A BLOG

Experiments with Social Media

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and engaging with various social media. I’ve been writing about them on this blog and talking about them on my podcast with STA. Today, I also tweeted about my experiences using my blog, Pinterest and Tumblr to track trouble in different ways:


I was inspired to tweet about different social media spaces after just creating a new board on Pinterest and then blogging about it on Tumblr. I wonder, how do others use their various social media spaces in connection with each other? How do they work (and fail to work) together?

Trouble and the Academy

A recent comment that I wrote on this blog has got me wondering about my own relationship to the academy/academic spaces. Just a few minutes ago, I wrote:

I’m currently struggling with my own relationship to the university. Having devoted so much of my life to formal education (as a student and teacher), I’m deeply invested in it. Yet, I feel that in the last few years, I’ve really pushed up against its limits and experienced a deep sense of alienation because of it. Is it fatally flawed? I really hope not, but sometimes I’m not so sure…especially when institutions are unwillingly to rethink elite models that serve the interests of so few at the expense of so many others.
As I think through my own (troubled) relationship to the academy and academic spaces, I thought I’d revisit some of my past reflections on the topic. Here are just few entries in which I write about my struggles of feeling alienated in the academy:

a note for podcast 7 @The Undisciplined Room

Here’s a note from yesterday’s podcast, Loose with My Use:

PINTEREST OR TUMBLR?

A common theme for us (well, for me at least) concerns the relative merits of Pinterest vs. Tumblr. I like how easy Pinterest is to use and how you can put lots of different images beside each other on your boards. But, I’m concerned by the business/marketing focus of the site and the etiquette rules. In the last couple of days, I’ve set up a tumblr site (staying in trouble) and I’m experimenting with how I might be able to use it for some of the same purposes as Pinterest (collecting images/examples of trouble). So far, I’m liking Tumblr. It’s really easy to post a variety of media and create a (semi) custom design. It’s also fun to experiment with new media.

I wonder, though, how much social media is too much? And are these various forms encouraging new ideas and connections or merely distracting me from digging into the ideas/theories/stories that I’ve already imagined? I don’t really think that this should be asked as an either/or question; I think pinterest and tumblr can and should inspire and distract. In fact, sometimes distractions are good. They can enable us to break bad habits, rescue us from creative ruts, shift our attention away from problematic ways of thinking and remind us to not always be working. For more on using distraction to open up news of engaging, see “Designing Choreographies for the ‘New Economy of Attention’“. And for more on the need for shifting attention in feminist classrooms, see chapter one in No Angel in the Classroom.

Anyway, yesterday on our podcast, I mentioned one interesting use of Pinterest that I recently came across: One of my Facebook friends (who also teaches Women’s Studies) has set up boards for her two classes on Pinterest. She’s sharing resources related to class discussions, including posting images of Victorian “antimasturbation” devices. A few days ago, a random Pinterest user commented on her board that “she seriously had issues” and that it “wasn’t even funny.” Ha! Ha! Aside from the clueless commenter, I thought this was a cool and creative way to use Pinterest. I wonder how she incorporated it into her class lecture/discussion?

In discussing this use on the podcast, I suggested that one cool assignment students could do with Pinterest is to create a board (or several boards) in which they collected examples of key feminist concepts: white privilege, heteronormativity, sizeism, ableism, racism, colonialism, etc. Or, students could create a board based on one product (like beer or perfume, for example) or brand. Their board could serve as the data for an analysis of the hidden assumptions and norms that are perpetuated through various ad campaigns.

After writing this last paragraph, I began to wonder, How are educators using Pinterest in their classrooms? Here are 2 sources that I found:

5 Tips for Using Pinterest in Your Classroom
a few tips: visit the education category on pinterest, create a board with sources, create reading lists, have students use it to track online research.

Educators May Use Pinterest in the Classroom
This post has different suggestions for inspiration, lesson-planning, and professional development.

 

in praise of the academic riffraff

All day I struggled with how to convey my reactions to Gary A. Olson’s article for the Chronicle of Higher Education last week. Some of that time was spent wondering why I should even bother. I’m still not sure. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to offer up this unfinished thought…

Last week, Gary A. Olson wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education in which he strongly cautions against jettisoning “traditional monograph-style dissertations” in favor of digital scholarship. Claiming to have “received calls from a handful of deans and department chairs” who fear the damage to the reputation and careers of those in the humanities that such a shift would cause, Olson suggests that digital scholarship might not be scholarship at all. It’s too quick and short. It discourages our capacity for deep concentration and sustained engagement with research. It is not “appropriately vetted by responsible experts.” And, it seems to be (at least partially) motivated by a scholar’s desire to get “instant gratification” from others on their research.

