This video made the rounds last week on Facebook. I’m sharing it here for those of you who may have missed it (or who want to watch it again). It offers a tragicomic glimpse into the cynicism that pervades the academic humanities these days — a result of poor job prospects for many, limited funding, and diminishing respect within and beyond higher education. It’s biting, but for exactly the reasons I wish it were not.
My department at Indiana University, Communication and Culture, is looking for a top-notch person to fill an opening in digital/social media, at the level of assistant professor. Check out the job announcement, below, and please circulate it widely.
I’m not a member of the search committee, by the way, so if you have questions it’s best to contact the committee chair–my colleague, Professor Barbara Klinger.
Indiana University
Department of Communication and Culture
Digital and Social Media
The Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Digital and Social Media to begin Fall 2011.
We seek a humanities-trained Ph.D. whose primary area of research expertise and training is in digital media studies focused specifically on the social dimensions and potentials of digital media. This applicant will be expected to interact productively with colleagues in one or more of the department’s three areas: Rhetoric and Public Culture; Film and Media Studies; and Performance and Ethnographic Studies. The applicant must have a well-developed research program and teaching experience in digital and social media. She or he will be responsible for developing an introductory lecture course and advanced undergraduate courses, as well as for actively shaping and teaching graduate offerings in this field of study.
We particularly encourage applicants whose research involves specialization in areas such as:
Candidates are expected to have a strong research agenda and a commitment to excellence in teaching. Preference will be given to those who have their Ph.D. in hand by the date of appointment. Applicants should send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to: Professor Barbara Klinger, Chair, Digital/Social Media Search, Department of Communication and Culture, 800 E. 3rd Street, Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405. Review of applications will begin December 1, 2010 and continue until the position is filled.
Indiana University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. The university actively encourages applications and nominations of women, minorities, applicants with disabilities, and members of other underrepresented groups.
About a month ago a friend and fellow academic contacted me to ask how I organize all of the material that we accumulate in the course of our careers. With the school year starting for most of us here in the United States and elsewhere, I thought it might be worth sharing what I told her. It never hurts to start the year off on the right foot, eh?
Confession: I’m a prodigious keeper of academic stuff. I’m not of the caliber of the people featured on the TV show Hoarders (which, by the way, literally takes my breath away), but my collection still runs pretty deep. Heck, I even have a few of my old notebooks from my undergraduate days, and truth be told I do refer to them on occasion. I’m able to keep this much stuff because I live in the Midwest where housing prices are relative affordable. Folks living in urban setting ought to take what I’m about to say with a major grain of salt.
One of the main items I hold on to are photocopied journal articles and book chapters. Each one has its own separate file folder, and on the tab I write the author’s name and the selection title. Where possible I note the full citation on the document itself. I file these alphabetically by the author’s last name in a four-drawer file cabinet that I’ve just about outgrown. In the event that the article is more topically-focused or doesn’t name the author, I place it in a colored file folder and file it alphabetically by topic.
I’ve also begun amassing a growing number of e-readings of late, which I save on my laptop in a folder called “articles.” I use the author’s last name and a keyword from the title as the file name. I’m not yet convinced this is the best system, but it seems to be working for now. Regular backup is a must.
I keep my old notebooks from graduate school in a cardboard file box. They’re filed chronologically by semester, with the oldest ones toward the back. I’ve moved a few of the notebooks I refer to most frequently to the front, even though that violates the chronological system.
I organize my teaching files by class and semester. Every class gets its own hanging file every semester, and in each I place three manila file folders: one for lesson plans, one for handouts/tests/syllabi/etc., and one for any other course related documents (e.g., enrollment records, grade rosters, etc.) I keep the most active files in my desk-drawer file cabinet at home, and the older ones (usually for classes I’m not teaching anymore) I have archived in one of the file cabinets in my campus office.
My research files vary, but for the most part I keep a hardcopy of every finished manuscript in its own separate file folder labeled with the title and publication/presentation date. These I keep in a cardboard file box organized chronologically. The accompanying research materials I contain in accordion files, which I label with the project title. I keep these in a file box separate from the finished papers, although I’ve gone back and forth on this. Any articles I’ve used on a project go back in the metal file cabinet once I’m confident the project really is done.
I’ve managed to collect electronic copies of all of my published research, which I keep on my laptop in a folder called, surprisingly enough, “Published Research.” Within it I maintain separate folders for journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews. Again, backup is essential.
