Category Archives: Academia

A Generalist’s Work, Day 3

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Timothy Burke

One of the big issues on my mind lately is my ability (and that of my colleagues) to imagine the world of work as our students will experience it. Most of us at Swarthmore know something about the range of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

How I Talk About Searching, Discovery and Research in Courses

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I recently boiled down some of the advice I try to give students about how to carry out searches and formulate research questions, which I’ll reproduce here. I start with the basic insight that I’ve picked up from Swarthmore’s library … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 17 Comments

Memoirs from Africa: Paring Down a List

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’m preparing a year-long reading list of books about Africa for the Washington D.C. area Swarthmore alumni. I decided to constrain myself to memoirs or first-person perspective accounts. I decided to mostly concentrate on accounts from the last thirty years … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Swarthmore | 11 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

On the Bubble

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Is higher education in a bubble like (or worse) than housing prices before 2008? This N+1 essay by Malcolm Harris argues that a 900 percent increase in the average tuition since 1978 and a collected student debt burden that now … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 10 Comments

The Non-Science That Explains What’s Wrong with Science Explaining Non-Belief in Science

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’ve found Chris Mooney’s past work on the politics of science and on scientific literacy interesting, but there is something that gently grates on me in his Mother Jones essay published last week. In the essay, Mooney reviews arguments from … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Popular Culture | Comments Off

Adaptation

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I really love the idea of courses which combine trying to apply a body of knowledge to a practical problem with exploring why said practical problem actually poses intellectually challenging questions with no clear answer. I’ve mentioned before at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Intellectual Property, Popular Culture, Sheer Raw Geekery | Comments Off

Keeping the Keys to the Kingdom

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Timothy Burke

In February, Margaret Price published a thought-provoking piece at Inside Higher Education arguing for systemic reforms to the recruiting and promotion of faculty in order to mitigate or eliminate discrimination against professors “with mental disabilities such as bipolar disorder, severe … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 2 Comments

Courseblogs: An Experiment in Progress

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’m going to talk tomorrow a bit about the courseblogs I’ve got going this semester: History 83: What-Ifs and Might-Have-Beens and History 1Y History of the Future I’m particularly keen to attract interested comment on the research proposals the students … Continue reading →

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Burning Down the House

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Why ask for William Cronon’s email? Certainly it’s to intimidate him, and indirectly, his colleagues. I think that’s only the beginning. In the end, it’s a declaration by the organizations filing the requests in Wisconsin, Michigan and wherever else they … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics | 6 Comments