In contrast, continuing to rely on the 300+ page dissertation enables scholars to maintain “proper” standards and still be rigorous in their efforts, both of which are central to ensuring that the humanities are valued in this scary time of increased budget cuts. It also enables those in the hollowed halls of higher ed to use the peer review process to keep out the riffraff, “the amateur or dilettante simply posting thoughts online.” Because without the elaborate peer review process of “top tier written journals,” presumably first introduced to grad students through the process of writing and getting their dissertation approved by a committee of experts in their field, written work is (probably) not serious and scholarly enough.

For Olson, or at least his “callers” (the anonymous “they” that he refers to throughout the short piece), the issue is simple: Expanding scholarship to include new forms, especially digital ones, is a threat to the humanities. It diminishes its value and lowers the standards of its scholarship. And, Olson asks, “Why should humanities scholars settle for lower standards for their own disciplines?”

Judging by the title of my post and the content of my blog, you might correctly guess that I am troubled by Olson claims. And I’m not alone. Just read the comments on his original piece. Or check out Sample Reality’s response post, Serial Concentration is Deep Concentration, over on his blog. Many writers have great, very thoughtful and studied, responses to why Olson’s argument is faulty. I’m not interested in re-hashing them.

Instead, I want to offer up some praise for (what Olson might refer to as) the academic riffraff; those scholars, thinkers, writers, teachers, and activists who refuse to settle for the limited and biased set of standards and proper behavior that many in the academy continue to promote. While these “standards” are supposed to ensure quality, they are often used to keep out ideas/practices/people that challenge privileged forms of knowledge production.

Does this mean that we shouldn’t have any standards? That there’s no way to effectively assess whether or not serious engagement is occurring? No. It means that academics need to spend less time policing the borders of who counts as a scholar and more time engaged in the difficult labor of repeatedly asking who benefits (and at whose expense) when “standards” and rigor are invoked. They also need to develop new ways to understand, engage with and evaluate research.

Many of the digital scholars that are critical of Olson’s claims aren’t part of the academic riffraff; they are successful academics who have managed to do critical and creative work online and offline in ways that earn them cultural capital within the academy. Indeed, it seems as blogging and other online engagements, have increased caché in the academy, or at least some pockets of the academy. So, my praise of the academic riffraff is not necessarily for digital scholars working within many academic spaces (although I do appreciate the work that they do). Instead, my praise is for all the thinkers, troublemakers, storytellers, academic rebels, adjuncts, graduate student teachers (and more) that get exploited, undervalued, dismissed, and rejected even as they engage in exciting, compelling, innovative, “cutting-edge,” transformative, revolutionary, and accessible work.

Not as a side note, but as an finished thought and feeling, I’m bothered by how this argument for “standards” and “rigor” is so easily gendered, raced and classed. It seems that the “academic riffraff,” those folks who are doing the most interesting and innovative work, have the least amount of privilege (and access to cultural capital). 

For more on the MLA controversy, see my previous post: tweeting your thesis? good. rethinking purpose of thesis?  better.

A feminist techagogy source to revisit

Young Women’s Blogs as Ethical Spaces
Here’s how the author describes their project:

The increased visibility of personal blogs in the last decade has been lamented by some scholars as a sign of increasing individualization and superficiality in public discourse. New media technology and culture blur boundaries and raise new questions about personal and public issues, roles and responsibilities. In this they may also open up spaces for individual self-expression as well as collective reflections on values and norms for interpersonal relations. This article explores how personal blogs written by some of the best known young Swedish female bloggers can be seen as ‘ethical spaces’. Such spaces are formed in interaction between media producers, texts and users, and have a performative character in that they contribute to expanding and negotiating social norms and cultural values in society. Through an analysis of postings to and comments on the blogs, the article discusses the ethical issues that are raised, and what connections between personal experiences and dis- courses on young women’s self-expression, social relations and position in society are being made. The analysis also shows how bloggers in various ways create ethical spaces through performing roles as moderators, provocateurs or friends. Finally, the article argues that, despite the focus on personal issues, these blogs constitute performative spaces that contribute to personal as well as public negotiations of ethics, values and norms in contemporary Sweden.

This looks like a great resource! I’m excited to review Lövheim’s bibliography and find even more sources on what is meant by ethical space and how some bloggers are imagining and inhabiting that space. Cool.