Books: if I haven’t read or referred to one in a long time, or if I’ve never read it at all, then it becomes a candidate to sell to a used bookstore — although the only problem here is that I end up just trading them in for more books. Otherwise, I use foldable/stackable bookshelves (a carry-over from graduate school, when I used to move around a lot) to house the many volumes comprising my library, the bulk of which I keep at home since that’s where I mainly do my writing. The titles are organized loosely by topic (philosophy, media studies, communication theory, postcolonial studies, race, cultural studies, etc.) and then by author, but I don’t maintain any type of formal alphabetical system here. I try my best to organize multiple works by the same author chronologically. Most of the time textbooks and odd or duplicate volumes end up on the bookshelves in my campus office.
That’s my system in a nutshell. What are your best tips, fellow travelers?
Great news for all of my readers who despise profligate government spending! My buddy Kembrew McLeod published a thought-provoking article in Tuesday’s edition of the Huffington Post called, “A Modest Free Market Proposal for Higher Education Reform.” In it, Kembrew outlines a compelling vision for ending the financial bloat that’s endemic to today’s public universities.
Among his proposals, he calls for corporate sponsorship of classes. Personally I’m looking forward to the day when the syllabus for my Introduction to Media class, which enrolls 250-plus students every fall, can finally say, “brought to you by the Walt Disney Company.” Kembrew also suggests that undergraduates be given the green light to utilize paid-for research assistance companies, which makes a good deal of sense, really, for how else are we to grow the economy in tough financial times? My favorite idea of his, though, is to incentivize cheap graduate student teaching. Soon-to-be PhDs, Kembrew writes, ought to be able to outsource their doctoral dissertations:
By no longer having to conduct original research themselves, graduate students will have more hours to spend in the classroom as adjunct instructors. Let’s do the math. PhD-Dissertations.com charges $17.00 per page, which adds up to $3,400 for a 200-page dissertation (plus, their website states that, “A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages!”). Although this might seem like a lot of money, consider the fact that most colleges pay adjuncts roughly the same, between $3,000 and $4,000, for each course taught per semester. Therefore, by just adding one extra course to his or her roster, a graduate student can pay for an entire dissertation in less than one academic year–while at the same time serving the university’s undergraduate teaching needs. Once this new generation of scholar/project managers enters the profession, there will be no more need for traditional professors.
Since I’m an overpaid university professor who’s contributing to all the bloat, I’ll happily step aside to let someone with a bachelors or masters degree do my job for, say, seven or eight bucks an hour. But don’t worry about me. I’ll be lapping it up over at PhD-Dissertations.com, where at long last I can put my skills and experience to some real use.
Wow! I’m happy to report that my home discipline, communication, is finally making some strides in terms of bringing its book and journal publishing policies into the 21st century.
Last week, the International Communication Association (ICA), in Conjunction with American University’s Center for Social Media, released its Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies devised a similar statement of best practices way back in 1993 (it updated the document in 2009), so needless to say I’m pleased to see ICA catching up at long last.
These types of policy statements are vitally important for media and communication scholars, and indeed for scholars more generally. As more and more of our work engages words, sounds, images, and other artifacts drawn from the popular media, we need to be reasonably assured that we can criticize and, where necessary, reproduce content protected by copyright, trademark, and other forms of intellectual property law. That’s exactly what these best practices statements do, in part by identifying a “community of practice” and carefully defining its — in this case, scholarly — customs. But it’s not only about “show and tell.” Reproducing copyrighted content in academic work is important to the scholarly process. How else would reviewers, other scholars, and anyone else who may happen to read our work assess the validity of our claims?
Academics routinely — and often unnecessarily, I might add — self-censor our work, for instance by opting to exclude images we’re analyzing for fear we’ll get sued by some deep-pocketed media giant. Heck, I’ve even done it myself. And that’s why I’m such a champion of these best practices statements. They may not give us carte blanche to use intellectual properties in our work however we may see fit. They do give us a useful set of guidelines for making informed judgments about how best to proceed in these matters, though, plus they underscore how our own practices are in solidarity with others.
