Day of DH 2011

Today, March 18th 2011, is the Day in the Life of Digital Humanities according to the good people at TAPoR. In an effort to publicize what digital humanists do in their everyday lives, those who sign up are encouraged to blog (at least thrice) about what their #dayofdh held. TAPoR hosts blogs for each participant and will eventually gather and archive all of the entries. Though I am not certain, I am sure someone there is also gathering the tweets related to the Day of DH and will archive those, too.

Instead of cross posting my entries, I will simply link to the blog hosted on the Day of DH WP multisite build. Click here for my entries there.

EdTech and EduPunks

I have had this blog title sitting in my drafts folder for close to a year. Sitting and looking at it for ten long months has not motivated me to write more here. The guilt was overwhelming.

Fortunately, the guilt is now gone.

Jim Groom has broken up with EduPunk because “[Its] history of flirting and seducing the neo-liberals who want to dismantle public institutions has been a real turn off,” so I don’t feel as if I should be beholden to its glorious name.

Sure, I’ll still look for ways to modify me pedagogy to avoid the over-corporatization of higher ed. And I will still eschew big, bulky CMS programs like BlackBoard to save myself and my students bloat headaches from the unnecessary parts that fill what could be a simple, usable space for learning. I’ll keep plugging along with WordPress and Zotero and other free or open source projects that seek to make a difference and make life work better. Along with that, I will keep searching for lower-cost alternatives to text books to do my part to keep education costs down. Despite my love of the name  I may, like Groom, have to leave it behind.

Maybe, like punk music after 1978, the name won’t hold the same cachet it once did, but the spirit will live on.

Mad Men, Aca-Fans, and Online Scholarship

A (now-not-so) recent article by Jason Mittell (On Disliking Mad Men) has sparked several excellent discussions ranging from the value of fans-as-critics to whether Don Draper is a likable guy. Prompted by Mittell’s article, videogame theorist Ian Bogost wrote out his thoughts (Against Aca-Fandom) which, naturally, elicited a response from the critical founder of aca-fandom, Henry Jenkins. It should be said that these three scholars (and nearly everyone who contributed to the discussion in the comments) wrote with respect and kindness with genuine questions and intrigue.

When thinking of aca-fandom, I cannot help but think of Matthew Arnold. Just as scholars are expected to view their subjects objectively, aca-fans have a vested interest in their subjects that cannot be ignored. While studying and investigating texts and subjects that are not personally interesting is a chore and most likely results in dull criticism, fandom undoubtedly complicates (must resist problematizes…) objectivity.

Please excuse the lengthy quote, but here is where Arnold fits in:

It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be summed up in one word,–disinterestedness.¹ And how is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from what is called ‘the practical view of things’; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them.

from The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

While I may be misreading Arnold here, the ideas that a critic must remain wholly disinterested and promote what is best for his/her surrounding culture are at odds. Can one consider what is best for society while excluding “those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas?” His notion that a critic could remain disinterested while deciding what is best for his/her society it, as best, naive and, at worst, completely foolish. Why, then, do we believe that scholars can function both as critics and fans or any particular subject?² Though no particular field (at least in the humanities) is exempt, those in the field of popular culture seem most susceptible to the siren song of fandom. Whether music, film, art, or video games, pop culture critics and scholars research texts that love and their lack of objectivity is often apparent.

The rise of aca-fandom, to me, seems to be an unconscious revival of Arnold’s goal to educate the philistines and refine their cultural tastes until they match ours–the educated cultural elite–while maintaining a critical distance from the subjects that we adore. As Mittell notes,³ pop culture research is not concentrated on what may be considered low-brow entertainment. Instead, aca-fans study what they consider to be the best in hopes that their opinions catch on. This insularity, of course, does not aid the study of popular culture at large.

Since many scholars (particularly those in the pop culture camp) are avowed nerds who cannot help but express their fandom, what is to be done about aca-fandom? The answer, I believe, is not in distancing ourselves from the topics we love. Instead, we can strive for more balance. Like Bogost has done with Cow Clicker, scholars can stay within their preferred field but venture into parts that seem undesirable (such as Facebook games for a video game designer and scholar). For the music culture scholar, perhaps she can investigate the rise of Ke$ha although she typically avoids mainstream pop music. Maybe a visual culture critic could trace the history of Thomas Kinkade–painter of kitsch and light.

I do not pretend to have a good answer to the problem of aca-fandom but it is certainly something worth considering.

