Pages
- Photos at Flickr
- About Me
- Emergence Notes
- Last Collection Speech, Swarthmore, 2002
- Permanent Entries
- Power Can Lose
- Research Libraries Group/OCLC Programs Talk, June 2007
- Scholarly Articles
- Syllabi
- History 1L The History of Play and Leisure, Spring 2008
- History 1Y History of the Future Spring 2011
- History 61 The Production of History, Spring 2007
- History 62 The History of Reading, Spring 2007
- History 62, The History of Reading, Spring 2012
- History 80 The Whole Enchilada
- History 83 What Ifs and Might-Have-Beens, Spring 2011
- History 87 Development and Modern Africa, Spring 2007
- History 88 The Social History of Consumption, Spring 2008
- History 89 Environmental History of Africa
- History 8B History of Southern Africa, Spring 2011
- History 8B. Mfecane, Mines and Mandela: Southern Africa from 1600 to 2006, Fall 2006
- History 8C From Leopold to Kabila: The Bad Twentieth Century in Central Africa, Spring 2008
- History of the Future, Spring 2006
- The NOTES ARCHIVE
Archives
- June 2021
- January 2021
- November 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- January 2019
- October 2018
- May 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- November 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- May 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
Categories
- Academia
- Africa
- Blogging
- Books
- Cleaning Out the Augean Stables
- Consumerism, Advertising, Commodities
- Defining "Liberal Arts"
- Digital Humanities
- Domestic Life
- Food
- Games and Gaming
- Generalist's Work
- Good Quote, Bad Quote
- Grasping the Nettle
- I'm Annoyed
- Information Technology and Information Literacy
- Intellectual Property
- Miscellany
- Oath for Experts
- Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System
- Pictures from an Institution
- Politics
- Popular Culture
- Production of History
- Sheer Raw Geekery
- Swarthmore
- The Mixed-Up Bookshelves
- Uncategorized
Meta
Category Archives: Academia
Today’s Captain Renault Moment
London School of Economics faculty: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was such a nice young man, we never knew he would have anything to do with the mass killing of the people of Libya. But we see now that he’s made a … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
5 Comments
I Would Have Had My Great Books, Too, If It Weren’t For Those Meddling Hippies
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
Skills, Competencies and Literacies, Oh My
One of the themes that’s come up in strategic planning here is the question of the teaching of skills, competencies, literacies (and related concepts) in our curriculum. I’ve initially been a bit taken aback at the strong discomfort some of … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
2 Comments
The Cold Call
We’ve known for a while that my daughter isn’t liking this year at school as much. Yesterday she revealed one of the things that’s bothering her, which is that in her perception the teacher frequently “cold calls” on her during … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Domestic Life
19 Comments
Incentives for Faculty
I’ve had a bunch of conversations in the last five years that have turned on the question of what makes new practices or approaches attractive to tenure-track and contingent faculty, if anything. This kind of discussion springs from a deeply … Continue reading
Footnotes to XKCD on University Websites
I spent some time before Christmas informally gathering several kinds of curricular information from the websites of the COFHE schools for use in Swarthmore’s strategic planning work. Here’s some of what I informally learned in the process. 1. XKCD, typically, … Continue reading
Cheaters Sometimes Prosper
Historiann responds to the story of a cheating scandal at the University of Central Florida much the way that I do: before we get to talking about the misdeeds of the students, a 600-person course in strategic management taught very … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
4 Comments
Providing the Bricks, Not the Building
This academic year is turning out to be deeply drenched in committee work for me, but I’m not going to grouse about that as per the professorial norm. The stuff I’m involved in this year feels substantial, interesting, and consequential. … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
7 Comments
What Ifs and Might-Have-Beens: Draft Syllabus
I’m teaching a new course next semester on counterfactual and alternate history. The basic structure of the course is divided into four-parts: historiographical and theoretical debates about counterfactuals and alternate history; formal ‘scholarly’ counterfactuals; alternate histories; and workshopping student-created counterfactuals … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Production of History, Swarthmore
14 Comments
Goodnight to Goodnight Moon?
The NY Times says that the picture book for children is disappearing, largely because so many aspirant middle-class parents are pushing their children aggressively towards reading chapter books early in life, and receiving some endorsement in this move from teachers … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Popular Culture
11 Comments