Disqus - Latest Comments for digitaldigs

Re: humanities, universities and sustainability

digitaldigs — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:55:14 -0000

Approve.

Re: Everyone Has a Right to Free Speech, Even Milo

digitaldigs — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 17:16:31 -0000

And you have no proof that it wasn't conservative students engaged in some false flag operation. As I said above, no one has been specifically identified or arrested. Here's a quote from the CNN article that I mentioned but you probably didn't read "Some were attacked by the agitators -- who are a part of an anarchist group known as the "Black Bloc" that has been causing problems in Oakland for years, said Dan Mogulof, UC Berkeley spokesman." Maybe some are students. Who knows? Either way, there was a dangerous situation and the institution acted to protect students and their property. Their decision was NOT a comment on Yiannopoulos' politics. That's a different subject.

So my point is that we can have a conversation about who gets to speak where and when. We should have that conversation. But this institutional decision is not related to that.

Re: Everyone Has a Right to Free Speech, Even Milo

digitaldigs — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 16:23:45 -0000

Maybe you have a point, but this is not a good example. The talk was cancelled because of violence which made continuing unsafe. While no one has been specifically identified or arrested, the CNN report at least suggests it was the act of an anarchist group in Oakland not associated with the university. So how was this not the right decision? We can have a conversation about how universities should decide who gets to speak on campus, but this particular instance is just a different matter.

Re: We Know What Works in Teaching Composition

digitaldigs — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 08:14:50 -0000

That would be a concern. However, I would note that the research paper isn't really a genre, or at least it represents a too broadly conceived concept of genre. What I mean by this is that assignments that are called research papers vary greatly among disciplines. In addition, first-year composition students generally lack the requisite disciplinary knowledge to write a research paper in most disciplines. So one might be able to ask such students to do some kind of literature research paper drawing on their modest experience in high school with English classes, but that would do very little to prepare a student to write a research paper in economics, psychology, engineering, etc. etc. That said, I would say it is very common for composition classes to have assignments that require students to use the library and at least draw on secondary sources. Teaching students to do primary research though? That's the job of profs in their major and that includes learning to write in the required genres to conduct research.

Re: pluralism and the nonmodern, nonliberal society

digitaldigs — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 08:20:02 -0000

I think that's close to Lilla's point: that all voters in the US can be included within the identity of "American." However, I disagree with that, as I note above. All identities are disjunctive. Even without getting overly postmodern about it, I think I can say that I am not identical to myself. I just think about that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian: the Judean People's Front, the People's Front of Judea, the Popular Front of Judea... splitter! So I don't think identity works as a basis for forming agreement. Sure we can be pseudo-democratic, take a vote (as Americans) and elect Trump, but such results only demonstrate the disjunctive function of identity. We acted as Americans and end up more divided than ever. Indeed in this election, nationalism became an identity formation designed to divide Americans and oppose them to one another. And really both democrats and republicans used that rhetorical strategy.

Maybe it's hyperbole to say we're more divided now than at any time since the Civil War. Maybe we were just as divided during the Civil Rights/Vietnam War era of the 50s and 60s. The only way we've ever accomplished a fiction of an American identity is by excluding significant portions of humans living in the country. Right now the shifting demographics of the country, plus the economic pressures of post-industrial global capitalism, have intensified affects around those differences. That's why I'd say the only thing "we" share are disagreements.

Re: designing rhetorical technologies of deliberation

digitaldigs — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 07:47:14 -0000

I agree with you about the economics. I would imagine that many of the suggestions above wouldn't be undertaken by a social media company itself. Almost everyone knows on some level that a site like Facebook is primarily designed to make money by keeping you there and getting you to interact in some way. However, I think about the way cable tv works. We pay for that but is it really designed for our benefit? Even the premium channels that are ad-free? I would think it would be more accurate to say tv is designed to appeal to our desires but not necessarily to our best interests. I'm not interested in telling others what their best interests should be. However, if we can build rhetorical media tools to appeal to and shape our desires, it seems that we might also build tools and practices to counter such efforts. And yes we'd need to pay for them, including paying for an education that develops critical thinking and rhetorical awareness.

Re: risk, reward, and revolution in an object-oriented democracy

digitaldigs — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:55:00 -0000

no worries.

Re: risk, reward, and revolution in an object-oriented democracy

digitaldigs — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 12:34:53 -0000

Thanks Marc. I'm sure you're right about the 2000 election, and I didn't mean to suggest that NH voters stole the election. That would suggest they did something wrong, which they didn't. I only meant to indicate that third-party voters, even if they amounted to less than 5% of the vote as they did in 2000 (and probably will be more this year), can play a powerful role in the outcome. I'd hate to see something like the Brexit vote where people wake up the next day and say "I voted for it but I didn't really think it would pass. I just wanted to express my displeasure with the status quo." But that's not how votes work.

