Comments for Historiann

Comment on Hard Times, indeed. by Z

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:58:13 +0000

P.S. There is a big discussion of this at the LA Review of Books and CIP is a big interlocutor there as well.

Comment on Grad applications, ca. 1961: Writer Phyllis Richman gets the last laugh, and a Harvard proffie remains clueless by LadyProf

LadyProf — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:09:10 +0000

One more sentence would have made Doebele’s whole letter awesome:

This is not a letter that I would write today. While far from perfect, conditions for women working in the profession of city planning are, I believe, far more accommodating than in 1961.But back then, even back then, I was wrong.

Comment on Guest post on the Lords of MOOC Creation: who’s really for change, and who in fact is standing athwart history yelling STOP? by Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:56:35 +0000

The modern university has a lot of problems right now. I don’t see “phone it in” teaching as one of the biggest problems. But even if it were, there are already solutions for fixing that particular problem: intervention by colleagues (with the threat of a stalled or thwarted advancement, if necessary), plenty of teaching resources, and the like. The solution is not MOOCs so that *everyone* has to watch a proffie phone it in from 2010 or 2012 indefinitely into the future!

Comment on Guest post on the Lords of MOOC Creation: who’s really for change, and who in fact is standing athwart history yelling STOP? by Karl Metzner

Karl Metzner — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:17:29 +0000

Historiann,
I know that there are dedicated and hard-working teachers out there. (I tried to be one of them during my very short university-level teaching stint.) And I agree with your point about the lack of correlation between great teaching and school reputation. I’m not a MOOC insider, and have only done a few lessons on khanacademy (which is not a MOOC), but I’m fascinated by the potential to reach so many students so easily. I recall most fondly those small seminars with engaged teachers. But some others just phoned it in. When a professor steps behind the dais, pulls out yellowed notes from 1994, and drones on for an hour (even recycling jokes from the days of yore), and at every session takes two or three questions from the same two or three students, I think that there must be a better way. This is the kind of “learning experience” that MOOCs have a good chance of replacing.

The issue of which schools are getting involved in MOOCs is intriguing, but I would not be surprised if imaginative and compelling teachers from non-elite schools (or even from, gasp, outside academia) end up getting the last laugh.

Comment on Grad applications, ca. 1961: Writer Phyllis Richman gets the last laugh, and a Harvard proffie remains clueless by truffula

truffula — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:57:09 +0000

I was on a search committee in the 21st Century during which a member of the committee opined that the one female candiate would not be able to learn how to use the technical equipment in the lab that came with the job. Did I mention that she had applied in, and the lab was built for, her area of expertise? The chair of the committee, not exactly a feminist himself, saw the potential for disaster and leaned in to restrain me.

Comment on Grad applications, ca. 1961: Writer Phyllis Richman gets the last laugh, and a Harvard proffie remains clueless by Z

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:27:39 +0000

Job market in 80s the same kind of thing happened, unwise to let your dissertation director or job search committees know if you were married, because that would be it for jobs and was for some.

I was on a search committee in 90s where they seriously discussed not hiring nonwhite women because they would allegedly get pregnant for sure, or their husbands “would not let them take” tenure track jobs, and so on. That contingent did not win, but thought it would, because it had always done in the past.

Comment on What part of “no solicitors” don’t you understand? by Janet

Janet — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:21:26 +0000

Put a sign that says “Please do not ring or knock, sleeping baby inside.” They’ll probably just leave.

Comment on Grad applications, ca. 1961: Writer Phyllis Richman gets the last laugh, and a Harvard proffie remains clueless by truffula

truffula — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:29:33 +0000

No, it’s not a nice story koshembos.

Comment on Grad applications, ca. 1961: Writer Phyllis Richman gets the last laugh, and a Harvard proffie remains clueless by koshembos

koshembos — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:12:16 +0000

So I learned that a douche isn’t a jerk and I guess vis a versa. No, things have not reached equality. Power and access will always prevail.

Phyllis, “the Martian appetizer lacked salt,” Richman took her sweet time, but he is a fossil. Fossils are natural; they’ll stay with us.

It’s a nice story.

Comment on Grad applications, ca. 1961: Writer Phyllis Richman gets the last laugh, and a Harvard proffie remains clueless by truffula

truffula — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:31:49 +0000

Nicoleandmaggie: but I also hear my mom and my aunts lamenting that they thought these things would have been fixed by now.

My mother, who majored in psychology at Penn State in the early 1950s, says this as well. It took me until 2008 (specifically, the Democratic party primary that year) to understand why my mother pushed me in the ways she did when I was thinking about college. I didn’t listen and it worked out okay but upon reflection, I think she was right.

The (science) department I left a few months ago has employed three female tenure-track* faculty over the whole of its 50+ years. Two of us overlapped for most of our time there and left within a year of each other. Now they are poised to hire two men to replace the two of us. What did they do, look at each other across the staff room table and ask, “hey, what don’t we have enough of here?”

*The woman I’m thinking of from the wayback might not have been t-t; not sure.