I guess there’s not going to be any settling down, is there? Here, as is often the case, are some interesting articles to kick off your weekend:
- Looks like Audrey Watters gave a barn-burner at the University of Richmond this week, on “Ed-Tech in a Time of Trump”: “A Time of Trump” could be “A Time of Neoliberalism” or “A Time of Libertarianism” or “A Time of Algorithmic Discrimination” or “A Time of Economic Precarity.” All of this is – from President Trump to the so-called “new economy” – has been fueled to some extent by digital technologies; and that fuel, despite what I think many who work in and around education technology have long believed – have long hoped – is not necessarily (heck, even remotely) progressive.
- Tim Carmody has a stunner on Walter Benjamin, James Baldwin, the present emergency, and what’s normal, anyway: Global refugees, the stubborn pervasiveness of white supremacy, the arbitrary power of the state, the fragility of national and international institutions — we’ve been here for some time now, haven’t we? One day, you stir, and there you are — right where you’ve always been. With nothing under your feet, and ghosts pausing for breath next to your cheek.
- Catherine Scott offers strategies for grad students who’re trying to cope with mental health issues: I suspect that I don’t immediately come across as someone with severe depression or an anxiety disorder, either on social media or in person (the time where I broke down crying during my thesis defense notwithstanding, but that’s another story). I’ve spent most of my life trying hard to be “normal” (or at least minimally functional) while silently struggling with these issues. I’d like to live in a world, and work in an academic environment, where being open about mental health issues is normal.
- Bardiac does that classic trick of doing one of her assignments herself: Back when I was doing basic pedagogical training (you know, when we baked our syllabus onto a clay tablet), one of the strongest suggestions was that every time we give an assignment, before we give an assignment, we take the assignment and write it ourselves (this was in the context of an English department, so the assignments didn’t involve other production than writing).
- I loved this post by Flavia about one’s changing relationship to reference books: At some point I became obsessed with the idea of getting the complete 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary–nevermind that I lived in studio apartments until I was past thirty. When I was working my law firm job I considered saving up $1,000 to buy it new. Once I started grad school I looked longingly at the used sets that would occasionally pop up in local bookstores. Eventually I compromised and bought a 20-year-old “compact” version–the kind with the magnifying glass–which I lugged home through the rain, more than a mile across town, so eager was I to have it in my possession.
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