Wednesday Lunchtime at U.C. Davis with Tedra Osell, Eric Rauchway, and Scott Eric Kaufmann

Since I'm still not sure what I am going to say at lunch on Wednesday with Tedra, Eric, and Scott, let me just send around five URLs:

• Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1224), "Licterae Generales (Establishing the University of Naples)," in Paul Halsall, ed. (2006), Internet History Sourcebooks http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1224fred2-lictgen.html
• Niccolo Machiavelli (1513), "Letter to Francesco Vettori" December 10 http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/000006.html
• Eszter Hargittai (2004), "The Academic Contributions of Blogging" November 18 http://crookedtimber.org/2004/11/18/the-academic-contributions-of-blogging
• Eszter Hargittai (2005), "Paths to Weblogs" March 15 http://campuscgi.princeton.edu/~eszter/weblog/archives/00000235.html
• J. Bradford DeLong (2006), "The Invisible College," Chronicle of Higher Education Review 52:47 (July 28, 2006) http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/the_invisible_c.html

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U.C. Davis History Department - Schedule of Events: Colloquium on Blogging and Scholarship: Date: Wednesday, May 23, 2007Time: 12:00 PMInformation: Colloquium on Blogging and Scholarship, May 23, 12:10, Andrews Room, with Tedra Osell, Scott Eric Kaufman, and Brad DeLong...

Weblogging and Scholarship: An item on my calendar for which I am not prepared looms out of the mists of time...

Acephalous: During the hour I'd be codifying my stray silliness into material suitable for you, dear readers (you no doubt remember my schedule) I'm... frantically preparing for next week's talk and how to deal with the inevitable, nay, threatened interruptions...

Comments

[NBarnes]

Wednesday Lunchtime at U.C. Davis with Tedra Osell, Eric Rauchway, and Scott Eric Kaufmann

Die. In. A. Fire.

*burns with jealousy*

[LizardBreath]

Likewise.

[Jon Fernquest]

RE: Eszter Hargittai (2004), "The Academic Contributions of Blogging" November 18

In another part of the world, Australian National University's "New Mandala" blog has been a critical source of information and academic debate about the politics that led up to the coup in Thailand and the constitutional drafting process. The internet met real world recently when the leading author of the blog, Andrew Walker gave a paper presentation at the political science department of the country's leading university.

IMHO blogs in the future can be a platform for incremental academic publishing and peer review but citation standards have to become more established, because people are naturally reticent about sharing innovative ideas that will be important parts of published papers over the internet, particularly in niche subjects that are easily plagiarised without people knowing. Blogs or wikipedia articles can (and have) become conduits for plagiarism.

As for my own academic blog, I turned off comments when the only comments I was getting were missionaries spamming me on entries such as "discourses on just war in the historical chronicles of Buddhist kings." No one really wanted to discuss this issue seriously, at least publicly (they now do at New Mandala blog at ANU, see link below), but the ubiquitous American missionary who dominates northern Thailand certainly wanted to create a meme out of me. Yuck. No thanks.

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/
newmandala/2007/05/22/
thai-cinematic-war-with-burma/

[jim]

I don't know what you're going to say tomorrow, either, but here's what strikes me looking at this reading list:

The medieval university was an aggregate of students. Frederick invites students to come to Naples and form the university. Even the medieval college's status is doubtful. Maitland says somewhere that medieval English lawyers had a hard time distinguishing between the Master and Fellows of King's College as a corporate body and the Master and Fellows of King's College as a mass of natural persons.

The modern university, the modern college, whatever else it might be, is undoubtedly a corporate body. Its faculty are employees, its students, customers. And it has established byzantine procedures both for acquiring employees and accepting customers.

It would be an exaggeration to say the modern university has put an end to all patriarchal, feudal, idyllic relations, that it has pitilessly torn asunder the motley ties that bound students to their natural superiors, that it has left remaining only callous cash payment. But that is because we, the employees and customers of universities, fight against it. The administration would have it so.

The academic blogosphere is, however, still an aggregate, a mass of natural persons. One joins it by starting a blog, perhaps inscribing oneself in Henry's wiki. Your invisible college is an aggregate: the blogger and commentators of "Grasping Reality". One shows up and joins in. We are, essentially, medieval. We are bound by motley ties.