Category — General

Prerequisites. As she promised, Naomi has written a list of prerequisites for graduate school in the humanities. Though couched in positive terms, her list is far closer to my Straight Talk in content than Naomi would probably want to admit. That’s fine. The more people saying these things, and the more… [Caveat Lector]

for those interested in going into higher education, i think this list is a good start, not a great start, because it lacks a bit of the necessary cynicism, but a good start.

Teaching Philosophy Statement. I really need to do a good teaching philosophy statement that I can stand by, publish on the Web, and be proud of. I was poking around my hard drive trying to find a statement that I wrote years ago while at the University of Tennessee, but I could only find this quotation that I've loved ever since I first read it in Fall 1999 (guess the actual teaching statement got eaten along the way…eh, it's probably on a floppy somewhere):

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Nor will the preceptor be under the obligation merely to teach these things, but frequently to ask questions upon them, and try the judgment of his pupils. Thus carelessness will not come upon them while they listen, nor will the instructions that shall be given fail to enter their ears; and they will at the same time be conducted to the end which is sought in this exercise, namely that they themselves may conceive and understand. For what object have we in teaching them, but that they may not always require to be taught?

—Marcus Fabius Quintilian, from Institutio Oratoria, written in the year 90 C.E. My emphasis.

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Bet you loved that one, Mike–seems right up your alley. I guess what I'm struggling with in writing my statement is a balance between theory and practice–oh, that and a solid understanding of the teaching philosophy statement as genre. Here are a couple of statements from teachers I know:

• Susan Giesemann North

• Charlie Lowe

Does anyone else know of good examples of online teaching philosophy statements? Please post them. [CultureCat: Rhetoric and Feminism - .::.caterwauling like Garfield on the fence at night.::.]

i don't have one, but i too have been working on one. i should go raid my cicero quotes to see what i have there.

autounfocus: Stanford CourseWork Released. Quote: “Charles Kerns wrote to say that Stanford has officially released their open source course management system, CourseWork. The system looks to do everything most people would want out of the box, and “

Comment: A little struggle to find the actual code, but here it is. [Serious Instructional Technology]

hmm, interesting, haven't played with it yet. i still want to try moodle.

US plans hypersonic bomber. American scientists plan to build a hypersonic aircraft which could strike anywhere in the world within two hours. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
so this is what they are doing, hmm, scary….. its our world or no world, boom, your dead

actor construction?. In too many topics, too little time of June 29, 2003, regarding the role of the actor in the actor-network theory and methodology, jeremy writes: “however, the fixation on the actor is still present. get rid of it, stop thinking about it, think about networks, only networks, and then think… [infoSophy: Socio-technological Rendering of Information]

i replied to this on his blog too, but ultimately my position is to rid oneself of the heirarchy of ontology involved in differentiating actors, and just look at the networks. there really are no actors, because then there is no differences amongst actors, only nodes where networks conjoin.

keeping in mind though that this is just my interpretation of several texts, mainly latour, law, then adding some norbert wiener. most people really want to differentiate between actors, I'm unconvinced that it is as important as kant tells us.

50 centuries of history mapped out.

[Poorbuthappy Guide to Ease]

i want one of these. this would make be perfect for explaining things to students.

1602. “[T]he whole Marvel Universe is starting to occur 500 years early …

Sir Nicholas Fury is head of the Queen's Intelligence, Dr Stephen Strange is her court physician (and magician), the Inquisition is torturing “witchbreed” … and now a mysterious treasure — which may be a weapon of some kind — is being sent from Jerusalem to England by the last of the Templars. Something that may save the world, or destroy it, which has already attracted the attention of such people as Count Otto Von Doom (known as “The Handsome”)… [so] Nicholas Fury sends his top agent, a blind Irish ballad singer named Matthew Murdock, off to bring it back safely.”

What does it all mean? Just that Neil Gaiman is taking Marvel back to 1602. [MetaFilter]

this sounds like it could be cool….. or at least interesting. comic books are interesting to me again.

here is a super rough draft of what i was going to write for the blogosphere call, but realized, thankfully before I submitted it that I would never have time to write this, given that I'm supposed to be working on other things, but is worth thinking about nonetheless, so I'll share it.

!–this is a rough draft–!
Within and Without: The Blogosphere's Construction of Subalterns

In a globalized and individualized society, information systems become identity systems. Blogs are part of this recombinant system, Since their popularization, a disturbingly normal phenomena has once again reared its head. Blogs, and networks of blogs create systems of cores and peripheries, of hegemony and subaltern. In fact, through the appropriation of the authorial voice by systemic hegemonization, many blogs are dissuaded from participating, or voicing alternative blogs and methods. People's ears and yes are tuned out and turned away, the dissonance created by their implied difference from the hegemonic voice.

This glowering hegemonic ideal represses the individual voice, and subordinates it to the hegemony. It defacto creates an underclass of blogs that become ephemeral to the world, unwatched and unread, except to a few, and thus the information and identity functions that these blogs would provide for are circumscribed. This paper is intended to be a theoretical analysis of this phenomena, examining particularly, the relationship between the hegemonic system and the creation of the subaltern class in the blogosphere. By analyzing 'blog advice' and 'how to blog' books, I demonstrate the hegemonic system at work, by relating those to the particular authors and popularity of certain blogs that they author. It should be clear that the infrastructure of blogging is directly related to the hegemonic processes of power and fame of these books and blogs. Following the establishment of the hegemony in the blogosphere, I probe for the subaltern, looking for those that are excluded both within and outside of the the blogosphere establishing within them their inherent lack of role in the blog regime and the fragmented nature of their efforts to become a validated alternative. I conclude by presenting some of the strategies for the subaltern which could reauthorize their voices, perhaps unifying them, and thus providing a sense of difference in the blogosphere.

Sources
Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks . Tr. Joseph A. Buttigieg and Antonio Callari. New York: Columbia UP, 1992.
Gramsci, Antonio. The Modern Prince, and Other Writings . Tr. Louis Marks. New York: International Publishers, 1967.

If you can't tell, I'm avoiding grading, though I am slowly getting finished. grading is the worst part of teaching, if i didn't have to grade i'd love it much more. so our grades for summer session 1 have to be in tomorrow, while second summer session in which I'm teaching my political economy of the internet class, starts today. NO break, though we do get the 4th off, wooo hooo. i wanted to go to dc for the 4th which is always fun, but didn't manage to put anything together:( i'll prolly head up in august when it gets nice and warm.

The presentations from the conference, Death of th …. The presentations from the conference, Death of the Book? Challenges and Opportunities for Scholarly Publishing (Sydney, March 7-8, 2003), are now online. [FOS News]

I was supposed to go to this with Leveraging the E-everyday life of Academia, but in the end, the budget crisis prevented my participation, luckily that seems somewhat resolved