Category Archives: Swarthmore

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

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

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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Skills, Competencies and Literacies, Oh My

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Timothy Burke

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

Providing the Bricks, Not the Building

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Timothy Burke

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

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Timothy Burke

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

Image of Africa courseblog

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I’ve finally gotten my courseblog (and Twitter feed) for History 86, Image of Africa, fully set up. I’m really looking forward to this class: it’s become as much a class on the history of transmedia interactions as it is about … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Swarthmore | Comments Off on Image of Africa courseblog

What Color Is Your Leaden Weight?

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Timothy Burke

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