The other bit of good news is that Boston College’s Charles (Chuck) E. Morris III has drafted a resolution calling on the National Communication Association (NCA) to revise its fees for licensing NCA-copyrighted material. In a preamble to the document, Chuck writes:
The resolution seeks to regulate the prohibitively expense copyright fees charged by Taylor & Francis [publisher of NCA journals] in conjunction with NCA. Particularly alarming is that while for more than a decade NCA Executive Directors, who contractually have the prerogative to waive or reduce fees, intervened to make reprinted NCA journal materials affordable for high quality anthologies/readers of pedagogical and scholarly value, the current NCA Executive Director, Nancy Kidd, has prioritized profit and is allowing a dramatically higher fee.
Basically, NCA jacked up its licensing fees about a year ago, a move that will price smaller publishers out of the business of republishing top-quality communication research. The change not only promises to whittle down the competition (leaving only giants like Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, and Sage standing), but it’s also inimical to the larger cause of scholarly communication. When Chuck writes that NCA is putting profits ahead of publishing, he’s exactly right.
If you’re an NCA member, you have until Tuesday, June 29th the add your name to the document. You can do so by contacting Chuck via email: morrisch@bc.edu. And hey — if you’re not an NCA member but you believe in the spirit of the resolution, why not go ahead drop Chuck a line anyway? I don’t know if he can add your name to the formal list of signatories, but it can’t hurt for him to be able to attest to support coming from beyond NCA.
Now, if only we could get NCA to adopt a best practices for fair use statement of its own. It’s an embarrassment, frankly, for the oldest and largest professional association for communication scholars in the United States to lag so far behind its peer organizations.
My latest essay, “Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing,” is now out in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7(1) (March 2010), pp. 3-25. In my opinion, it’s probably the single most important journal essay I’ve published to date. Here’s the abstract:
This essay explores the changing context of academic journal publishing and cultural studies’ envelopment within it. It does so by exploring five major trends affecting scholarly communication today: alienation, proliferation, consolidation, pricing, and digitization. More specifically, it investigates how recent changes in the political economy of academic journal publishing have impinged on cultural studies’ capacity to transmit the knowledge it produces, thereby dampening the field’s political potential. It also reflects on how cultural studies’ alienation from the conditions of its production has resulted in the field’s growing involvement with interests that are at odds with its political proclivities.
Keywords: Cultural Studies; Journal Publishing; Copyright; Open Access; Scholarly Communication
I’m fortunate to have already had the published essay reviewed by Ben Myers and Desiree Rowe, who podcast over at The Critical Lede. You can listen to their thoughtful commentary on “Acknowledged Goods” by clicking here — and be sure to check out their other podcasts while you’re at it!
Since I’m on the topic of the politics of academic knowledge, I’d be remiss not to mention Siva Vaidhyanathan’s amazing piece from the 2009 NEA Almanac of Higher Education, which recently came to my attention courtesy of Michael Zimmer. It’s called “The Googlization of Universities.” I found Siva’s s discussion of bibliometrics — the measurement of bibliographic citations and journal impact — to be particularly intriguing. I wasn’t aware that Google’s PageRank system essentially took its cue from that particular corner of the mathematical universe. The piece also got me thinking more about the idea of “algorithmic culture,” which I’ve blogged about here from time to time and that I hope to expand upon in an essay.
Please shoot me an email if you’d like a copy of “Acknowledged Goods.” Of course, I’d be welcome any feedback you may have about the piece, either here or elsewhere.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF MEDIA STUDIES
CALL FOR PAPERS
2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. “[I}t is common knowledge,” he wrote, “that the miniaturization and commercialization of machines is already changing the way learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited” (1984, org. 1979: 4). In 2010, “Connected Understanding” will be the theme of the Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities in Montreal (http://www.fedcan.virtuo.ca/congress2010/
The massification and informationalization of the university has transformed not only the content of teaching and research but also disciplinary processes of knowledge production and the technological form of academic life and culture. The integration and normalization of ICT’s raises many questions about the university, academic labour, scholarly communication and collaboration, and academic technoculture. In 1957, Marshall McLuhan invited us to reconsider the education process by announcing that, with the advent of television, the “classroom without walls” had arrived. A half a century later, we are working in the university without walls and the ICT “revolution” is over. In “Universities, wet, hard, and harder,” German media theorist Friedrich Kittler reviewed 800 years of university-based media history to observe that “universities have finally succeeded in forming once again a complete media system.” Yet media scholars have rarely chosen to study their own universities as media systems. This special issue of the CJMS is an invitation to reflexive, critical media studies. Established and emerging scholars are invited to address continuities and transformations in new media and the network university and to set the agenda for future study and debate.
