3A longstanding problem in the discipline of history is the lecture. Looming over our field like a ponderous, aging, typically conservative, uncle, people insist that the lecture deserves its place at the table and, well, kids these days don’t understand that ole uncle lecture has remained in our family for as long as he has… Read More →
Go over and check out the newest issue of the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies (JEMAHS) for their forum on alt-ac (alternate academic) careers (and you might want to download it all now since I don’t think it’ll be freely available forever). These are careers for individuals who either shifted their attention from… Read More →
Readers of this blog know that I’ve been teaching History 101: Western Civilization to about 150 students in a Scale-Up style classroom this semester. I had great hopes of revamping this class in a massive way, but decided close to the start of the semester to make a few little changes than a substantial re-imagining. … Read More →
It’s labor day, a day dedicated to working hard and getting stuff done. It’s the one day of the year where we can all hunker down and do what needs to be done without an apology, without looking for an immediate reward, and without excuses. So it is appropriate that I publicly reaffirm my pledge… Read More →
It’s been a long time since I’ve let myself be annoyed by something in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I take some pride in that because one of the Chronicle’s chief purposes is to keep us all informed where, when, and for what reason the sky is falling. Yesterday, Prof. Joan Hawthorne, the Director of Assessment… Read More →
I have about a week left of sabbatical and have begun to sit back and critically assess whether I got done what I needed to get done over this year away from the classroom. I know I’ve summarized my sabbatical at various times over the past year, so some of this will be redundant (for… Read More →
I think I’ve blogged about this before but couldn’t find it in the ole archive, so I figure I should post my comments on this again, just in case. I just completed a peer review for a decent journal in my field. The interaction with the journal’s editors came entirely through their editorial manager software.… Read More →
If you have an hour, go and check out the recent forum on the storage crisis in archaeology in the awkwardly named Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. Morag Kersel offers a nice essay framing the storage crisis in Eastern Mediterranean archaeology, and argued for re-exploring the potential of long term loans as a… Read More →
This is a pretty exciting day at Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Headquarters. My colleague, Richard Rothaus and I are pleased to release the first episode of our new podcasting adventure: We are both pretty happy with the results, although we’ll certainly refine the sound quality and the flow of our banter a bit as… Read More →
Over the past couple of years, there has been growing attention to grade inflation in higher education. Grade inflation, as documented here, is a blanket term for the gradual increase in grades over time. Since university grading systems based on a 4 point system have remained relatively stable for almost 50 years, it is particularly… Read More →
If you haven’t had a chance to check out Dimitri Nakassis’s blog post earlier this week at his Aegean Prehistory blog, you should take the time now. He takes on the issue of time to completion for Ph.D. with particular reference to Classics and applies Malcolm Gladwell’s somewhat arbitrary 10,000 hour rule. He argued that,… Read More →
I have slowly become aware this holiday season that my sabbatical is half over. I’ve done some of things that I pledged not to do, but avoided other pitfalls, and now I have to try to focus of the next 9 months to ensure that I survive sabbatical with my motivation intact. I was particularly… Read More →
A couple of my colleagues have been discussing one of the most challenging topics facing academic scholars, writers, and musicians today: how do we make a living doing what we think is important even as immediate economic realities of our profession change. Among academics, endless articles have detailed the rise of adjuncts, the reduction in… Read More →
My first month of sabbatical is behind me, and I have a few notes to share about how I’m adapting to it. To be clear, I feel very fortunate to have this time away from teaching and service responsibilities, and I am not suggesting that my workflow or practices reflect a universal experience with sabbatical.… Read More →
Yesterday was a big day for various alternative archaeologies (for lack of a better term). Andrew Reinhard premiered his Drunk Archaeology podcast and Josh Wheeler’s story appeared on Harpers webpage on the punk archaeologist involvement in the Atari excavation this spring. Andrew Reinhard was the inspiration and organizational force behind both of these things, and… Read More →
