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Posts tagged ‘Blogging’

Jan 2

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Day 2: The Greeks Exhibit at the Field Museum

On New Year’s Eve, I went to the Field Museum in Chicago to see its special exhibit on the Greeks.  The Museum has collected 500 artifacts from Greek museums, which cover 3500 years of history, beginning with the Minoans on Crete and other Cycladic islands.  I had seen many of these pieces in their home museum, which admittedly, is already pulled from the original context, but seemed at least to beckon to the sense of the place from which they were found.  Seeing them all pulled together robbed them of their aura (in the Benjaminian sense), it seemed to me.  I’m glad they could pull it together for people to see, but I just want to put the plug in for going and visiting places and the museums in those places.

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Jan 1

31 Days of Blogging: January Resolution

I don’t have the resolve for a year long’s resolution, and everyone seems to be poo-pooing resolutions this year anyway, so forget it.  I’ve decided to resolve just for a month I’m going to blog every day.  I was inspired by Jill Stauffer, who did it every day in December.  I am feeling a certain trepidation about this resolution, perhaps that is a sign that it is a good one.  I often think about something Jill said at the public philosophy panel at SPEP in 2014 about how things need time to percolate in private before bringing them to the world, and I think this notion influences my public philosophizing.  I spend a lot of time ruminating before sending things into the world.  I think that is useful, but I think it is also useful to develop habits of daily engagement and thoughtfulness.  So that’s what this is.  As you can expect, I’m also going to reflect along the way about what’s hard about keeping this resolution, which I expect will have something to do with being a woman in philosophy on the Internet.  Stay tuned.

calvin-hobbes-new-years-resolutions

Thanks to Fit is a Feminist Issue for the Calvin and Hobbes find.

Jul 6

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What I learned about teaching research from having a summer research student

For eight weeks this summer, I had a summer research student, a rising senior at Wabash.   I learned some things over these weeks about how to teach students to do research from seeing what was surprising to my student and what was difficult.  The student who worked with me approached me last semester about doing summer research because he said he wanted to see what faculty in philosophy do when they do research.  I invited him to work with me on an article manuscript that I am working on.  He began by reading secondary literature which then directed him toward primary texts and dialectically back and forth between secondary literature and primary texts. Read more

Dec 31

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Janus-Faced, Part 1: Stuff I’m Proud of from 2014

Janus is the Greek god of doors and gateways, beginnings and endings, looking back and looking ahead.  To be Janus-faced is to recognize that the ending is a beginning, and the beginning an ending, to hold together what has come with what will come.

So much for the lofty start.  Here we are: year end reviews.  Everyone’s doing it.  I don’t like to be a cliché, but I do like to look back in order to look ahead and to do so in a way that addresses what was significant to me rather than the kind of thing I would put on a salary review.  I realize that what I don’t like about these kinds of things is how much they are about individuals–what I did this year–when what seems important is what we collectively have done, or more, how what we’ve done has been collectively accomplished.  So I’m trying to think about how the things that I did were also collective efforts. Read more

Aug 22

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Metablogging: Blogging about Academic Blogging

Why I started blogging and how its been more of a benefit that I expected.

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Apr 22

The Trott Line

A trot line is a fishing line that is set up across an span of water with a staging area every few feet from which you drop a line.  On the end of each staging line is a hook that you tie your bait to during the day, let the sun go down, and come back in the morning to see what’s been caught.  Some call it lazy.

I like this idea of fishing, of just letting the fish come to you when they’re ready.  Lazy?  Maybe, but it takes patience, and too, attentiveness.  There’s something  about the way the trot line gathers the things of the water without prejudice: your trot line could catch old rope, plastic bags and snakes as likely as fish.  Thinking is kind of like this: ideas come by and get caught on your staging.  Some of them are worth keeping, some of them you throw back, some of them are a cause for celebration, some of them you’d rather never have seen, some of them don’t mean that much to you, but someone else is glad you caught it.  This blog is my trot line.   Read more

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