Clippings

An answer to the question: “What can you do with a history...

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:29:17 -0500

An answer to the question: “What can you do with a history degree?” (From this post on occupations of Williams College alumni by major, via @YAppelbaum)

"A problem is only a problem within a particular context. A solution is only a solution within a..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:26:25 -0500

“A problem is only a problem within a particular context. A solution is only a solution within a particular context. Some branches of natural and social science are more context-aware than others, but it’s the humanities and arts that are hyper-alert to context. If our society is going to have a fighting chance of wrestling effectively with the wide range of problems that we currently face, we need a wide variety of perspectives on how the problems are defined and approached. We need not simply technical descriptions of the problems but humane understandings of how the problems emerged out of a particular context, and a creative envisioning of how we might find a way of addressing (if not solving) problems.”

- David Voelker, The Gray Box - The Gray Box Blog - The Humanities Know (Part 1)

THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace (by The Glossary)

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:12:01 -0500

THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace (by The Glossary)

"We operate now in a world where information is endlessly available. It is the cheapest, easiest..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:11:03 -0500

“

We operate now in a world where information is endlessly available. It is the cheapest, easiest thing to get hold of, whether you’re pulling links off Twitter or searching the Department of Labor and Statistics. Finding words and research and data is not a big problem. But discerning what is useful, and what is real, is a vital skill.

A worker in the creative economy requires several levels of discernment. The first and easiest might simply be described as filtering, that is, distinguishing between the weird echo chambers of crazy that exist on the Internet and the solid gold of credibly sourced content. I’m sure you all saw some of the bizarre photographs that were going around on Facebook and Twitter during Hurricane Sandy. New York City sparkling under an apocalyptic cloud of doom. Waves breaking high around the Statue of Liberty’s shoulders. Some of it was obviously fake, a lot of it wasn’t. And that’s what it’s like now: Rumor flies through social media like Instagram or Tumblr or Pinterest, spread by individuals meaning to help or disrupt or just to say, “WOW, look at this.” Professional content providers – whether news organizations, public information officers, emergency first responders – distribute these ideas, possibly first reporting them as rumor and then slowly sliding into reporting them as reality. Strange stories and improbable facts enter the vast distributed online database of information that writers search when they sit down to start learning.

How can you help your students learn to distinguish between credible content and utter worthless crap? If you can help them with that, you will have done them, and society, an enormous service.

”

- Jan Bultmann, “Discernment: Advice from a Hiring Manager to Humanities Students and Their Teachers” | 4Humanities

Average Length in Pages of Minnesota Dissertations since 2007,...

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:36:00 -0500

Average Length in Pages of Minnesota Dissertations since 2007, with explanation. History for the win!

"Greatest article on @jstor? jstor.org/stable/2852357 Medieval snail battles! i.imgur.com/6E1ebU3.jpg..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:54:00 -0500

“

Greatest article on @jstor? jstor.org/stable/2852357 Medieval snail battles! i.imgur.com/6E1ebU3.jpg i.imgur.com/rxankUN.png
— John Resig (@jeresig) May 6, 2013

”

“Access drives preservation” at the Internet Archive...

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:50:22 -0500

“Access drives preservation” at the Internet Archive (via Vimeo)

The Humane Digital

Sun, 05 May 2013 08:31:38 -0500

The Humane Digital:

by Timothy Burke

Space coffee gets an upgrade (by RiceUniversity) Proud to see a...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:18:55 -0500

Space coffee gets an upgrade (by RiceUniversity)

Proud to see a Duncan College freshman featured!

"As we fear, so we write. Fearful writing is different from covering the bases. It’s building a..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:47:12 -0500

“As we fear, so we write. Fearful writing is different from covering the bases. It’s building a glass wall around one’s project so that the reader can look at but can’t disturb the pleasant scene within.”

- William Germano in Do We Dare Write for Readers? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The standard dismissal of Twitter as a scholarly tool suggests that no serious argument can be made..."

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:52:21 -0500

“The standard dismissal of Twitter as a scholarly tool suggests that no serious argument can be made in 140 characters, and there’s of course a real truth to that. But that dismissal betrays a failure to engage with the ways that scholars actually use Twitter today, and the things that can be done in those 140 characters: scholars share links to longer pieces of writing; engage in complex conversations in real time, with many colleagues, over multiple tweets; and more than anything, perhaps, they build a sense of community. This community is ready with congratulations and sympathy, and is eager to share jokes and memes, but it’s also ready to debate, to discuss, to disagree. More than anything, it’s ready to read – it’s not just a community of friends but a community of scholars, an audience for the longer work in which its members are engaged.”

- Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Networking the Field | Planned Obsolescence

(via Fiefs to Watch Out For | Houstonia Magazine)

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:01:07 -0500

(via Fiefs to Watch Out For | Houstonia Magazine)

Orange, TX, lawyer does a great job explaining the need for...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:24:28 -0500

Orange, TX, lawyer does a great job explaining the need for informed public history of the Civil War in Texas (via OrangeLeader13)

"So inflated and elevated is the global image of Marx, whether revered as a revolutionary icon or..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:17:23 -0500

“So inflated and elevated is the global image of Marx, whether revered as a revolutionary icon or reviled as the wellspring of Soviet totalitarianism, that it’s unsettling to encounter a genuine human being, a character one might come across today. If the Marx described by Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri specializing in European history, were around in 2013, he would be a compulsive blogger, and picking Twitter fights with Andrew Sullivan and Naomi Klein.”

- Jonathan Freedland’s review of ‘Karl Marx,’ by Jonathan Sperber - NYTimes.com

Filing, seventeenth-century style | The Collation

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:44:51 -0500

Filing, seventeenth-century style | The Collation:

via ayjay

"I had no thought of being a journalist in college, but in retrospect studying history was pretty..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:55:47 -0500

“I had no thought of being a journalist in college, but in retrospect studying history was pretty good preparation. You learn to view sources very critically and skeptically. You learn to boil down a lot of information into a concise argument, or story. You learn the importance of context. That being said, they don’t call it the “news” business for nothing. Almost every time I tried to sneak a few paragraphs about the past into my news copy an editor would cut it out.”

- Tony Horwitz at The Way of Improvement Leads Home: So What CAN You Do With a History Major?: Part 23— An Interview with Tony Horwitz

"The challenge for someone trying to assess America, at this moment, is properly calibrating how far..."

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:29:08 -0500

“The challenge for someone trying to assess America, at this moment, is properly calibrating how far we’ve gone with how far we have to go. Too much optimism renders you naive; too much pessimism makes you cynical.”

- Departures - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic

How Search Works

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:50:31 -0600

How Search Works:

The inside (but not totally inside) story from Google. Cool presentation.

“There’s No Way like the American Way”:...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 21:55:46 -0600

“There’s No Way like the American Way”: Margaret Bourke-White’s famous photograph in LIFE magazine, 1937

source

“Americana band with an obsession for American history....

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:43:00 -0600

“Americana band with an obsession for American history. Current themes include the burnt-over disctrict, Mormonism and Edwin Stanton. Released 2 Eps - Underfed & Underpaid and Your Obedient Servant - and our debut album was released on 19th January 2013.”

(via The Mule & The Elephant | The Payroll Union)