Yesterday Sarah Bond and Kevin Gannon wrote a reply to a widely circulated piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Manya Whitaker. Whitaker’s piece suggested that early career scholars should avoid writing for public audiences because these types of publications tend not to chart a clear path to tenure. This is undoubtedly true, particularly at mid-… Read More →
This past week my colleague and friend Sheila Liming published an intriguing column in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “My University is Dying.” The piece is provocative. It speaks directly to her experience as the only candidate for tenure in our college of over 200 faculty members this year. The article is intensely genuine. I thought… Read More →
Last week, I trekked northward to Brandon, Manitoba to participate in a panel on public history at the Northern Great Plains History conference. The drive across the Manitoba prairie was during harvest was scenic, the panel was well-attended, and the audience and fellow historians offered some thought-provoking questions that I’ve been chewing on for the last… Read More →
Over the last few years, I’ve experienced an enormous increase in the number of both book and article manuscripts that I’ve been asked to review. I’m not exactly sure why this is happening. I’m neither more qualified than I was a few years ago or more visible. It must just have to do with the cycles of… Read More →
Yesterday, I suggested that the basic way in which administrators and faculty talk about academia creates moments best described as absurd or even the theater of the absurd. In these situations, both sides use laughter to reinforce the fundamental incommensurability of the two perspectives on the academic project. This view, of course, is reductionist and… Read More →
One of the things that initially drew me to academia was the absurdity of it all. I don’t mean to suggest that all aspects of academic life are absurd or even the best parts of it are absurd, but certain things about the academic life encourage us to laugh at both ourselves and our situation. For… Read More →
This weekend, I finished reading Umberto Eco’s lovely little book, How to Write a Thesis, that was translated and republished by MIT Press a few years ago. The book is a great refresher for mid-career scholars and I would love to use it one day in an undergraduate research class. From the choosing a topic, to… Read More →
This weekend, I read Anthony Abraham Tuck’s The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students (Harvard 2019). This seemed like appropriate reading heading into the academic year. More than that, the topic of the book (which is neatly summarized in its title) is one that has sort of haunted me for the last… Read More →
Anyone who likes sports and baseball, in particular, should read (or re-read) Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. The book describes a fantasy baseball league designed by Henry Waugh and played with roles of dice and a series of charts that allowed Henry to simulate the complexities of the game. Henry… Read More →
I was pretty interested to read second installment in Sarah Bond’s series “Addressing the Divide” on the Society for Classical Studies blog. It reflects on the division between Classics and Archaeology and ponders the borders of Classics as a field. Classics has always been a bit odd in that – from an outsiders perspective – it appears… Read More →
I’ve been watching with some interest the recent controversies surrounding the Society for American Archaeology and the Classical Association of the Midwest and South annual meeting. In both cases, these professional associations have experienced sustained and justified criticism. The SAAs have bungled how they handled the registration of a known sexual predator at their annual… Read More →
The past couple of months have been pretty intense for my colleagues in Classics. The field is undergoing a very public debate over its future and its values. The willingness of some of my colleagues (in the broadest sense), to speak out in favor of more inclusive, more expansive, and more critical futures for Classics is… Read More →
This week, Mike Wittgraf and I went through what was left in the Working Group in Digital and New Media lab on the campus of the University of North Dakota. The lab had been little used over the last few years and, in general, the Working Group has lost momentum as an organization. This spurred… Read More →
This is another draft of an essay for the North Dakota Quarterly blog and a case study for what happens when you have to clean up from a major thunderstorm while jet lagged. Comments, critiques, or ridicule welcome, as always! I had been home from my summer field work for about 24 hours when I… Read More →
There’s been a ton of buzz lately about the role of Classics in the larger curriculum of the humanities and in higher education (or any education really) today. Most of the debate has been ongoing for decades and emphasizes the problematic history of Classics and its close association with the “Western Tradition.” Many of the… Read More →
Today is one of those super hectic days that’ll run from before 7 am until after 8 pm with barely time for quick bites to eat and think between obligations. These obligations are almost all good and fun, but “wowf” will today be full. There are three things on my mind about NDQ this week,… Read More →
This weekend, I got to thinking about how scholars in the humanities might rate their research productivity and quality. This line of thinking was prompted by both a new university mandate that scholars in the humanities and social sciences figure out how to rank or evaluate our publications and a reading of I. Stengers’s Another Science… Read More →
Four weeks ago, I started writing my contribution to the North Dakota Quarterly special issue dedicated to Humanities in the Age of Austerity. If you haven’t read the first part of this article, you can find it here, you can find the second part here, the third part here, and the fourth part here. Last Tuesday, I had… Read More →
