Over the last few weeks my students in my graduate class in English have started a project designed to engage with Merrifield Hall before it undergoes major renovations next year. For those of you who have read this blog, you’ll recognize this as a development related in some way to my ongoing effort to engage with the changing… Read More →
I’ve been directing a graduate seminar called “Thinking with Things” in the English department this semester and so far it has been pretty great. The discussions have been probing and enthusiastic, the students eager and creative, and over the last two weeks they’re transformed the seminar from a standard, read-and-discuss format, to a more active read-discuss-produce… Read More →
This semester is going to be an adventure. Not only are we having some pretty cold weather, but COVID and teaching four different classes is keeping my on my toes. On top of this, I’m trying to develop a bit more personal discipline and read and write regularly even if it’s not directed toward any… Read More →
Each winter, the local newspaper does its public service and publishes a searchable list of the salaries of state employees. This includes employees at the state’s universities. Predictably, there’s a low grumble of outrage as faculty whose salaries are public record somehow find a way to object to them being made even more public. This is… Read More →
For better or for worse, my blog rarely deals with contemporary affairs, but occasionally a situation arises in our community that intersects closely enough with my professional and personal interests to warrant some comment. This past week, North Dakota’s Catholic Conference penned a letter to the Catholic parents urging them to contact the University of North Dakota concerning its… Read More →
My holiday reading consisted of wading my way (almost!) through David Graeber and David Wengrow’s massive book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021). I like the book and I like their argument and I’m hoping that it spurs a wide ranging discussion of how our views of the past shape how… Read More →
Earlier this week, there was a fun discussion on The Twitters about a job ad that read: New job: “tenure track position: American history OR Medieval history.” At first, like a bunch of other people on Twitters, I was baffled by this (although I could understand easily enough how a department might need one or the other… Read More →
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been chipping on a paper that reflect on the Wesley College Documentation project as an approach to teaching the archaeology of the contemporary world. I’m about two thirds of the way through the paper and thought I should probably share a draft of it. I’m moderately happy with what… Read More →
For the last decade, I’ve been teaching our department’s historical methods class and the final weeks of the that class are almost always devoted to encouraging students to think about their writing. In a practical sense, this involves urging students to write clear, well-organized prose. Like thousands of other teachers, I stress the need for… Read More →
This week is the annual meeting of the American Schools of Overseas Research in Chicago and unfortunately for the second year in a row, I won’t be able to attend in person because of the dumb COVID pandemic. If you wonder why I’m not going to Chicago, this article appeared as if on cue! You can check out… Read More →
It feels like it’s about the time of the semester for a Three Things Thursday. So here are some thoughts on peer review, being busy, and a little fiction from the NDQ archive! Thing the First This week, I was vaguely annoyed by a well-meaning twitter thread about peer review. The author of this thread argues that… Read More →
It’s been a long week and I’m looking at a day filled with meetings, teaching, and other adventures. In light of this, it seems like a good time for a Three Things Thursday. Thing the First Last week, while having a conversation with one of my old Greek archaeology buddies, he casually mentioned that Rhys Carpenter… Read More →
One of the aspects of revising my book manuscript that I’m currently negotiating is knowing whether and when to cite a dissertation. At some point in my career, someone told me it was generally bad form to criticize a dissertation (or a dissertation’s arguments) in a published work. It was regarded as a kind of… Read More →
I know that I’m a bit late to the conversation on this, but I wanted to think about things a bit more before I wrote anything (not that this has helped in the past). If you follow archaeology on social media, you’ll have undoubtedly witnessed the dust up between Flint Dibble and the director of some… Read More →
Time seems the slow down in the week before classes start. It feels like the cooling, muggy air of late August effectively bogs down the steady clip of summertime making minutes feel like hours and hours feel like days. This slowing of time serves as a good reminder that our experience of time is indeed relative even… Read More →
Teaching about structural violence is always a bit difficult. After all, structures are elusive things that often operated below the level of conscious action and agency, but nevertheless shape our daily lives. At their most visible, structures are manifest in institutions and, at their least, they are known through movements and attitudes that aren’t structures themselves… Read More →
Last week, I listened to my first audiobook: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. It was lavishly produced (I think) and featured numerous actors and accents to enliven a story with a genuinely global reach. It is worth reading (or listening to). The book tells the story of climate change the role of… Read More →