1. Objectivity, independence of judgment. [↩]
2. Mea culpa: I am chief among the offending aca-fans. Much of my research has begun as fandom which had to be reverse-engineered into some for of scholarly endeavor. [↩]
3. “While media scholars do not solely write about what we like, the prevalence of books focused on “quality television” shows that appeal to academics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and now Mad Men – especially when compared to the lack of similar volumes or essays about more lowbrow or mainstream programs – suggests that taste is often more of a motivating factor for our scholarship than we admit. We should own up to our own fannish (or anti-fannish) tendencies regarding our objects of study, not regarding fan practices as something wholly separate from our academic endeavors by acknowledging how taste structures what we choose to write about.” [↩]

Challenging my Anglocentrism

Several weeks ago, the New York Times printed an article about the future of academic peer review and potential alternatives that garnered quite a bit of attention in academic circles. Besides inspiring one of my favorite non-meme memes, #LOLDan, the NYT piece was picked up by newspapers and news outlets worldwide, including Le Monde. What intrigued me most about the Le Monde article (after, of course, my surprise that I could still read French enough to get the gist) was the bracketed phrase contained here:

“Cette évolution était derrière la récente décision de la prestigieuse revue Shakespeare Quaterly [spécialisée dans les études des textes du poète et dramaturge britannique] de s’embarquer dans une expérience inhabituelle.”

The bracketed phrase specifies that Shakespeare Quarterly specializes in the study of the British poet and playwright. My egregious Anglocentrism is showing here, but I was stunned that the newspaper would find it necessary to explain to its readers who Shakespeare is. Would French literary scholars be surprised if a US newspaper specified who Molière was (which, sadly, it surely would)?

Rather unrelatedly, there is a joy to be felt at the promise at the increasing globalization of literary scholarship. Google Wave (now slowly going the way of the buffalo) showed great promise for global collaboration and it gives me great hope for the future of the increasingly small world of the academy.

With increased contact with non-English-lit-centered scholars, I can only hope that my anglocentrism will dissolve into a more nuanced approach to literature and scholarship.

LMS Debate and Decisions

In preparation for this coming semester I have been testing different programs and systems in an effort to make my teaching better. With much help from the good people over at ProfHacker, I have been introduced to several methods of teaching involving technology that I would have not otherwise encountered. Having been sheltered in fairly tech-free English departments (Which is not to say that my professors did not embrace technological advances for their research and personal lives, but that their tech use didn’t influence their pedagogy. To stretch this parenthetical tangent even further, let me recommend a piece that Brian Croxall recently wrote on the absence of technology in the graduate seminar), I haven’t had the chance to see technology flex its pedagogical muscles to enliven stereotypically stodgy composition and literature classrooms.

The debate over LMS (Learning Management System) use has been waged elsewhere and no clear winner has emerged. However, the fact that many universities have chosen to go with Bb’s open-source cousins, Moodle and Sakai, may indicate which direction the battle is heading. Blackboard, the granddaddy of the big (some say bloated), costly LMS software packages has long been standard on college campuses across the country. Both my undergrad and graduate universities used Bb so it’s all I’ve known. Though it should be mentioned that they have since changed to Moodle and Desire2Learn, respectively (for now, we’ll ignore their choice of program names). For my purposes, as an adjunct professor, I feel it necessary to circumvent the prescribed LMS and create my own. [Another ProfHacker link. This time, it's a post from Ryan Cordell regarding institutions' technological choices.]

The decision to create and host an LMS separate from the university has many positives and (without having put it into practice) few drawbacks. For ease of use, there is only one system that I must learn and use. If I were to teach at more than one university, it is likely that they will have different systems. Along with that, the fact that the system is hosted on my server space means that the content belongs to me and travels with me. There is no fear that the coursework put in an university-owned LMS will disappear once the system changes or once the semester ends. The student’s work is more accessible down the line for both students and instructors.

Not only does hosting my own LMS make sense, it is relatively easy. Using the latest version of WordPress (which can be coded to function just as WPMu with a little PHP manipulation) and a few plugins, one can create a useful and unbloated LMS to fit specific class needs. Having allowed networking on my WordPress install, I can create multiple linked blogs under one database and control them all from one dashboard. Along with multiple managed blogs, the plugin ScholarPress allows any blog to have schedule, assignment, and course information tabs that are just as user-friendly as the set up in Moodle or Blackboard.

One drawback is that there is no secure feature to display student grades through WordPress. ScholarPress, though, is promising a secure gradebook addition that will connect to their Courseware. Until that day, I imagine I will have to use Moodle at least for the function of sharing and reporting student grades.

While I’m not yet a legitimate EduPunk, future posts will discuss the (brief) history of the EduPunk movement and how it will affect my pedagogy.

[Image by Flickr user English106 / Creative Commons licensed]