I would say that I do share many of the aims of the Green party. In fact, I would say my personal political values are closer to the Green party than any US political party I know of. I haven't decided my vote for November, though living in NY I'm fairly sure where my electoral college votes will be headed. If Hillary can't win in NY on the strength of voters who see her as the person they most want to be president then she has no shot nationally. The same thing is probably true for Trump in Georgia. Maybe we just need to get rid of the electoral college.

I also don't think any vote is pathetic or misguided, unless the voter completely misunderstands (or is ignorant of) the positions held by the person for whom she is voting. When one is voting for a candidate one knows will not win, one simply has to be confident s/he understands what the consequences of that choice might be in relation to the eventual winner and be content with that.

I'll have to think about whether or not third-party votes in presidential elections strike me as an effective way to reshape our democratic structures. Undoubtedly they get more media attention than such efforts would garner at other levels of government. I guess the problem right now is that winning even fairly small elections like for state assembly seems out of reach of the Green party.

Re: changing your mind in social media

digitaldigs — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 08:40:35 -0000

I'm not sure what you're describing would work, but voting clout rewards would be an example of a structure designed to give strength and durability to a way of speaking politically. It would be interesting to see how it worked within the context of Congress where there is a lot of voting on which to base the values and voting records are public. I should point out that in terms of Congress there is an established structure giving strength and durability to political speech. You or I or others may not believe it benefits us either individually or collectively; we might say it doesn't share our values; we might even think it is unethical or destructive. Honestly I can't say I have any novel ideas for making it better. Reforming the role that money plays in elections and restricting the potential personal financial gain of those who would take office for some period following their term might help, but one could easily say that's just covering up bigger problems. I could certainly point to more systemic problems: the powerful drive to achieve short-term political or financial gains, the ongoing clash between pre-modern religious/social values and an increasingly global, cosmopolitan community, and the inability to listen to science and technology in a political forum.

However, in saying that, I would be entering into the kind of political discourse I was addressing in my post. Perhaps you or another reader would already be inclined to agree with me. Certainly other possible readers on the web would not. If this was happening among my Facebook friends, some of my academic friends would "like" what I wrote. Others have different political-theoretical commitments that are generally more activist and would find this insufficient. Then, when you add in family, high school friends, former students, and other random folks, one would find something closer to the general spectrum of American politics. What would be the point of trying to have a conversation about such matters with such a community? I would say none, except possibly entertainment, if one could imagine finding such a thing entertaining. And while I'm not sure many people would describe such online battles as fun, I do think that our commitment to them is affective.

In order to make such conversations productive, we would require solutions that went far beyond social media itself. When one side of an argument says "I know I'm right because it says so right here in the Bible," and the other side says "I know I'm right because the evidence is here in this scientific study," there's no mechanism for persuasion or agreement. Latour's point, in part, is that politics needs it's own mode, it's own way of establishing truth, separate from the modes of science, religion, and so on. It would have to be based upon a commitment to form a group despite differences in other modes.

In such cases I think one could find a recursive relationship among discourse, rhetoric, and other substances. (I would say discourse and rhetoric are substantive.) A common example of this is a lecture hall. It is built to make certain rhetorical-discursive practices strong. The lecture hall follows the demand for lectures. In turn, we are inclined to inhabit the lecture hall as members of an audience or as a lecturer. Discourse and rhetoric follow the substance of the lecture hall. Turning to the matter at hand, one might think of the Capitol Building with its chamber for formal meetings and votes but also many offices and meeting rooms as a space that both fosters certain kinds of political discourse but was also clearly designed (and then expanded) to reflect ideas about how political discourse should function. We don't have that in social media. Instead, on Facebook, I think we adopt the rhetorical practices of arguments over the Thanksgiving meal with your uncle or with the locals at a bar or some such. In such instances I don't think we're really looking to resolve political differences. I think we're simply looking for group identification, to affirm that there are people who are like us and that we are part of a group with them. That's fine and perhaps even necessary, but it is not a means to address differences.

So I suppose the root observation that drove my writing this post in the first place is to that while one may have many reasons/feelings that drive one to get into political arguments in social media, let's not imagine that this is a way to persuade people to think differently or come to some agreement. The mechanisms for doing so really don't exist in social media. Maybe we'd like to build them. I don't know.

