Monthly Archives: September 2008

I notice on Amazon.com that Gregory Tague’s collection, The Origins of English Literary Modernism (Academica) is now out. The collection has several interesting essays on turn-of-the-20thC English literature; it also has my essay, “The Middlebrow Prophet: Reading the Future of … Continue reading →

Last week, the Tomorrow’s Professor listserv circulated a chapter by Jeffrey Buller explaining how to handle, as a dean, one-on-one meetings with faculty.  I am not a dean (though the son of a provost), but this advice seems useful for … Continue reading →

This morning at breakfast we were talking about college & saving.  A pointed out that if the 5-yr-old went to a CSU school, we could set him up pretty well for afterwards.  He said that he’d probably like to use … Continue reading →

It is, I think, a rule of the internets that if you do something well and openly, that someone will sue you.  In this case, it’s the makers of Endnote suing Zotero for having the temerity to help users access … Continue reading →

It’s a rainy day in CT, and so this morning at breakfast the topic of “going to school in the rain” came up.  Here’s the conversation with the 5-yr-old: we were talking about how kindergartners are a lot like college … Continue reading →

This semester I’m teaching for the first time our department’s intro-to-the-major course, which is fairly new to us.  (Previously we tended to assume that our majors got all the intro work they needed from the surveys.  We no longer think … Continue reading →

This is a first for me: A blog post reconstructed from text messages, but here goes: A friend of mine at another university–for strict anonymity’s sake we’ll call him “Brian”–wrote this afternoon to ask whether I had any practical advice … Continue reading →

Last week I was in Porto for WikiSym 2008. It was both fun and informative, in ways some followup posts will explore. Perhaps the most interesting and invigorating part was the opportunity to be at a conference that was both … Continue reading →

Matt Sedensky has an interesting article out today on the problem of institutionalizing elderly Holocaust survivors. Here’s the lead: Nearly every night, Martin Hornung’s nightmare unfolds to the same haunting strains. Of Auschwitz. Of screaming voices. Of scenes he would … Continue reading →

It’s odd that these three came out within a week of each other, as they were conducted several months apart, but I do have three new interviews up over the past 10 days or so: In Clarkesworld Magazine, an interview … Continue reading →