In early 2012, Rohan Maitzen published a few very thoughtful posts about what counts are research, the apparent conflict between research and teaching, and related issues. One of these, “When is Reading Research?“, really highlights some of the underlying issues. When we talk about “doing research,” I think we conventionally mean reading in service of a […]
Read More »scholarship
Are you treating your research like a hobby?
Most academics are paid to do research. Research is part of your job description. Research figures prominently in the criteria for hiring, tenure/confirmation, and promotion. This can feel out of sync with the reality of your daily life in the university. You teach. You attend meetings. You do the work necessary to do those 2 […]
Read More »Open Access & Knowledge Mobilization
I fear that for some in the academic community, Open Access publishing is acting as a crutch, albeit one they don’t have yet. Open Access publishing is a good thing. We should have more of it. There are lots of reasons for this, all of which are well known. But … How many of you […]
Read More »How scholarship is evaluated
The quality and impact/significance of your research is usually evaluated based on where you publish. The advent of new outlets for your scholarly work has raised some interesting issues about how this is done. A blog exchange about Melville scholarship (read the comments, and also see this discussion of that post) highlights the particular issues […]
Read More »What happened to the Life of the Mind?
For many people what’s attractive about an academic career is the opportunity to be intellectually engaged: with students, with books, with colleagues, etc. Popular cultural representations of academia twist this into an image of the professor with his mind on higher things and detached from reality. Either way what gets called “the life of the mind” […]
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