Two or three years ago it'd be difficult to imagine a university shuttering an internationally recognized program, one of the leading such programs in the country. Oh, wait. Never mind. That happens all the time. My own experience tells me that it's usually a marginalized field, using new methodologies, producing hard-to-classify work, heavily interdisciplinary, challenging… Continue reading On the Death of the Digital Humanities Center
Tag: public scholarship
Loud, Crowded, and Out of Control: A New Model for Scholarly Publishing
Yesterday Dan Cohen, the director of the Center for History and New Media and my colleague at George Mason University, posted a thoughtful piece describing a major problem of scholarly publishing (and of book publishing more generally). Dan suggests that while the "supply" of written work has changed with the advent of digital collaborations, academic… Continue reading Loud, Crowded, and Out of Control: A New Model for Scholarly Publishing
The Archive or the Trace: Cultural Permanence and the Fugitive Text
We in the humanities are in love with the archive. My readers already know that I am obsessed with archiving otherwise ephemeral social media. I've got multiple redundant systems for preserving my Twitter activity. I rely on the Firefox plugins Scrapbook and Zotero to capture any online document that poses even the slightest flight risk.… Continue reading The Archive or the Trace: Cultural Permanence and the Fugitive Text
Pedagogy and the Class Blog
Julie Meloni over at Prof. Hacker has a good rundown of the kinds of questions a professor should think through when he or she integrates a blog into the classroom. I've been using blogs in my teaching for several years now, so I wanted to share a few ideas that have worked for me. I'm… Continue reading Pedagogy and the Class Blog
Updates on David Foster Wallace review by Jay Murray Siskind
A few weeks ago I was interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education for a story about the fake David Foster Wallace review in Modernism/Modernity. The Chronicle story is online and at least for the first week, not behind a paywall. I was in Spain at the time, so for the interview I had to… Continue reading Updates on David Foster Wallace review by Jay Murray Siskind
Transparency, Teaching, and Taking My Evaluations Public
I recently wrote about why I'm making even the earliest scraps of my research public. It's a move, in theory, that most academics would not object to. Nobody is going to give me funny looks for suggesting we share our research problems. After all, scholarly collaboration is something we're almost all willing to profess a… Continue reading Transparency, Teaching, and Taking My Evaluations Public
On Hacking and Unpacking My (Zotero) Library
Many of my readers in the humanities already know about Zotero, the free open-source citation manager that works within Firefox and scares the hell out of Endnote's makers. If you are a student or professor and haven't tried Zotero, then you are missing out on an essential tool. I use it daily, both for my… Continue reading On Hacking and Unpacking My (Zotero) Library
Electronic Literature is a Foreign Land
One of the more brilliant works of electronic literature I savor teaching is Brian Kim Stefan's Star Wars, One Letter at a Time, which is exactly what it sounds like. Aside what's going on in the piece itself (which deserves its own separate blog post), what I enjoy is the almost violent reaction it provokes… Continue reading Electronic Literature is a Foreign Land
The truth behind Jay Murray Siskind’s review of David Foster Wallace
And finally, the wink and nod I've been looking for. Laurence Rainey, the editor of Modernism/Modernity, and Nicole Devarenne, the former managing editor of Modernism/Modernity, sent me this open letter today: An Open Letter to Mark Sample, We appreciate your recent remarks concerning a review essay about David Foster Wallace, one that appeared in late… Continue reading The truth behind Jay Murray Siskind’s review of David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and the Littlest Literary Hoax
Jay Murray Siskind is Don DeLillo's only recurring character, having first appeared in DeLillo's pseudonymous Amazons and later as a kind of Mephistopheles character in White Noise. Now, Siskind has broken out of the realm of fiction and entered the real world. I am referring to "An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent," a… Continue reading David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and the Littlest Literary Hoax