Monthly Archives: May 2011

Pictures from an Institution 2 (Grading)

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Grading, finishing today after having eaten up most of Memorial Day. Just as well, I wasn’t about to try serious gardening in the heat. I’ve been slowly shifting over to paperless grading. I have enough of an attachment to marking … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore | 2 Comments

Pictures from an Institution 1 (Graduation)

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’m going to do an academic’s year in pictures from now until next May. Not every day, but as many as I can do. Seems a better way to communicate about what goes into faculty life. So let’s start at … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore | 3 Comments

When We Think We Lead We Are Most Led

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’ve been trying to think through why I’m bothered by the idea of cultivating “leadership” among our students as a possible area of intensified institutional focus. Partly I think this is a theme that virtually all highly selective colleges and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 11 Comments

Generalist’s Work, Day 5

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Timothy Burke

My colleague Richard Eldridge has written intricately about “the persistence of romanticism”, and defended romanticism in literature and philosophy against some of the more common criticisms. In humanistic writing, I’m struck by the sometimes uncomfortable mixing of a romanticist vision … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Generalist's Work, Popular Culture | 2 Comments

The Return of the Phantom Time Menace

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Read enough forum threads across a wide enough range of websites and you ought to become fairly expert in predicting the range and distribution of responses and even of anticipating where you’re likely to fall in that picture yourself, should … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Production of History | Comments Off

A Generalist’s Work, Day 4

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Timothy Burke

The concept of fieldwork fascinates me and vexes me all at once. I didn’t really grasp how much fieldwork outside of formal archives is a significant part of the study of modern African history until I was several years into … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work | 2 Comments

A Word for the Experts

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I frequently use this blog to talk about the limits and problems of academic expertise, so it’s about time that I give some attention to its continuing value and strength. The New York Times recently profiled David Barton, an amateur … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics | 2 Comments

A Generalist’s Work, Day 3

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Timothy Burke

One of the big issues on my mind lately is my ability (and that of my colleagues) to imagine the world of work as our students will experience it. Most of us at Swarthmore know something about the range of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

How I Talk About Searching, Discovery and Research in Courses

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I recently boiled down some of the advice I try to give students about how to carry out searches and formulate research questions, which I’ll reproduce here. I start with the basic insight that I’ve picked up from Swarthmore’s library … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 17 Comments

Memoirs from Africa: Paring Down a List

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’m preparing a year-long reading list of books about Africa for the Washington D.C. area Swarthmore alumni. I decided to constrain myself to memoirs or first-person perspective accounts. I decided to mostly concentrate on accounts from the last thirty years … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Swarthmore | 11 Comments