Maps of Citations Uncover New Fields of Scholarship – Research – The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

 

Maps of Citations Uncover New Fields of Scholarship – Research – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This is a really interesting article about new ways of tracking and organizing research in academia!

Diffuse Libraries: Emergent Roles for the Research Library in the Digital Age

This article describes the kind of collaborative environment I envision for my George Eliot portal!!  Now I have some models to go and look at! 

As an example of a specialized service, the University of Virginia’s proposed American Studies Information Community will draw on harvesting protocols to bring together disparate types of information text, data, media, images for a community, defined as a group of scholars, students, researchers, librarians, information specialists, and citizens with a common interest in a particular thematic area. The project is being undertaken collaboratively with other institutions and content providers e.g., Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Virginia Tech University, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art. The University of Virginia describes these information communities as “learning and teaching environments in which subject-driven websites are developed around print and digital versions of our collections and the teaching interests of our faculty members . . . Information communities will foster interdisciplinary and collaborative research and publication amongst scholars with common interests.”2 This access model is interesting because it reflects several trends that are also evident in the broader landscape. The new service will take advantage of a distributed collection model and a range of partners. The descriptive techniques will reflect enhanced attributes appropriate to the subject area and the diverse formats in the distribut ed collections. Analytic tools will be incorporated to add value to the content and to stimulate collaboration. Perhaps most significant, the access system is explicitly designed to serve a social role as a catalyst for an interdisciplinary community—a far more intrusive role than is provision of access alone.

via Diffuse Libraries: Emergent Roles for the Research Library in the Digital Age.

Creative Approaches to the Syllabus – Chron of Higher Ed

ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This was a very useful article about putting the syllabus into a graphic format that the student is liable to actually read. It seems obvious, but somehow I hadn’t applied the idea to a syllabus other than to put a few tables in to make reading the schedule easier. But my students respond so well to graphic design when I do use it in class slides, for example,  I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this myself. Probably because I had never seen a graphic syllabus myself; my professors certainly never used one.

So I am in the process of modifying some sample syllabi to make them more graphically interesting. It seems rather ironic to me that I am teaching English by replacing words with images; but these days students are conditioned to images, not text; and if I want my students to actually “READ” the syllabus and see it as a useful tool rather than just something to stuff in a notebook, I have to use graphic design to guide their eyes, to help them make connections and understand context. I wonder if that is why my students seem less able to do that sort of organizational thinking when they write, or even when they read: they are used to having the information they consume organized for them visually/graphically. Give them a large block of text and their eyes begin to glaze over.

So am I contributing to the problem by using graphic syllabi? I’m not sure; but then, is privileging text over graphics a sort of colonialism? Do I assume that intellectuals reads text and philistines read graphics? There are different forms of literacy, surely; but then, how can one read a Dickens novel if one can’t plow through reams of text? Is being an English lit professor inherently classist?

And does this matter at the level of syllabus creation?

[Myths and Mismatches]- Myth #1: The Life of the Mind

Myth #1: The Life of the Mind, or,

Academia Is the Only Game in Town

From the Myths and Mismatches email series.

I said that I would be blogging about these emails as they arrive. This email is about the myth that “academia is the place where Great Thoughts happen,” while the “cumulative ‘out there’ beyond the ivory tower” is a howling wilderness of philistinism where “public intellectualism is dead.”

As the writer points out, both premises are inaccurate. Academia is also full of tedious meetings, political agendas, and apathetic students that get in the way of thinking (and writing about) those Great Thoughts. And public intellectualism is not dead; there is plenty of good thinking and good research and good writing going on in business, government, journalism, and the non-profit world.

It was the second half that got me thinking. Just what does “public intellectualism” entail these days? I tend to think of public intellectuals as policy wonks on cable talk shows, think tank denizens floundering amidst white papers, and journalists and bloggers who endlessly comment on the commentators’ comments. [Not to mention the bloviators spewing toxic bias on the talk radio shows--they may be public but they are not intellectuals because they deliberately spread misinformation]. In my mind, this is a far cry from the dignified “discourse” of academia, with its conferences and scholarly journals and academic presses. While academic discourse tends to be walled off and separate from the rough-and-tumble culture wars being fought in the media, that is its weakness as well as its strength.

