of a social historian
A timeless image of the ideal academic life was given by bell hooks: “To wake. To have a leisurely breakfast. To write and think for four hours or so, surrounded by beautiful things – flowers and art and comfortable furniture. Then have lunch. Go outside. Go to a park or shop. See friends…” It only needs the addition of exchanging those writings and thoughts with colleagues and students to become more or less my ideal as well.
While this may sound timeless, much has changed down the decades. Indeed, down the centuries. Academic life has certainly moved on from the days of the Victorian gentleman scholar – even if the beards are back. In these opening chapters of the twenty-first century, academic life has spilled over into the digital arena. Much of the time, this seems to involve posting photos of cats sitting in front of laptops. While there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s also a lot more to it. Academic work, especially in the humanities, can be largely isolated – reading and writing while the cool kids are out in the sunshine. Blogging and social media offers a space for sharing ideas and forging new communities. It’s the conference that never ends.
The posts below are comments and reflections on different aspects of academic life…
When it comes to teaching online, some of the key thinking and advice can be helpful regardless of discipline. But we also need to think about what works for our own subject in particular. I've shared some thoughts in a blog post which you can read over at the Social History Society's Teaching Exchange.
For the last few years, I've been researching the history of charity shops - and, importantly, the various types of shops set up and run by charities that don't look so much like what we picture when we image a 'charity shop'. When I'm not busy just coping with the chaos and uncertainty of the …
Continue reading "Shopping for a cause? Discussing the history of charity shops"
Academic book reviews tend to take a long time before they appear in print. Some take longer than others. David Cameron was still Prime Minister when I promised to write a review of Armine Ishkanian and Simon Szreter's edited collection on the 'big society' for the journal Cultural and Social History. By the time I …
Musings 