Historiann

Well, friends:  we’re in the midst of a butt-chapping deep freeze, thanks to an Alberta Clipper that just won’t quit.  It’s -15 degrees Fahrenheit here in Potterville, and won’t get above freezing until sometime this weekend.  Those of you in the East might be enjoying a snow day today, so here are a few tidbits to warm you up and get your engines running this morning:

• Chris Hedges asks, “Are Liberals Pathetic?“  (h/t Susie at Suburban Guerrilla.)  He writes that their “sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.”  He then goes on to contrast elite, sheltered liberals with working class men who “knew precisely what to do with people who abused them. They may not have been liberal, they may not have finished high school, but they were far more grounded than most of those I studied with.”  What do you think?  I think he’s onto something, but he also engages in a romanticization of a partcular kind of working-class masculinity that equates “fighting” with manhood only, and by implication slights the liberal coalition of today which is based on feminists and gays.  Can we get away from these gendered tropes for criticizing the left?  (Hedges himself identifies the intersection of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue that’s really to blame for Dem reluctance or even refusal to attempt real change.)
• Hedges’ essay reminded me of an interesting piece by Joe Bageant on the absence of compassion among so-called “progressives” called “Shoot the Fat Guys, Hang the Smokers.”  I worry about this–it’s part of what I was trying to get at last year in most of my posts on Sarah Palin.  Laughing at or condescending to people isn’t a winning strategy.  Smugness will be the death of the left.
• Clio Bluestocking brings us more tales from the Orwellian world of online teaching at her school–or, as Hacky McHackhack, the overpaid consultant puts it, “delivering education.”  Continue Reading »

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John Gast, "American Progress," 1872

Inside Higher Ed reports on a study that says that faculty think they’re more tech savvy than their students think they are.   Color me unsurprised!  Second commenter “bevo” explains some of the perception gap here, and asks, “Why do we assume that all technology has to improve education?”  Why indeed?  It’s only useful if it’s used thoughtfully and effectively.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m pretty far from what you’d call an “early adapter” of anything.  But, I’m open to whatever works–I don’t see me adopting Twitter for use in class or out, but I think it’s great if other faculty want to experiment with it and figure out how it’s useful for their pedagogical goals. 

I’ve become a big adherent of PowerPoint, because of its ability to incorporate visual and verbal information–I’m able to include analyses of a wider range of documentary and material culture sources in my lectures because of it.  (That, and the fact that there are so many big, beautiful color images of just about everything that I can rip from the web.)  But, it took me a long time to switch from a lecture outlined on an overhead projector to PowerPoint.  When people first started using PowerPoint, I was extremely underwhelmed with how they were using it:  either as a digital overhead projector, with the same outline and bullet points, or illustrated badly with anachronistic images.  I don’t use any images that can’t be analyzed as primary sources–a challenge in my period, but it can be done.

Switching to PowerPoint changed my lectures, Continue Reading »

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Mr. Mole

I had lunch on Monday with a mole deep inside the world of for-profit academic publishing.  We discussed his industry’s current fascination with e-textbooks:  everyone is developing them and spending gobs of money on them, but no one has figured out how to profit from them.  (Like everything else on the internets, except for Pr()n and gambling!)  Apparently, Texas–one of two states (California is the other) that pretty much dictate what K-12 textbook companies publish–demands now that all textbooks considered for statewide adoption have e-text versions as the price of admission.  That is, having the e-text is a precondition for being considered at all, but they still have to print up the hard copies of the books, too.

The advantages to e-texts without hard copies are obvious to publishers:  no paper, printing, or warehouse storage costs, and absolutely no competition with the used textbook market.  (Used textbooks are Kryptonite to the textbook publishing industry:  they have to make all their money in one year on a new edition–after that, there are so many used copies in circulation that they can no longer compete.)  Mr. Mole said that given the minimal focus most college instructors put on textbooks, e-texts make a lot of sense, since in most disciplines they serve for the most part as expensive reference tools that aren’t read cover-to-cover but rather are consulted episodically on an as-needed basis.  In those cases, e-text versions should be welcome substitutions for the 15-pound doorstopper.

But, would e-texts work in history or literature classes?  I wondered if book-intensive (rather than article-intensive) disciplines in which reading is–or should be, anyway–not just a central methodology but also a pleasureable experience would be so eager to jump on the e-bandwagon?  Mr. Mole and I both agreed that on-line was fine for short pieces (as on blogs) and perhaps magazine-length articles, but not for books that were meant to be read cover-to-cover.  And, I would add, not even on a Kindle or other such gadget.  (After all:  who wants to spend even more time in front of a darn computer screen?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?)  Interestingly, Mr. Mole was one step ahead of me, and said that he had conducted a focus group with 10 undergraduates at his alma mater recently about e-texts.  Here’s what he found out:  Continue Reading »

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Over at Mama Ph.D., “Math Geek Mom” Rosemarie Emanuele revealed something that happened to her last year which I find unbelieveably shocking and upsetting:

Ursuline College [her employer] has excellent programs in fashion design and fashion merchandising, along with several tangential programs, including interior design and the only master’s program in Historic Preservation in the state of Ohio. I often have students from these programs in my classes, and can’t help but feel a little self-conscious at my own wardrobe, which is classical “preppy”. It looks ok on me, and saves me money in buying new clothes, since I only have to replace things when they wear out. I make no pretense of trying to be in style, and I therefore don’t have to even try. However, last semester I discovered that my own disregard to fashion was not necessarily shared by my students.

