OPEN CULTURE
-
This next installment begins with my personal intellectual curiosity about big data, offers resources for using the Contingent Faculty Index, and concludes with a practical how-to about extracting data from pdf tables into csv format (for use in Excel, SPSS, Google Fusion Tables, etc.) How to Get a Humanist-Sociologist Excited about Big Data Wendy Hsu,…
-
My dissertation research focused on the obstacles that young aspiring musicians faced as the labor market shifted away from formal institutions toward contingent and freelance action supported by emergent technology. As a former adjunct, labor sociologist, and faculty support professional, I have become obsessed with the parallel forces I’m observing in higher education and how…
-
I’m currently working with a data set from the Adjunct Project that began from a simple, brilliant, idea – use social media to ask adjunct faculty input their pay and benefits into a collective Google Spreadsheet. Over a couple of weeks the spreadsheet was populated with nearly 2000 responses, providing up to date information from…
-
At our upcoming Digital Scholarship Institute, my colleagues and I will explore the theme of alternative argumentation. At our institution, Occidental College, all frosh are required to take an interdisciplinary cultural studies seminar that focuses on honing argumentation skills. Traditionally, the curriculum has focused on text-based argumentation (reading texts and writing about them), but CSP…
-
What is the fate of academic practice, where knowledge production is a slow, resource intensive process, in an age of fast-moving, fragmented, and free information? How can emergent technologies be put to effective use in learning to engage students in their learning when students – so-called “digital natives” – are primarily socialized as technology consumers…
-
Check out this Google Doc where adjuncts across the US are compiling data on what they make, whether they have contracts, and whether they have benefits and retirement. Super creative use of digital media to gather important data cheaply and quickly. Kudos and thanks to Copy-Paste for building our knowledge of the labor conditions adjuncts…
-
When I was young, I used to make home recordings of pop songs by layering track after track on a karaoke machine. By the time I got the drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead and piano, and vocals there was eerie bleed through on the cheap Memorex tapes I was using. It would take me an…
-
Today at my university, the Scholar’s Lab held a talk on Open Access with Madelyn Wessel, Associate General Counsel and Dr. Brian Pusser, Curry School of Education. The talk was in celebration of Open Access Week (Oct 18-24), and served as a follow up conversation to the open access resolution passed by our Faculty Senate.…
-
This is the question asked by Andrew Cedermark, songwriter and recording artist/rock journalist, in the current issue of C-Ville Weekly. The reasons are social, cultural, and historical – stretching back to constraints on women’s ability to be “alone” in public spaces, to ongoing girlhood socialization as quiet and non-aggressive. The article covers the experiences of…
-
“Nakashi”: Typhoon Relief Benefit To raise funds towards typhoon relief efforts in Taiwan, local food and performing artisans will join forces with Taiwanese artists for an evening of art, sound, live music and dance. The event will feature an one-night-only exhibit of visual and sound art installation works by Taiwan-based artists responding to the typhoon.…
jacob alden sargent 