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- History 1Y History of the Future Spring 2011
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- History 80 The Whole Enchilada
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Category Archives: Academia
Big-Tent Problems
One of the best experiences I’ve had in my career to date has been participating in a relatively informal group that meets irregularly at Bryn Mawr to talk about complex systems, emergence, and information theory among other topics. I’ve had … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
4 Comments
Precautions and Paralysis
In response to a prompt recently, I had to try and do a bit of forecasting about higher education. I’ve spent too much time teaching about the history of futurism and prediction to find that a comfortable invitation. No matter … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
7 Comments
Looking Backward
I’ve been fiddling with the syllabus for my Image of Africa class, which I am to teach this fall for the first time in a while. No course in my repertoire has changed as much in my underlying assumptions about … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Africa, Production of History
22 Comments
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A short while before I was supposed to get on a plane last week to fly to Chicago and participate in an event at Northwestern University, something I’d really been looking forward to, I started to have the sinking sense … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Domestic Life
7 Comments
Literacy Quizzes (Again)
There is probably no point whatsoever to a critique of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s civics literacy quiz (via 11d), but hope springs eternal, I guess. First off, my generic criticisms of these kinds of historic or social-science literacy quizzes. Usually, … Continue reading
The Work of Cultural Capital
This entry about the Ramey study on family time at 11d got me thinking. Laura, citing David Brooks and Tara Parker-Pope, observes that a shift towards parents spending much more time with their children doesn’t seem to have any downside. … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Domestic Life
6 Comments
Evaluation Across the Disciplines
One perspective that I’ve occasionally heard from colleagues that makes me grit my teeth, that I have very little patience for, is that it is so difficult to evaluate the quality of work in other disciplines or judge their comparative … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
3 Comments
What Color Is Your Leaden Weight?
Strictly in the department of anecdotes-don’t-make-data and a single year doesn’t make a trend, there’s been a slight acceleration in movement in enrollments this year at Swarthmore towards the sciences, particularly chemistry and biology. Reading enrollments anywhere is hard, even … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
9 Comments
Teacher Teach Me
Like a lot of other bloggers, I was impressed by Elizabeth Green’s article on teacher training in the most recent NY Times magazine. Green describes some movement towards improving the process of training teachers both before and after they’re on … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
8 Comments
Sacrificing Your Isaacs
Sorry for the long silence. Busy couple of weeks and a stretch where I just felt impossibly fatigued. ———– I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of budgets, a Gordian knot if there ever was one. Whether we’re talking … Continue reading