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October 6, 2006
Academic Wiki-Blogroll
Just a quick pointer for now to Henry Farrell's wiki-driven blogroll, spun off from the old Crooked Timber academic blogroll (via Chris at Category D). I share Chris's reservations about some of the categories used to classify academic blogs, especially when it comes to film and media studies blogs (mine is housed in the Humanities section under "Culture, Theory and Literature," while Chris's Category D is housed under "Media and Communication" in the Professional and Useful Arts section). But the wiki-blogroll is a useful tool for sifting through the growing number of academic blogs and for thinking about the role of academic blogging as a kind of alternative university where some very interesting conversations about our profession are taking place.
The wiki also includes links to articles on academic blogging, as well as research on blogs, some of which may be useful for the course I'm planning to teach this spring.
Posted by chuck at October 6, 2006 4:07 PM
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Comments
Those categories are really kind of odd – it's hard to think of communication and media studies as "professions and useful arts" beyond the undergraduate level. I imagine these categories are more grounded in traditional department lines rather than the hybrid knowledge domains where I find myself.
I guess any categorization system is inadequate, but it seems a tag-based system would be better than constructing a taxonomy like this.
Posted by: McChris at October 6, 2006 5:10 PM
This may or may not be of interest, Chuck.
Posted by: Matthew at October 6, 2006 5:13 PM
I felt the same way, housed as you are in CTL. It makes more sense to me, having moved the whole kitkaboodle to a wiki, to just alphabetize us all, and let us put ourselves in various categories. The scarcity of space on a blogroll is no longer an issue, after all.
Umm. In fact, there's no reason why we can't just go do that now, I suppose, since it is a wiki and all...
cgb
Posted by: collin at October 6, 2006 5:24 PM
Yeah, spoke too soon. Oops.
Posted by: collin at October 6, 2006 8:41 PM
As promised here's a friendly reminder that on November 15th, I'll be hosting an Alfred Hitchcock Blog-A-Thon. Glad you're taking part!
http://pasquish.blogspot.com/2006/10/alfred-hitchcock-blog-thon.html
Posted by: Squish at October 8, 2006 8:02 AM
Matthew, thanks for the link. It looks like that entry has provoked an interesting conversation about the definition of academic blogging. I tend to agree with Adam and Henry, to some extent at least, that the academic blog-wiki should be understood as a means of legitimating academic blogs to university administrations and tenure and hiring committees that have tended to view blogs skeptically (recall the Ivan Tribble column in the CHE a year or so ago).
The category problem is an interesting one. Of course I can just go and add my blog to the media blog list, but any category-based system will have some problems.
Squish, thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten completely.
Posted by: Chuck at October 8, 2006 11:48 AM