Comments on: Academics and blogging

By: Steven D. Krause

Steven D. Krause — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:50:22 +0000

Great thread here… I think I started blogging for many of the reasons folks gave here, though as a composition and rhetoric scholar who focuses primarily on issues of technology, blogging was a pretty natural and easy fit into my academic work. Specifically, I started working on an “academic/official” blog after I published an article in CCC Online called “Where do I list this on my CV?” Considering the Value of Self-Published Web Sites. In one form or another, I guess that’s been around for a couple of years. On my academic or “official” blog, I post things about my work as an academic, which includes lots of links to things I come across from reading other blogs and other things on the ‘net and in “real life.” I do post about “job oriented” things having to do with EMU and I have also offered my thoughts on being a “Happy Academic,” but mostly, it’s about things that are for me “scholarly.” I started an “unofficial” blog about a year ago to post things that are about my life. In my own mind, that’s part of an effort to create a space where I bring some healthy separation between what I do at “work” and what I do in “life.” I don’t think of my blog as scholarship per se—I don’t list it on my CV—but I do think of it as a useful scholarly enterprise. In composition studies, we talk about various invention exercises in writing classrooms. Blogs are for me a form of this. My academic blog is also a “notebook” of sorts where I keep track of links and things that I’ve come across that I think will be helpful in my scholarship or teaching later on.

By: John Lovas

John Lovas — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 08:28:24 +0000

I started blogging to document my work as a writing teacher in a community college. As part of the CCCC leadership, I had participated in several efforts to make the work of college compositionists more visible. While those efforts had some impact, I was frustrated with the ponderousness of organizational response. I wanted to see if the blog would be an effective means of reaching a wider public. At the same time, realizing I’m near the end of my full-time teaching career, I wanted to capture my practice, and my rationales for that practice. So I’ve tried to write daily—and have almost succeeded since I started May 22, 2003. In my view, my blog IS scholarship. It does a lot of what our journals did in the 1950s and 1960s, namely describe successful classroom and program practice and argues for certain teaching practices. At the start, I did not know how it would go, so publishing in print was not a concern. But a few months into my writing, I found a 20-year old outline for a book on the teaching of English I had totally forgotten about. I realized that a lot of the material I included in my blog fit that old outline. My current plan is to make the blog more functional this summer by organizing the year’s material in categories that might be useful to early-career composition teachers. At that point, I’ll probably look around to see if there’s anyone interested in publishing the material in some form. And, for what it’s worth, Lynn Quitman Troyka and Doug Hesse published one of my blog pages as an illustration of a teacher’s blog in the new 7th edition of the Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers.

By: Dennis G. Jerz

Dennis G. Jerz — Sat, 20 Mar 2004 10:20:37 +0000

Goodness… ask bloggers to write about their blogging, and what do you get? I noted this request on Crooked Timber, saw a handful of interesting replies, and made a mental note to blog the answers. For the two or three people who have not only scrolled all the way down here, but are hungry enough to want to read what yet another academic has to say, I’ve posted a long-ish response at my own site. http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=2279

By: Vanderbank

Vanderbank — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 16:16:33 +0000

What prompted you to start blogging? I started reading blogs like Invisible Adjunct and Frogs and Ravens. I decided I wanted to be able to express myself too. And what keeps you going? I like having a place where I can sound off. I’m writing my thesis in a small university town and sometimes it’s good to talk to the world at large. What do you try to do in your blog? I would like to write clever things but I usually end up talking about my latest diet or something silly I’ve done. Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? I would like it to. Unfortunately that would stop me writing personal things on it as I wouldn’t want potential employers to read them. what do you get from reading blogs? I learn that other people are just as human as me.