But especially in my field, the humanities, the ivory tower may be our undoing unless we can show that what we do has value in the ideological/political/social battlefield of policy, media, and public opinion. And I find that a challenge. I want my work to matter, but my sphere of influence is small. Is academia the place I want to work? Is it the place where what I do can really matter?

How can I do these things outside of academia:

• Research – Research is my love. I could do this outside academia of course, either as an independent scholar in the off hours from a “real job,” or as a grant-writer for a non-profit, or as a subject specialist for a testing company or a digital database provider. While I love research in general, I especially enjoy my field – nineteenth century literature and culture. So maybe I could write popular non-fiction, or historical fiction.
• Teaching – I used to think that teaching students mattered, that I would be influencing the future by helping to form the minds of the next generation. But most of the students I see today don’t want to be educated in the old-fashioned sense of the word; they want to put their time in to get their credentials, and get a job. And in this economy, who can blame them? I try to teach my students to think critically and write cogently. But I think I also need to do a better job of relating what I am asking them to do to the real world. The thing that makes the blogosphere such a wonderful place is that we can all be public intellectuals. So I am challenged to get my students to write in the blogosphere, to get their thoughts and their research out there for the world–not just me–to read. But I could do this outside of academia. I could perhaps teach community classes, or work in literacy non-profits. Or do workshops on writing in business settings.
• Writing/publishing – again, I can do this outside academia. Sometimes I think that writing novels would be better; George Eliot got tired of being a public intellectual and took to writing novels instead; and her novels had a much farther-reaching impact than her journal essays and reviews. But I’m not a novelist. So I write academic articles and blog in obscurity. I could of course write more popular books.

So it seems I can do the things I love outside of academia – it just seems kind of overwhelming to think about putting together a job search for a job outside of the academic model.

 

 

Why did I decide to go for my Ph.D.?

If you are thinking about a career as an academic: Don’t.

That is the piece of advice I have heard over and over in the past year or so, but it comes rather late, after spending 10 years in pursuit of my degree.  I know it is common to whine about this, but bear with me a little:

•  Someone should have told me that English majors have the longest time to degree of any Ph.D. in the U.S. This was in an MLA report in the year 2000; I began my studies in 2001. Yet no one told me (why didn’t I research it for myself?)
• That same report talked about the oversupply of English literature Ph.D.s, which had been going on for at least a decade. My professors did talk about this a little; but they assured me it was a temporary blip, and that the market would be getting back to “normal” soon.
• I wish I’d had a crystal ball to inform me that the economy would tank so badly that it may well take a decade to recover (if it ever does).
• Why didn’t I foresee the devaluing of the humanities in public education? Why didn’t I know about the rising use of grad students and adjuncts rather than tenure-track professors in the humanities, especially English, where they are cannon fodder, not just for composition courses and gen ed courses, but now even upper-division courses?

Whine, whine, whine. Moan. Whimper.

In truth, if someone had told me all of this, I’m not sure it would have mattered. I had always wanted a Ph.D. The ten years was going to pass anyway; I might as well spend them in grad school studying something I loved. I loved getting my masters. By then I was starting to see some of the problems in the academy, but after my masters exam, which my committee said was the best they’d attended in years, my professors urged me to get the Ph.D., saying that clearly I was cut out for it. Sure I was at an R-1 rather than an Ivy League school; but they could get me job interviews, and once I was in the interview room I was a sure thing, since I was the “real deal.”  As well, my spouse had a “real job” in industry so that I didn’t “need” the income, so I could even be an “independent scholar” if I wanted.

So I went ahead.

And now I am regretting it.

Myths and Mismatches eCourse « Jo and Julie

Myths and Mismatches eCourse « Jo and Julie.

I just heard about this course from a friend, so I’ve signed up for the emails. I will be blogging about them as I receive them.