We’re not teaching literature, we’re teaching the professional study of literature: What we do is its own subject. Nowadays the academic study of literature has almost nothing to do with the living, breathing world outside. The further along you go in the degree ladder, and the more rarified a college you attend, the less literary…
Tropes are storytelling devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. The site’s name is misleading… while there are plenty of TV tropes, you’ll also find examples from journalism, comics, video games, etc. From the “air vent escape” to “loser archetypes” to the…
For decades, TV journalists have worked in teams, with the lines of responsibility regulated by union rules or simple tradition. Stories were covered by a crew consisting of a camera operator and a correspondent (and further back, by a sound or lighting technician); their work was overseen by a producer and their footage assembled into…
Fascinating follow-up to Wednesday’s story about the Linux advocate who posted a bitter diatrabe lamenting the ignorance of a teacher who confiscated a student’s Linux disks and wrote a heartfelt (if misguided) letter insisting that giving away software must be illegal. “Why did you throw me to the wolves like that?” I didn’t even have…
After a long anecdote about how hard it is to predict the pro playing ability of college quarterbacks, this New Yorker article focuses on details that characterize effective teachers. While I was initially bored by the sports introduction, I ended up being fascinated by the play-by-play commentary of scenes from the classroom. Another teacher walked…
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has cooperated with a game developer to produce a Second Life memorial to Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass,” a series of state-sponsored anti-Jewish riots in 1938). I haven’t visited the site yet, but it looks like there’s a deliberate attempt to distance the player from the experience, by casting the…
That may be the best headline I’ve seen on all the coverage related to the KFC teen girls sink bath MySpace photo story, but note that the <title> of the page is the more informative “KFC Bath Prank: Three Girls Fired From California KFC After Bathing In Restaurant Sinks.” The photos themselves are silly, rather…
Philipp Lenssen at “Google Blogoscoped” spotted a change in Google’s panorama map interface, and asked me to weigh in. Since a recent Google Maps Street View update, Google shows the wording “Report a concern” at the footer of their panorama photos (in older versions, a text for this elsewhere was reading “Report inappropriate image” –…
Called Muxlim Pal, it allows Muslims to look after a cartoon avatar that inhabits the virtual world. Based loosely on other virtual worlds such as The Sims, Muxlim Pal lets members customise the look of their avatar and its private room. Aimed at Muslims in Western nations, Muxlim Pal’s creators hope it will also foster…
Last week, as one of my classes was wrapping things up for the last day, a student who has finished all his coursework noted that I was his professor for the first and last classes of his undergraduate career. He blogged his thoughts, and e-mailed the old student roster, inviting his former classmates to share…
I really like what Steve Ersinghaus wrote about assessment. One of the significant issues I’ve faced has to do with attitude. Mine, not the students. Typically I ask students not to worry so much about making the deadline, but that the deadline is real nonetheless. I’ve also informed my students that they don’t have to…
Camille Paglia puts her finger on something that has vaguely troubled me. For years I’ve enjoyed reading Language Log’s posts on Bushisms — which as often as not included the reminder that we all garble our syntax from time to time, and even daringly suggests that Obama makes his own share of gaffes. Remember the…
This interesting post on WRT ponders the case of I Love You, Beth Cooper, a novel that presents its protagonist, Denis Cooverman, with a status bar. Like a health meter, the reader knows how much body Dennis has remaining at any given time. Reading the book becomes the experience of seeing how far we can…
Increasingly, creative types are harnessing what I’ve begun to call “the T-shirt economy”–paying for bits by selling atoms. Charging for content online is hard, often impossible. Even 10 cents for a download of something like Red vs. Blue might drive away the fans. So instead of fighting this dynamic, today’s smart artists are simply adapting…
Douglas Engelbart gave an earth-shaking demo 40 years ago today. The presentation included the debut of the computer mouse, which Engelbart used to control an onscreen pointer in exactly the same way we do today. For a world used to thinking of computers as impersonal boxes that read punched cards, whir awhile, then spit out…
Harvard redesigns its English major, removing required entry-level surveys and sophomore seminars. In their place, courses in the four new categories–“Arrivals,” “Poets,” “Diffusions,” and “Shakespeares”–would interweave literary history with textual analysis. At a gathering for prospective concentrators on Tuesday, English professor Stephen J. Greenblatt said that these courses will most likely be small seminars. […]…
“It was on the third night that we found out that the octopus Otto was responsible for the chaos. “We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out the 2000…
A new generation of wired politicos will give journalists much fodder for scandal, but isn’t this making it a bit too easy for them? Incoming Obama administration director of speechwriting Jon Favreau (L) and a friend pose with a cardboard cutout of incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a party. (Obtained by The…
Editing, like sending thank-you cards, is one of those things that everyone acknowledges is a good idea but few people do. It takes time and you don’t reap much reward, certainly not equivalent to the time. There is probably not enough attention to teaching writing in graduate school, but at least you have plenty of…
China continued to be world’s worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years. Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan round out the top five jailers from among the 29 nations that imprison journalists. Each of the top five nations has persistently placed among the world’s worst in detaining journalists. At least 56 online journalists are jailed worldwide,…