Sigur Ros, during a recent performance in St. Louis. (Download free, legal mp3s here.)

1. "Serious Bloggers," by Jeff Rice at Inside Higher Ed
2. " To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me " (New York Times)
3. "Thank You, Professor Powerful," by Tim Burke
4. "goodbye, 15 minutes" and "please, 15 minutes -- just go" at Xoom

Jeff Rice argues that we should not treat academic blogs so seriously, and that if we do, we run the risk of stagnation:

When we become too serious about novel ideas too quickly, we deny ourselves the ability to experiment with and develop the very innovations in communication we are attracted to in the first place. In turn, we replicate processes already in circulation; i.e., we maintain a status quo and fail to explore possibilities raised by the new medium.

The NYT article had the potential to explore some of the interesting ways in which new media are affecting professor/student communication, but instead turned into yet another "Those darn kids!" piece. Meg, at Xoom, writes of her displeasure of being misrepresented in the article, and even chimes in on Tim Burke's blog to respond to his criticism of what she's quoted as saying.

One important thing that blogs let those of us in academia do is represent ourselves. Ideally, this would lead to a new image of who academics are. Of course, readers will often be able to see what they want in what they read, so that blog content will always be received by some as confirmation of the worst academic sterotypes already in existence. However, there's a great deal to be said for the way we make our work public in our blogs, not just the finished product of the syllabus, the article, or the book, but also the process by which we got there.

For example, I think the material found in the Teaching Carnivals does a great job, for the most part, of giving readers a window on the thinking behind what goes on in the classroom, and it allows for a kind of cross-disciplinary pollination that is too rarely found in other venues.

Academic bloggers also often create a persona in which the fullness of their lives is visible, from research and teaching to cooking and dating. There are naysayers in the IHE comment thread who argue that blogging about personal subject mattter is "lame," but they overlook the ways in which our personal experiences affect (positively as well as negatively) our research and our performance in the classroom. I'm not saying "anything goes" with blogs, but I guess I'm agreeing with what Rice argues about experimentation; let's not fear the unexpected in style, in content. Let's not assume we already know what's best for this brand new form.

It is not yet possible to classify and explain what academic blogging is, to create implied rules, to assume that there are neat generic boundaries that define the different kinds of bloggers. The genre is too new. We're still trying things out. If you're going to write about academic blogging, write about it as an emergent form, constantly changing, not yet (if ever) settled.

There are plenty of venues in which the only thing the reader sees is the starched shirt facade of the professional academic, and it would be foolhardy to argue that there's nothing wrong with leaving things this way. May we please give ourselves permission to explore a genre of writing where something different might take place?

Update: Links via Technorati of other bloggers addressing Rice's essay.

We know more about the history of orality and literacy than what we read in manuscript or print sources.

This chair is an interesting artifact of both oral and literate traditions. Sit forward, and you can talk with your guests. Sit backward, and you can read and/or write.

In 2004, I took this picture in the house John Wesley built on City Road in London in the 1760s. I should have asked more questions, but I'm assuming this is a chair one could use in the usual way, facing forward, or one could turn around to read or write using that angled board along with the padded arm rests.

Here's something I'm unsure of: did one sit backwards with legs spread around the backrest? If so, then the armrests seems too high to be comfortable. Did one instead kneel on the seat? If so, then why make the backrest so narrow?

(View the annotated photo on Flickr, or view the really big version, if you like.)

In framing my project, I'm working to break down the boundaries between the study of speech, of writing, and of print. I don’t want to create a frame in which these forms exist in a hierarchy (e.g. print on one side, speech on the other, and manuscript in between), but rather one that recognizes they exist in the same plane of human experience. I’m looking for the overlooked shared characteristics as well as the already explored differences. Francois Lachance makes a very good point about the risk of technological determinism in the way I've explained my project, but I do not yet have a fully formed response to what he’s said. Basically, I think he's right, and I need to change how I describe what I do.

For now, here's what I do have...¹

Objection: “All oral evidence from before the invention of recording devices comes to us via ms. or print.”

Answer: This statement is wrong in two different ways:

1. A theoretical disagreement: “Recording devices” are presented in this objection as categorically different than manuscript or print, but these latter two are themselves recording devices. The evidence available to us in technologies that capture and store audio deserves to be treated with the same caution as evidence available to us via manuscript and print. In both cases, the living, breathing word is stripped of much of its meaning-constitutive context. We should not mistake the record for the original expression. Yes, a change did take place with the invention of sound recording devices in the late nineteenth century, but I would argue that this is a change in degree, not a change in kind.

2a. A methodological blindspot (This is a more significant mistake): We have plenty of non-manuscript and non-print evidence concerning orality. Such evidence exists in the form of material objects related to oral traditions. For example, we know a great deal about religious oral traditions (sermons, hymns, liturgies) from the design and placement of pulpits, of pews, of chapels.

2b. Furthermore, there are a great many traditions that we will never be able to observe first-hand, having to rely upon evidence that includes written and printed documents as well as material objects. Why single out orality for special skepticism? And, it is important to point out, the study of literate traditions is subject to the exact same constraints. We will never be able to observe an eighteenth-century reader with her book, for one thing, and even if we could, how would we know what was happening?² We will never be able to observe an eighteenth-century print shop, but we assume rather confidently that we know what went on there. If there are problems concerning the study of orality, then those problems also apply to the study of literacy. If we can make confident assumptions about literacy based on the evidence available to us, then that confidence also applies to orality.

