By Brian Mathews. A few weeks ago I met Brian Croxall and learned about Emory’s Center for Digital Scholarship. I thought it was interesting that it began as a research commons for faculty and graduate students… but that it went underutilized. They re-worked the concept and built a co-working environment filled with experts in data, gis, digital humanities, pedagogy, educational technology, and other specialties. More...
By Howard Good. Senior faculty. It sounds like an honorific. It isn’t. It’s more a sort of stigmata. Being called “senior faculty” stigmatizes you. I’m called “senior faculty” quite a lot.
I have been teaching journalism for 33 years, 29 at the same college. My career in academe, begun with innocent hopes and fearsome ambitions, is nearing its obvious end. I expect to be bid farewell in the style to which I have been made accustomed. Notable work anniversaries—10, 15, 20, 25 years—all passed unacknowledged by my institution. More...
By Allan Metcalf. It’s time to take a breather from rescuing the humanities. So in this week of Thanksgiving, let’s pause a moment to acknowledge the corn. More...
By Allan Metcalf. Last week in this space I regretted the lack of an acronym identifying the fields of the humanities, an acronym that would be a counterpart to the scientists’ successful STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. A hundred readers joined in the discussion, and one, I think, came up with the answer to our prayers: RAPHAEL.
It would signify:
R – Religion
A – Art
P – Philosophy
H – History
A – Aesthetics
E – English
L – Languages
Admittedly, the acronym isn’t perfect. More...
By Ben Yagoda. Back in September, Barrett Township, in Pennsylvania, was the center of a manhunt for an armed fugitive and adopted the motto “Barrett Proud.” When the suspect was caught, in October, the entire region appropriated it and dubbed itself “Pocono Proud.” More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. I remarked in a recent post that the reason I spend time disputing silly things people say about English grammar is that I take seriously my job description as a professor. But I’ve actually been working to rebut silly claims about language (not just English) since I was an undergraduate.
In the 1956 British edition of The Guinness Book of Records, which I browsed for hours when I was a boy, the section on language (Page 118) has an entry headed MOST PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. More...
By Lucy Ferriss. “I love how that goat just nopes out of that situation.” And I love the ring of a newly hatched bit of slang that hasn’t even received its Urban Dictionary definition yet. Here, at its inception, nopes out doesn’t yet sound juvenile to me, or evasive, or overused, or imprecise; it hasn’t yet earned any of the pejoratives that purists may hurl its way if and when it becomes as widespread in the language as amazeballs or totes. More...
By Ilan Stavans. A few days ago I happened upon a brief essay by Borges called “On Dubbing,” in which he lambasts the then-recent Hollywood invention (the essay was written in 1945) of devising “monsters which combine the illustrious features of Greta Garbo with the voice of Aldonza Lorenzo.” Borges calls the mechanism “a malignant artifice” (un maligno artificio). More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Recovery Continues, but Competition Is Fierce”
Organization: Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa
Summary: The annual survey of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges shows that states continue their slow recovery from the recession. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding on Community Colleges and Universities in Three States”
Authors: Hana Lahr, Lara Pheatt, Kevin Dougherty, Sosanya Jones, Rebecca Natow, and Vikash Reddy
Organization: Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College
Summary: New policies in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee that link significant portions of state budget allocations to colleges’ graduation and persistence rates are causing some four-year colleges to become more selective. More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