I learned, from one of my math majors, that a student in one of my classes had been taking pictures of me in class and sending them to friends at another school. She overheard this student talking in the cafeteria about a new picture she had taken of me, which she was e-mailing to her friend [emphasis Historiann's.]  Continue Reading »

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The reason I ask is that I have heard stories recently about highly successful professional women (that is, in professions nowhere near the entertainment industry) having serious plastic surgery–as in, massive breast implants and obvious facelifts.

Continue Reading »

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Altnerate commencement at Notre Dame, 2009

Via Religion in American History, I found this brilliant essay by Georgetown political theorist Patrick Deneen, “Abortion and Catholic Culture.”  He argues that the fracas at Notre Dame over President Barack Obama’s appearance at graduation yesterday because of his position on abortion is a rear-guard action which,  ”along with the opposition to gay marriage – this issue represents the last stand, the inner-most wall barely keeping the hordes from overrunning the sanctum.”  He continues:

The ferocity over [abortion] - and this issue almost to the exclusion of nearly every other issue that might be part of a rich fabric of Catholic culture – suggests to me that Catholic culture, where it existed, has been largely routed. And, in fact, it suggests further that it is precisely for this reason that this issue has become largely defined politically – and not culturally – with an emphasis on the way that the battle over abortion must be won or lost at the ballot box (and, by extension, Supreme Court appointments).

Why does Deneen think that abortion politics represents an end-game for conservative Catholics?  Because there is no such thing as a Catholic culture in the United States, and American Catholics are full participants in late capitalism’s culture of ”choice” writ large:  materialism, individualism, hedonism, and mobility.  In other words, “American Catholics have largely assimilated into mainstream American society, and come to seek success and approval from that culture on its terms.”

A culture – Catholic or otherwise – that regarded abortion as well-nigh unthinkable would be profoundly different than the one we inhabit. First, such a culture would foster a strong sense of place. This is one of the central features of Catholicism, in strong distinction to Protestantism: we are members of parishes, which are located where one lives, and not according to the choice of minister or music or fellow churchgoers. . . .

Did you catch that dig at Protestantism?  Well, much of the scholarship on (in the words of one scholar) “the Democratization of American Christianity” supports Keenan’s thesis: Continue Reading »

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The University of Michigan Press is going all-digital, baby.  Does this make you more or less likely to seek out UMP as a publisher?  I get the economic argument–but what kind of history authors in particular is this move going to attract?  Given how status-conscious publishers are–and how relatively sought-after historians are after they’ve published a book already–I just don’t see too many second- or third-time authors agreeing to have their books published digitally.

Speaking as a reader–I spend enough time in front of glowing screens as it is.  I’ve consulted some on-line books close to my own research, but I can’t say that I’ve “read” them.  And, having a shelf of ”books” printed out from the internets–that just sounds messy and unappealing.

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This is hillarious:  Barack Obama’s Teleprompter has a blog, and you’d better believe that TOTUS has a lot to say (via Corrente.)  For example, TOTUS answers readers’ questions:

Teleprompter, have you ever thought about helping Secretary Geithner, or do you work for just one person?

No, I am a one-man machine. And while I’m beginning to have some self-doubt about the way the Big O and I are working, do you really think I could make a lick of difference with Timmah? What Tim Terrific (the Big Guy’s nickname for him) needs is a time machine with “way back” capabilities, which would allow the rest of us to direct him on career paths that we now realize he has the talents for, like, teaching macramé at a small Midwestern women’s college or perhaps working as a salesman at a lemonade stand managed by a seven-year-old.

In other words, no piece of equipment in existence today could help this man.

And, TOTUS says that ” Vice President Biden is the smartest person in the Administration. Seriously.”

What of the unfortunate off-the-cuff remark about the Special Olympics on The Tonight Show the other night? Continue Reading »

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*Or, On the Enlargement of Things Lost.

In an essay about breast reconstruction after a double mastectomy, “Replacing Things Lost,” Amy DePaul offers a fascinating glimpse into the technology of breast reconstruction and the cultural expectations that go with it.  She writes that in her first meeting with the plastic surgeon, he asked her, “What is your current bra and cup size, and what would you like to move up to?” as though it were self-evident that she would want to emerge Phoenix-like from a mastectomy with larger breasts:

No, I thought. No, he didn’t just imply that I am an obvious candidate for breast augmentation, though some might argue that I was. I looked at my doctor and then my husband, both of whom studiously avoided eye contact with me. . . .

I finally managed to stammer a response to the bra inquiry (“It’s 34, um, A”) and said that no, I’d pass on the augmentation. My answer seemed to surprise my doctor (“Oh” was all he could say at first), and then he mentioned that I might want to mull this matter some more and perhaps confer with my husband on the decision. But my mind was pretty much made up that day in the office. The inescapable fact is that I resist any attempts by others to “improve” me. My husband, for the record, never tried to talk me into augmenting. He is a very intelligent man. Continue Reading »

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A miracle!  No, not another virgin birth:  Historiann and Pope Benedict XVI agree on something!  Actually, Historiann recommends that you give up Facebook and texting forever–not just for Lent.  Here’s the part I loved:

Pope Benedict also has personal experience of the distractions of obsessive texting. President Sarkozy of France, a renowned technophile, came in for withering criticism for checking his mobile for text messages during a personal audience with the Pontiff.

Now, I loves me some Sarko–I’m sure his BlackBerry came in really handy while solving one international hostage crisis after another lately.  (Maybe he’s also working on global climate change and doing something about that wolf at our doors lately?  We can only hope.)  And if I’m ever abducted by the FARC, the Basque separatists, or anyone else, please see if you can get Sarko on the case for me.  Nevertheless, constantly checking your phone for incoming messages in an audience with the Pope is really de trop.

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