Re: looking at college from the other side

digitaldigs — Thu, 26 May 2016 10:39:56 -0000

The point about scheduling is well-taken, but part of the challenge is in the variability. In addition to the Mon-Wed-Fri 1-hour (or 50-minute) class and the Tues-Thur 90-minute class, there are recitations and labs, 3-hour once-per-week classes, and classes that are 1-credit. Of course we have online classes and hybrid/blended classes that are part online. One could imagine classes with a wider range of credits and classes that met on all kinds of variable schedules. The result though is an increasingly complex game of scheduling Tetris</em.>

Re: Slavoj Žižek on Objects

digitaldigs — Thu, 19 May 2016 15:27:57 -0000

That may be true, but Bryant is a significant outlier in this respect.

Re: making a graduate seminar pedagogy

digitaldigs — Tue, 03 May 2016 14:48:06 -0000

Thanks for the feedback Brian. I think you're right about the expected role of the professor and my obligation to meet or at least address that obligation. Understandably grad students can have uncertainty about whether or not they belong in grad school. I certainly felt that way in my first year. That expectation to "know" is part of that. Fortunately, at least with our Teaching Practicum, I think there's less pressure to know about rhet/comp. No one is coming to UB to study rhet/comp, so there's no expectation students know about it. Some do, mostly because they've taught as MA students and taken a practicum elsewhere, but no one's identity seems caught up in that.

Re: rhetoric, the humanities, and service departments

digitaldigs — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 14:49:27 -0000

Thanks. I wasn't familiar with Zimbalist's research. I didn't mean to suggest I was in favor of the investment in D-1 sports but only that the purpose of it appears to be to attract students. It wouldn't surprise me if the results are mixed at best. (BTW, Rutgers grad, class of '91.)

As to your first question, I don't know. That's the kind of question we could answer if we had the transparency that Newfield calls for. I suspect that our STEM colleagues would suggest that the lack of state funds does injure STEM. That is, if the state supported SUNY the way it did 30 or 40 years ago, then STEM departments would have more money than they do now too.

Re: faculty at work

digitaldigs — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 21:12:35 -0000

Yep, the performance thing is one of the main points Johnson raises. And I agree that the way this translates to academia (if it translates) is in thinking about the activities, the practices, of teaching and learning rather than the content that may or may not get "banked," transferred, downloaded, etc. from faculty to students. Content is cheap and easy to come by if you aren't picky. All the valuable content/knowledge, in terms of the broader market, may be proprietary and very expensive (think medical research) but that material is not at stake in undergraduate education, especially not in the humanities. Our value as faculty cannot lie in what we know alone. Expertise is necessary but not sufficient.

Re: hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

digitaldigs — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 07:10:10 -0000

Thanks David. I agree. Or at least an argument for approaching education rhetorically.

Re: expression is not communication

digitaldigs — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 12:19:13 -0000

*Like.* Seriously though, I agree that it is both possible and necessary. Part of the challenge is the very strong feeling of righteousness, even obligation, that I think many people genuinely feel when they are writing these things. I know I have felt that way. Whether its the latest report of police brutality or something some politician said or did or just something on a television show, people clearly feel some compulsion to share their indignation. Even when it goes beyond the immediate reaction into some critical mode, it's still a negative activity. While critique/negation can be useful, it is insufficient on its own. Unfortunately the opposite of negation cannot be positivity or approval; it needs to be construction. The great limitation of Fb is that there really isn't anything to do but like or take offense. It is not, by itself, a platform for building. I can't think of a social media platform that really is.

Re: academic capitalism: futures of humanities graduate education

digitaldigs — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 10:21:06 -0000

I see where you are coming from Steve. Maybe this is just a diplomatic response. I agree with you that our field of rhetoric is oddly situated in this conversation. Our job prospects aren't that bad (but please, let's not build more phd programs!) and I do think we can more easily fit into the current discourse about college and jobs/professionalization in the form of technical/professional writing degrees. However I do worry about our overall disciplinary ability to rise to the challenge of digital literacy and our role as WPAs (even though I am one myself, I share the concerns we see from Sid Dobrin, Marc Bousquet and so on).

As for the more threatened areas of the humanities, fortunately it's not up to me to figure out how they should translate into the 21st century. I am happy, fwiw, to hold open the possibility that there can be a future there. I am only skeptical because, in practice, I don't see much movement.

Re: Economist offers critique of job market for Ph.D.s in English

digitaldigs — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 14:48:35 -0000

I think he's using the US News and World Report list (and the Pedagogy article lists the actual schools he uses in his sample). You're right though, there aren't a lot of rhet/comp institutions in the top two tiers. I would imagine rhet/comp students and faculty, to the extent they would impact this data, would make it seem more equitable, as you would find more rhet/comp grads at lower-ranked schools getting jobs and getting jobs higher up the rankings.