By: Rana

Rana — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 22:14:33 +0000

And here's my responses: If you’re an academic who blogs, what prompted you to start blogging? As I recall, it was a combination of needing an outlet for a welter of confusion, frustration, etc. about being tossed out of the ivory tower and guilt about hogging the comment threads at sites like Invisible Adjunct's. It seemed a less-introspective form of journaling -- the comments and awareness of an audience discourage excessive navel-gazing -- and getting my thoughts out in tidy print helped calm the whirling in my brain. And what keeps you going? Partly habit. Or addiction? In any case, I like having a space in which I can lay out my thoughts and activities, get feedback on them, and thus maintain a record of my ups and downs. Lacking many offline outlets of this sort, I suspect that the blog plays a large role in keeping my head from exploding! What do you try to do in your blog? I don't know that there is much of a larger purpose here, beyond furthering the development of online communities. I try to be honest and open about my life to the extent I can without compromising my offline privacy and that of my family and friends. Occasionally I'll share things I've found elsewhere that I think are interesting or funny or useful, and sometimes I'll speak about a cause I care about. I will freely admit that much of the blog is about pleasing myself. Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? Not really. Occasionally, I get feedback on larger contextual issues related to my work, but there is no direct relationship beyond both being by the same author. (Attempting to maintain a degree of anonymity makes sharing tricky!) Plus I rarely have the time or mental energy to do the kind of careful thinking my scholarship requires; the spontaneity of blogging is part of the appeal. What do you get from reading blogs? I love the encounters with other people and the windows their blogs offer on their lives, their thoughts, their hobbies and loves and fears... at least regarding personal blogs. Those that are directed toward more external purposes, like politics, or television, or craft techniques, I read as I read the paper and how-to-books and cheap magazines. In other words, for entertainment and information. I admit a particular weakness for forum-heavy formats, both because I like watching other people kick an idea or topic around and because I am a person who just can't shut up about things I'm interested in.

By: Rana

Rana — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 22:08:42 +0000

What a great set of questions, and interesting answers, too. Thanks for the topic! Because I’m lame and can’t figure out how to do trackbacks, here’s my permalink for my post responding to those questions: link.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:29:07 +0000

I think Naomi’s blog is one of the best, and I’d love to have her as a colleague. But the anonymity question is a good one. I’m not all that anonymous, if you know where to look. I do worry, though, because I am on the market. Now I’d like to ask those of you who already have tenure and may be on hiring committees—what happens if you know a candidate from the blogosphere? Should people on the market blog (Ms Mentor says to be careful)? If the blog is not academic, is it relevant to the search (although I can’t imaging that it wouldn’t have some influence on whether a candidate is a ‘good fit’? Inquiring minds want to know!

By: Naomi Chana

Naomi Chana — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 03:47:33 +0000

If you’re an academic who blogs, what prompted you to start blogging? Peer pressure from (non-academic) friends, plus a healthy dose of isolation, as I'd just moved to a new town for a residential dissertation-writing fellowship. And what keeps you going? Readers' comments, the fun of lecturing about something I don't actually get to teach, and the odd moment when I think I've learned or taught something. What do you try to do in your blog? Entertain and educate. Also, I try to have fun writing it. Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? See, it wasn't supposed to. I started a blog so I could talk about Buffy -- but then I wrote an academic article on Buffy (I wanted to deduct my cable bill as a business expense) and it went downhill from there. Now I mostly post about a handful of secondary specializations of mine, simply because my primary specialization would make it too easy for people to track me down. This brings us to the pseudonymity thing. I was starting a job search at the same time I started my blog; the last thing I wanted to show up on Google was my deathless reflections on how many applications I'd FedExed after an all-nighter. Now I find pseudonymity more than a little annoying -- I tend to drop it in email conversations, and it keeps me from making some very cogent points about academia -- but I'm still nervous about my students and/or senior colleagues Googling to find my blog. Lately I've been thinking I'll wait till I get tenure and then quietly post a link to my university website. Either way, what do you get from reading blogs? Ideas. Inspiration. (Not, sadly, always academic inspiration, but inspiration.) Less free time.

By: John c. halasz

John c. halasz — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 03:43:08 +0000

“If Walter Benjamin were alive today, he’d surely have a blog.” No, he would just collect blog quotes and rearrange them.

By: Elle

Elle — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 01:08:48 +0000

Like honorable mouse, I started blogging in 2001 “partly to try this new-fangled thing everyone was talking about and partly as a way to vent my spleen over the political situation.” I blogged under a pseudonym, even though I am tenured, because I liked being able to write about my opinions in a way that was NOT tied to my professional identity and my academic writing. Also like honorable mouse, I intend to keep the blog going indefinitely.

The newest twist for me is that I’ve begun to incorporate blogging into my pedagogy, and have students keeping weblogs. In discussions with students about why so many (at least on our campus) are so uncomfortable with blogging and resistant, we had some provocative conversations about accountability – not everyone wants their words published online where anyone can see and you are held accountable for what you say.

