Category Archives: Academia

Read It!

This Margaret Soltan take-down of the University of Oregon president is a thing of beauty.

Posted in Academia | 9 Comments

That Was the Month That Was

Catching up on some of the things that I failed to comment on in the last month but nevertheless have opinions about. 1) I’m deeply impressed by the report of the MLA’s Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Politics | 3 Comments

My Wicked, Wicked Ways

I’m back from both my holiday travels and from a post-holiday trip to Atlanta to attend the American Historical Association meetings. I have a confession: in Atlanta, I did one of the most perverse, inexplicable things that I’ve ever done … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 8 Comments

The History of Virtual Worlds

I’m going for a first-time event here: a triple cross-post here, Cliopatria and Terra Nova. I’m at a meeting on law and virtual worlds at the New York Law School, and there’s a really interesting panel discussion of methodologies in … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Games and Gaming | 6 Comments

History 87 Development and Modern Africa

This is the latest version of this course that I’ve taught. I still need to make some of the specific selections of reading material on a number of these texts: I’m trying to get small but potent samples of a … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa | 10 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

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