Re: pedagogy, computers and writing, and the digital humanities #cwdhped

digitaldigs — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 16:20:17 -0000

Thanks Steve. I think Marc summed it up well for me. My question is how do we do something DH in the curriculum in a sustained and structured way? Put in the terms of the old analytical section of the GREs, humanities is to print culture as ________ is to digital culture. Fill in the blank (hint: the answer isn't "humanities").

Professional writing is one answer to that question, but it's a partial one. Same for the "multimodal" curriculum of FYC.

Re: pedagogy, computers and writing, and the digital humanities #cwdhped

digitaldigs — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 16:13:56 -0000

Thanks Marc. I think the domain of one's own thing is a great idea and that digital literacy, like writing/communication should be a shared responsibility across campus (though I also think our discipline has an integral role to play). I also agree about the obstacles (some old story).

Re: DHSI 2014 Day 1, or Why We Need the MLA Report

digitaldigs — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 10:31:47 -0000

I think Rebecca's point is that the typical literary studies doctoral student is seeking a career that is roughly the same as his/her mentor's. In turn the typical mentor has a stake in maintaining the status quo. And it's not the super senior faculty members that are a stake now. It's the 30/40-something grad students and professors, who are hoping for another 20+ years doing what they were trained to do (which is what their mentors were trained to do). Plus we should probably thrown in everyone who is in grad school and will enter grad school in this decade, because nothing will happen quickly enough to help those folks. It's basically everyone who entered grad school in English after the Mosaic internet browser in 1994 (which is not a cause, but hardly coincidental either).

Of course it would have been hard to predict 2014 in 1994, but here we are nonetheless. I'm very much interested in critical making and DH widely, widely, conceived. I don't imagine a grand future for the faculty-formerly-known-as-the-humanities, but what future there is probably addresses helping people learn to live in a globalized-digital culture just as our 20th century predecessors helped people learn to live in a nationalized-industrial culture. Then, one would have to factor in the larger change in higher education. There is a future where that kind of educating will need to be done and to do that educating some research will need to be done as well. What those careers will look like, how many there will be, how secure the jobs will be, and how well they will pay is really anyone's guess. But it is hard for me to imagine this post-1994 group of literary scholars as being well-prepared as a group to meet that future.

Re: why five years for a Phd is both too short and too long

digitaldigs — Fri, 30 May 2014 10:39:25 -0000

If you are suggesting that many doctoral programs will not be capable of making the kinds of reforms suggested in the MLA report, then I agree. Either they will be unwilling or they will try but be unsuccessful. Demise is an extreme word. I won't go that far, but I will say forever transformed, either because departments will directly change their curriculum significantly (maybe) or the scale of programs will shrink to such a degree that curriculum will unavoidably change (more likely).

Re: Net Neutrality and the Public Sphere

digitaldigs — Thu, 29 May 2014 08:32:19 -0000

I can see your point here. Clearly net neutrality is about shifting the rules of the marketplace and presumably in favor of those who have the money. For the average citizen though, taking a side in a battle between Netflix and ComCast might seem a bit abstract. Hopefully we are smart enough to avoid the kind of vertical integration we saw with AT&T in the 70s. I am not arguing here against net neutrality but rather against a mythology about media technologies. The disruptive capacity of the Internet is not a permanent or inherent characteristic of the technology. Over time, the corporations, governments, and other organizations with which the Internet interacts will adapt (or fade away).

Re: where (or if) DH fits

digitaldigs — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 16:08:23 -0000

thanks Ted. And perhaps not only which departments but which universities will make these investments (often against the wishes of many/most faculty). I wish I could be optimistic about digital rhetoric, but I am concerned that my disciplinary colleagues can be as print-bound as those in literary studies, albeit in different ways. Either way, I agree that somehow digital literacy and digital methods will be studied and taught somewhere by someone. I've joked in the past that in the near future instead of imaging one to two people in a department who do "digital humanities," there will be one or two people doing "print humanities." Of course I'm kidding about that. There won't be anyone doing "print humanities."

Re: where (or if) DH fits

digitaldigs — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 19:59:08 -0000

Thanks Roger. I've read Ted's book and found it very interesting. I suppose there is a theological foundation to literary studies as a discipline if one thinks about Matthew Arnold, which also is one explanation for literary studies' allergy to anything it views as "technological." I haven't really thought much about this theological argument, though. I wonder how far it goes? I understand that the use of "pseudo" here is to designate that close reading is based on faith, but faith in a secular rather than a specifically religious sense. And yet perhaps a faith in close reading is a faith in a kind of Western/Christian sense of soul and psyche.

Now I am reminded of the theological concerns some of the early cyberneticists had with their work. Maybe an interesting angle to pursue.