Possible questions and areas of research and critical inquiry include:
We also invite investigations of:
Submission Guidelines
Authors should submit papers of about 25 pages (or 8000 words) in MLA style with abstract and keywords electronically to David Spencer, Editor, dspencer@uwo.ca. With the exception of the title page, please remove all indications of authorship.
The deadline for papers is February 28, 2010. Peer review and notification of acceptance will be completed by March 31, 2010. Final manuscripts accepted for publication will be due April 30, 2010.
Comments and queries can be sent to Bob Hanke, Guest Co-Editor, bhanke@yorku.ca.
For more information about the Canadian Journal of Media Studies, visit http://cjms.fims.uwo.ca/default.htm.
Off and on throughout the years I’ve been reporting on instances in which academic authors were prohibited from doing their jobs as a result of unreasonable intellectual property regulations — or the perception thereof. Here’s the latest case: composer and Bard College Music professor Kyle Gann, whose latest book, about the music of the avant-garde art group Fluxus, will be without some important material. Gann reports:
Apparently I’ve just broken copyright law. I can’t believe what’s holding up my Cage book: you are no longer allowed to quote texts that are entire pieces of art. This means I’ve been trying to get permission simply to refer to Fluxus pieces like La Monte Young’s “This piece is little whirlpools in the middle of the ocean,” and Yoko Ono’s “Listen to the sound of the earth turning.” And of course, Yoko (whom I used to know) isn’t responding, and La Monte is imposing so many requirements and restrictions that I would have to add a new chapter to the book, and so in frustration well past the eleventh hour, I’ve excised the pieces from the text.
You can read the complete post over on his blog PostClassic, which is hosted on the ArtsJournal website.
Odd, isn’t it, how you can pay a relatively small fee to license the rights to cover an entire song, yet you can’t get permission to do the same thing in a different medium for academic purposes? Something’s gotta give. Really. This is getting ridiculous, and it is an affront to academic freedom.
From today’s Inside Higher Ed:
Friday was the last day of classes at the University of California at San Diego, where students faced a weekend of studying before finals began on Monday. If any of them ventured to a nearby La Jolla shopping center, they might have encountered representatives from a new Web site there to make their pitch: Give us a test — any old test — and we’ll give you a $5 Starbucks coffee card.If that sounds like a surprisingly blunt quid pro quo, it’s consistent with the purpose of the site, called PostYourTest.com, which encourages students to upload tests and exams from their courses — anonymously, if they want — for others to find and download. The concept has already aroused suspicion and concern among some faculty members at UCSD, where many of the posted tests originated, and seems to run afoul of both traditionally accepted norms of academic integrity and, potentially, copyright law.
Even though I’m vigilant about changing the content of my exams, I do not permit my students to keep their tests once I’ve marked them. I always review their tests in class with them, however, and although I collect the documents thereafter, I make it clear that it’s the students’ right to access their exams should they have questions, want to review the material in anticipation of future exams, etcetera.
I implemented this policy many years ago now (in graduate school, I believe), after hearing many stories about old exams finding their way into files and getting passed down through generations of students.
PostYourTest obviously raises the stakes on the old “exam file.” I wonder: should I begin placing copyright declarations on all future exams I create? And has it really come to that?
Anyway, you can read the full Inside Higher Ed story here.
Josh Gunn over at The Rosewater Chronicles has an excellent post about the various critical personae one might encounter in the process of double-blind academic peer-review. He classifies them (us?) as “gushers,” “assassins,” “turf pissers,” and “empaths.” My favorite characterization (although probably my least favorite type of reviewer) has to be the “naysayer,” whom Josh describes like this:
The Naysayer: Nothing of quality or interest has ever been published in the field, and your essay is no exception. Communication Studies is a sub-par and parasite field, and your essay continues this horrible, alien existence. The Naysayer wanted to be a philosopher or studied comparative literature, but reluctantly took a position in Communication Studies out of necessity. S/he is bitter about being in Comm, and will take it out on you—especially if you take up concepts from high theory or philosophy.
I’m sure anyone who’s been through the gauntlet of double-blind peer review has encountered at least one cranky naysayer in her or his lifetime, and probably one or more of the other characters as well. I only wish there were more gushers and empaths out there. Too often, I find, academic peer-review seems as much about hazing as it does about ideas and execution–and I say that as someone who’s enjoyed reasonably good success at getting published.
Anyway, be sure to check out Josh’s post and the lively discussion that follows. Great stuff.
