Category Archives for reading
Complexity
I’m in the midst of reading Dominick LaCapra’s History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory, as I revise my essay on David Foster Wallace, Infinite Summer, and networked reading, and have been finding a lot there that’s helping me complicate … Continue reading
Though I Wish They’d Named It Something Else
I will begrudgingly admit that I’m intrigued by the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s new device, previewed today, which seeks to be an Unnamed Other E-Reader Killer (follow that link and scroll down; apparently the K-word was banned from today’s announcement). … Continue reading
On Teaching Infinite Jest
The following was originally published as a guest post on Infinite Summer. As you may have seen mentioned in a countdown post here, this past spring I taught a single-author course focused entirely around the work of David Foster Wallace. … Continue reading
Requiescat in Pace
Today is the last day of what has been alternately a difficult and an exhilarating semester. Honestly, it’s the first semester in I can’t remember how long that I’ve been sorry to see end, the first semester in several years … Continue reading
Digital Humanities Roundup
I’ve just posted on MediaCommons in order to point to Lisa Spiro’s fantastic post rounding up and reflecting on important developments in the digital humanities in 2008, with particular attention to issues of scholarly communication and open access. This post … Continue reading
Media Studies and Literary Studies
I was somewhat bemused to see the white paper recently released by the MLA, reporting to the Teagle Foundation on the goals and objectives of the undergraduate major in language and literature in the context of a liberal arts education. … Continue reading
Insert Nippular Pun of Your Choosing Here
One wonders whether the final outcome (please god) of this debacle will get anything like the coverage (so to speak) that its origin did: the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has overturned the fine of $550,000 levied by the … Continue reading
Stuart Moulthrop, “After the Last Generation”
Earlier so-called communications revolutions wrought only partial transformations: the increased emphasis on the image in photography and film; the recovery of orality in telegraphy, telephony, and radio; the creation of mass consciousness through broadcasting. Though they began to challenge writing … Continue reading
On Elite Education
There’s been a lot of discussion in the last few days of William Deresiewicz’s article in The American Scholar, “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education.” I’m mildly annoyed by the opening of the article — I suddenly realized the shortcomings … Continue reading
