversial before (as one student puts it in the campus newspaper, it’s a “predictable moment” in the calendar). If … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
8 Comments
Markets and Mules
Williams College has announced a new diversity requirement. There’s nothing especially wrong with the long laundry list of intellectual skills or experiences that now potentially qualify a course to be designated as “exploring diversity”. Under the old system, it just … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
19 Comments