1. See also my previous entries here, here, and here.
2. Actually, the history of reading is a lively area of research among scholars who study literate practices. Reading is no less ephemeral a practice than speaking or listening.

Gentle reader, I welcome your responses if, in fact, you actually exist.

• #7 The Salt-Box (forthcoming on Mar 15, 2006)
• #6 Science & Politics (Feb 15, 2006)
• #5 Ancarett's Abode (Jan 15, 2006)
• #4 New Kid on the Hallway (Dec 15, 2005)
• #3 Scrivenings (Nov 15, 2005)
• #2 scribblingwoman (Oct 15, 05)
• #1 thanks for not being a zombie (Sept 1, 05)

Let me know if you're interested in hosting #8 on April 15, 2006.

Update: The scanner in question is an HP Scanjet 5550C. Here's the simple solution:

1. On the "Start" menu in the lower lefthand corner of Windows XP, point to "Programs," point to "Hewlett-Packard," point to "Scanners," and select "Photo & Imaging Director."
2. When the Director opens, make sure that "HP Scanjet 4500c/5550C" is selected in the drop-down list.
3. Click on "Scan Document"
4. Select "Text as Image"; Destination: "Save to File"
5. Click "Scan"
6. When the scanner is finished, click "Accept," give the file a name, and save the file.

You can also use that dialogue box to adjust the settings for the "Text as Image" option.

Here's a point I'm trying to hone:

Scholars and theorists of oral culture, manuscript culture, and print culture tend to focus on these subjects in isolation from one another. What is needed is more work that seeks to understand the neglected reciprocities of oral and literate practices, the dynamic interactions of speech, manuscript, and print.¹ My work investigages a number of these reciprocities in eighteenth-century Methodism: the importance of letter-writing campaigns in promoting preaching tours; the role of preachers in distributing print matter; the influence of print over the habits of diary keeping and public speaking. If we study these practices alone, we will fail to understand them fully.

Okay, that's not too pretty, I admit. What does it need? Does it seem like an obvious and uninteresting point? What kinds of objections am I likely to encounter? Is there a big body of scholarly work I'm overlooking?

1. You could add "digital culture" and "digital practices" to this list if you weren't, like me, writing about the 18th century, in which these phrases would probably be interpreted as being related to masturbation. I'm just speculating, here.

That sounds lovely! You mean a get-together place online, yes? IRC would be great for that...

Actually, I was writing about a face-to-face gathering, but online would be nice, too. Is anyone up for it? What are you working on in your research lately? Need help thinking through some issues? What's going on in your classroom?

If you're interested, let's figure this out and set up a time that we might spend an hour or so communicating in real time.

Things are going pretty well chez Zombie (Midwest division). I'm gettin' fit at the gym regularly with a new gym partner. My classes are going well. Time with friends and colleagues has been generous lately. Aside from living 1,000 miles away from L,² I have no complaints.

Here's something I proposed to the little group of us who go out to dinner about once a month. Inspired by Scrivener's standing invitation dinner parties,³ I suggested that we have a standing invitation get-together every week somewhere. If you can make it, great. If not, no problem. And let's make these gatherings into an opportunity to talk informally about what research we're working on, or what's going on in our classroom, or some other issue related to our fields of study. We already have a system whereby we share some writing every month or so, but this new tradition will be something different, something where we can feel comfortable sharing half-baked thoughts and ideas to see where they might go.

Everybody seems on board with the idea, so I'm hoping it helps make this a good semester for all of us.

1. Please forgive the seemingly hostile entry title. I love you, dear reader. Really I do.
2. Oh, yeah. That.
3. Sorry, too lazy to find the specific blog entry.

1. Make it easier for a larger number of authorized people to make necessary changes.
2. Provide more regularly upated information about events.

The second of these two goals can be accomplished easily enough with one page run by something like Blogger. There are a number of options for the first goal, but it would be nice to choose the one that is most elegant and provides the lowest hurdle of necessary expertise.

If you are so inclined, oh loyal readership, I'd like to know how other departments pull off the above two tasks.

In order to consider different options, I'd like to learn more about possible content management systems for the website, which is currently composed of static HTML pages residing on a server running Microsoft software.¹ Whenever somebody wants something updated, they email the person or persons in charge of maintaining the website and request the change. This is not such an imposition, but it would be much better (IMHO) if there were a number of people with the authority to make changes, each of them responsible for different sections of the site.

We had been using a system by which one person used Dreamweaver to create pages and make changes, but that system seems to have broken down. I've never learned how to use Dreamweaver beyond the rudimentary stuff, preferring instead to code by hand or install server-side software that comes with customizable templates.²

Ideally, a person should not have to have particular software installed on her computer to make changes. Additionally, a person should not have to go through any elaborate training in order to make changes.³

I welcome any suggestions.

1. I think. I will need to contact campus IT support and get the details from them.
2. I'm such a stud, I know.
3. It's 2006. If you know how to use a word processor, you should know how to update a webpage. The software should be that simple.