Category Archives: Academia

Reassess the Diss

I’m in the midst of a four-day faculty writing retreat. Seven hours each day of camping out in a conference room on campus, with 19 colleagues from various disciplines, and a middling catered lunch every day. Sounds glamorous, right? We’re … Continue reading

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Fast Take: Undergraduate Conference

This past week I was so happy to be able to attend and moderate a panel for the 28th Annual Indiana University Women’s and Gender Studies Undergraduate Conference at Indiana University Southeast, where I teach. I spent the better part … Continue reading

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Vacation Reading

As I’m writing this post, I am happily into the second day of Spring Break for my campus. (By the time you read this, I will be back to work shaping young minds.)  This small respite, desperately needed, has got … Continue reading

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Langston Hughes and the Literary Canon

In a piece for The Smart Set magazine, Richard Abowitz reminds readers that this past February marked the birthday of one Langston Hughes, popularly known as “the Bard of Harlem.” Over the course of the article, Abowitz parses out Hughes’ … Continue reading

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A Spin on Vernacular, Part Two

In my last post, I discussed the unfortunate description of “vernacular spin” by writer and comedian Neal Brennan, and how it related to the use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). What does this have to do with Richard Sherman? … Continue reading

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Is the MOOC Era Finally Dead?

I’ve posted about my dislike, distrust, and general hatred of the Massively Open Online Course format before (see here and here), but it seems the once-beloved MOOC has now fallen somewhat out of favor. An article in the December 10 … Continue reading

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Bad Pedagogy is Bad

I wanted to comment on this post from the Chronicle which is a “progress” report from a professor teaching a MOOC in college composition at Georgia Tech. It’s somewhat infuriating to me. Part of the difficulty in adapting to new … Continue reading

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Information Literacy

I was recently pointed toward this short blog post about the difficulties of assuming information literacy in our students, whether they are of a younger generation who has grown up with iPhones and easy access to the internet, or whether … Continue reading

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Go MOOC Yourself

It almost seems cliche or foregone to write anything about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) right now, but they are the new hotness, and thus something stuffy old institutions want to get their collective hands on. Yet, like many university … Continue reading

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Of Dissertations And Degrees

It’s rare that a news story touches on the experiences of graduate school and academic work, and when it does, it’s perhaps even more rare that news outlets fully understand the ins and outs of graduate work, research, and academic … Continue reading

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