dagblog - Comments for "Blogging Like Chaucer"

I ran across this post

Donal — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:54:01 +0000

I ran across this post (through ScienceBlogs) and it seemed somewhat related:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/blogging/north-blogging-current-biolo...

Highly qualified job

Robert "Migrant Intellectual" Baum — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:44:52 +0000

In reply to I'm sorry that Lee Skallerup

Highly qualified job candidates work in a low-production industry (corporate outsourced university) with increasing demands of student learners. This is the recipe for increased job creation based on that proverbial sacred cow, the "free market."

MOOCs serve the same role to the university as overnight "cash only" cleaning crews in corporate food service. They are free, attract more workers, fail to pay adequate wages (if at all).

With this all in mind, doesn't the discussion about jobs need to account for more than the fortune's fate dialectic found across this particular blog entry?

I'm sorry that Lee Skallerup

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:38:54 +0000

In reply to Blogging by members of the

I'm sorry that Lee Skallerup took offense to my post.

I did not say that blogging had no intellectual value. I said it would not get you a job. I said this because Lee Skallerup, prolific blogger, blogged about how she could not find a job. And I said this because I am genuinely worried about a number of other young academic bloggers who are struggling with tenure-track searches.

And, as I said above:

1. The IHE blogger's larger point that in this market you can do everything right and still not get a job is absolutely true. There are far more qualified people than there are jobs, and so qualified people go without. Everything else I say should be read with that larger problem in mind. 2. I have no intention of commenting on the IHE blogger's specific case except for the fact that blogging seems not to have served her as a job credential. She's not asking my advice.

As for your charge of sexism, I admit it absolutely. That is why I singled out Tenured Radical, Historiann, and (in the comments thread) Hilzoy as ideal blogging role models. Those three women are my own blogging role models.

Blogging by members of the

rhollingsworth — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:24:19 +0000

In reply to Blogging Like Chaucer

Blogging by members of the academic community is a way for us all to use our critical thinking skills - a time for reflection on what we do and why. A form of meta-cognition, if you will, by those most interested in higher learning. This could be, indeed, a place to advertise one's own scholarly publications as you recommend above ... but I suspect that is not something that is a sure-fire compelling use of the blogosphere - unless you're talking about how you experienced the process of scholarly publishing?

If we agree that blogging is a form of community building among academics, then why shouldn't a woman at the edges of academia (an adjunct professor teaching a service course in one of the most rural locations in one of the poorest states in the nation) use her blog on Inside Higher Ed to do the very thing you emphasize in your last paragraph? It seems to me that your focus on one phrase (out of many long and thoughtful narratives in her series) is to give us notice that this particular blogger has done nothing else to further her academic career but use this one blog platform for her academic work. Perhaps you mean to infer (or perhaps I take from your example, despite the caveats you give) that if she had yet one more article, one more essay, one more book published by a scholarly press (instead of spending her time writing for IHE) that she would have been hired in a tenure-track job?

Your emphasis on one short statement in one blog post by this prolific writer/educator strikes me as a form of condescension, and I feel compelled to respond. I want to remind your readers that there are many forms of work to be done in academia for it to survive in the midst of a culture of anti-intellectualism and "values-based austerity" financing. More frightening, the uncounted hours of scholarly work done by women in a higher education setting that is not valued or -- when documented -- is seen as less important as the reputed potential of their male colleagues.

Please be sensitive to the very real sexism that is alive and well in our academic worlds - and choose more carefully when you decide to use a single case for your blog's foil.

Yes--Historiann's blog is fun

Shelley — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:21:24 +0000

In reply to Blogging Like Chaucer

Yes--Historiann's blog is fun and has a very individual voice.

Hi to her!

Welcome, Historiann. I know

Michael Maiello — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 03:05:15 +0000

In reply to Right on, Michael and thanks

Welcome, Historiann. I know you have a lot to read but please do stick around. We're a fun bunch, even if (because of?) a lot of us (well, me) are dilettantes.

You mention being a schmuck teaching at an Aggie school in flyover country. I got my undergaduate degree (okay, my only degree) from the University of New Mexico. Not an Aggie (that's New Mexico State) but a big and, from the coverage of it, unremarkable public university in flyover country. But, the scholars I met. And, all of my classes were taught by the professors. What a hard working bunch of teachers. They had to fight the lack of reputation of the place, for sure. Their paper had to be twice as good to get published (I know, I know, "blind submissions," but, seriously). Their books had to be twice as good to get noticed.

I guess what I'm saying, having been educated in the environment where you're teaching is, "Thank you, and head held high, please. I'm proud of my degree."

I think that the giant

Michael Maiello — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 02:53:34 +0000

In reply to Great comment, Michael.

I think that the giant efficiencies visited on the "creative class," (I use scare quotes because I both love and loathe the term but do apply it to myself) came as something of a surprise to people. Partly, it's that people who thought they found some safety working in immeasurable fields have now been measured. Or, where they can't be adequately measured, in an age of hyper-measurement, that is now considered a sin rather than a virtue.

And then there's just the sheer volume of material out there. Good material. Prices for it have been driven down. Apple's new music streaming service is going to pay labels 16 cents per listen and a smidgen of ad revenue after a certain threshold. I met a woman at a reading a few weeks ago who is a brilliant singer. She has done a few albums with an underground, but commercial, label. She has a bit of a following. So far this year, her big song has been streamed 2 million times. She got a check for a few hundred bucks. After she split it with her band, she cleared $40. That's .0025 cents a listen.

I'm starting this here, but I plan to piggyback a post on yours this week.

Oh, shytte!

Doctor Cleveland — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 02:18:47 +0000

In reply to There goeth his career.

Oh, shytte!

Thanks for dropping by,

Doctor Cleveland — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:33:47 +0000

In reply to Right on, Michael and thanks

Thanks for dropping by, Historiann, and thanks for the kind words and the link yourself. I'm sorry about the spam filter; I don't know what gets into it.

I think "blog triumphalism" is an excellent phrase and an excellent point. It used to be the case that blogs were the Next! Big! Thing! and would change all the rules and solve ever problem, yadda yadda yadda. (Compare it to the current wave of MOOC triumphalism.) And sure, it hasn't worked out that way.

But, as with any wave of enthusiasm, the disillusionment sets in by phases, with the savviest and best-connected players, the pool of early adopters, turning into the pool of early abandoners. (Some people will cash their chips out of the MOOC casino for a big hard-cash payoff before Inspector Renault comes in to shut it all down.) There's always a pool of optimistic believers who lag behind the curve. And they come from the very groups who can afford to lose the least.

It's generally not the hotshot PhDs fresh out of the Ivies who are still banking on their blog making them a career. It's young academics from less prestigious schools, with fewer connections and less professional capital. The saddest scenario of all comes when someone with an obscure academic pedigree, who needs to be busting out as much peer-reviewed scholarship as possible to narrow the Ivy gang's built-in lead, put their hopes in their blog instead and count on it to be the great equalizer.

Agreed. I would put you

Ramona — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:26:54 +0000

In reply to Yes, Ramona, I agree. Blogs

Agreed. I would put you right up there, too.