academia

Telenovelas, first dates, and fertile ground -- everyone has their own relationship with this defined, yet far from settled, medium. Justin Hall, often considered the first blogger, probably had no clue what he was on to when he first started coding his diary into HTML. The personal journal remains one of the most popular forms of individual blogging, but political, technical, l and news aggregate blogs have entirely reshaped the boundaries and potentials of self-publishing.

So what then is an academic blog? And what does it mean to be an "academic blogger"? Definitions are problematic. When I look through my blog subscriptions in Google Reader for some model to follow, the topics and purposes are as divergent as the titles.  Read More »

It's been just over a year since I wrote the very first gnovis blog entry, "Making the Case for a gnovis Blog," in which I argued that academic blogging offers, for both readers and writers, an opportunity to narrow the gap between pure critical theory and contemporary "real world" issues. While I'll still happily defend that particular argument, my own views on academic blogging have become considerably more nuanced.  Read More »

I need to begin my discussion by responding to the allegation that the first quote that Brad cites, in his post "Are Bloggers the new Public Intellectuals?", which hints at the specter of the critique of the *irrelevance* of cultural studies or critical work.  Read More »