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 …

Feature or Bug? Ebooks roll out later

Authors–especially academic authors–should always be happy when people want to read their work, and flattered by desire for access. And so please consider me flattered: thanks for reading and thanks for caring enough to tweet about it. But since Steven Shaviro’s comment mirrored my own confusion about a month ago (and has been making the …

Post Publication Cleanup: Old School Word Clouds

I’m in the somewhat laborious process of decommissioning files from two books. I hate sorting through paper. I’m organized inside computers, not outside them. There are tons of things that were important at the time and can now be recycled, including these two pages (which as you can see from the scan-through are already recycled …