After that, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and allowed the interactive editor at our local newspaper to link my blog, with my real name, on his page of “local bloggers.”

By: Edward Cohn

Edward Cohn — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 20:09:22 +0000

If you’re an academic who blogs, what prompted you to start blogging? And what keeps you going? I blog for several different reasons. I worked as a writer at a political magazine for a year after graduating from college, and always planned to do some free-lance writing in graduate school; unfortunately, I just haven’t had time for that, and blogging seems like a good way to keep up my writing. I always tend to spend more time than I should reading different blogs, newspapers, and magazines online, and it somehow seems like a better use of my time to post links to some of what I find interesting than just to read it myself. (The previous incarnation of my blog was made up almost entirely of links, along with some commentary on my archival research and travel to Russia; I did this writing as much for myself as for other readers.) These days I try to do more writing at length (though it’s sometimes hard to find the time), and I’m mainly motivated by a desire to play with ideas and to put some of my thoughts into words. (Like Timothy Burke, I also like the idea of the blogger as a “public intellectual,” though at this stage of my academic career it would be presumptuous for me to describe myself in those terms.) I also like the idea of interdisciplinary blog commentary: my current blog is a group endeavor with a high-energy physicist and a cancer biologist. Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? Not really. I try to avoid discussing my research in any detail, since I’m a graduate student and would prefer to wait and publish it later on; moreover, I have plenty of opportunities to discuss my work with my professors and with other graduate students, so I don’t feel a strong need to write about my academic work. I do sometimes discuss my field (Soviet history), but I rarely write about the specific issues covered in my dissertation (and I mostly confine my comments on my field to reactions to articles I’ve read online); at the same time, I enjoy writing about issues of historical interpretation more generally.

By: PZ Myers

PZ Myers — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 18:56:21 +0000

what prompted you to start blogging? I've maintained a lab web page since about 1993, so when I saw this simple technology that lets you easily dump stuff onto the web, I jumped at it. And when I saw that people were using it for more than just deadly dull dry academic material, and were expressing their personality and having fun while trying to be entertaining as well as informative, I thought it could be liberating and creative, too. And what keeps you going? Coffee. What do you try to do in your blog? Play. Vent. Crusade a bit for causes I care about. Educate people about my obscure little corner of the scientific world, now and then. Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? Once upon a time, I tossed some of my preliminary results on the web, only to see my protocols, right down to the arbitrary concentrations of some teratogens I used, published in a journal with no acknowledgement at all. So no, I don't put any of my current research there. Some of it is material that I know will end up in my teaching, though. Sometimes it's good to have an excuse to track down some little story in the biology literature right now and scribble it down on the weblog, so a few months from now I can delve back into my website and find that interesting little idea again and use it in a lecture.

By: cs

cs — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:15:41 +0000

Henry, I hope your going to synthesis all this into a nice blogbite for busy (at least at the moment) academics.

By: Norm

Norm — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:38:20 +0000

If you're an academic who blogs, what prompted you to start blogging? Wanting to 'join the conversation', particularly as a member of the left with views out of harmony with much (most?) of the rest of the left. And wanting to try it out, just out of curiosity. And what keeps you going? Wanting to remain part of the blog conversation. The fact that I (mostly) enjoy it. Some amorphous sense - which would once, probably, have been described as 'reified', and may still be by some for all I know - of obligation to what I perceive as the demands of my blog. What do you try to do in your blog? Discuss poilitical issues that I think are important or worth noting. Link to items that have come to my attention and which I find of interest. Try to cover a range of other things beyond politics in any narrow sense. Have fun. Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? Some. I ran a series on the concept of crimes against humanity, which is what I've been working on lately, and have posted a few other things directly relevant to my past or present work. There's also a looser general relationship between the political issues I discuss on my blog and my academic concerns. [W]hat do you get from reading blogs? A lot of interest. And tired.

By: Kikuchiyo

Kikuchiyo — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 11:25:37 +0000

What prompted you to start blogging? And what keeps you going? I started because I thought that the blogs that I could read were intelligent and informative, but sometimes a bit too serious. And so I started writing satirical “translations” of news conferences and articles in the preamble to the war. What do you try to do in your blog? Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? Sometimes there are musings related to economics, primarily the blog is where I an various acquaintances of mine blow off steam and poke fun at the surrealisms of media and academia.