And now, an academic paperback for over $1500

So I went to Amazon to pick up Constance Classen’s The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, which I’m looking forward to reading.  This is what I found:   While I’m definitely interested in picking up the book, and while it is clearly eligible for super saver shipping, this is the first over-$1500 academic …

“Look! Now you can…”: Gadget Logic in Big Data and the Digital Humanities

One of the problems with the move to digital humanities and big data is a kind of “gadget logic” taken from the advertising rhetoric of consumer electronics.  Lots of the reportage around digital humanities work on the big data side of the field focuses on what computer could do that people couldn’t.  By that I …

Writing: Tools of the Trade

A Facebook conversation started by Tara Rodgers got me thinking about the tools we use as writers.  Obviously, the creative process is highly idiosyncratic and personal at some level even though none of us are as unique as we think we are.  Try everything; select what works.  The proliferation of new tools is exciting but it …

Narrative: Can’t Live With It. . .

Last week in my Historiography seminar I taught Hayden White’s classic 1966 The Burden of History.  This is the third time I’ve taught him (last two times were in 2000 and 2004) and each time, certain aspects of his argument seem fresh, others seem dated.  What’s wonderful is that those labels change each time. Here …

2013 Academic Plans

1.  Refuse requests for “to spec” writing.  I did five essays like that in 2012 and while each one was a pleasant diversion from my main research agenda, the sum total–alongside grant applications–have taken me too far from the work sitting on my hard drive waiting to get out.  I won’t declare bankruptcy on existing …