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The wind in the trees: Regimes of attention
“What the modern movie lacks is beauty,” said D.W. Griffith, melancholy at the end of the a long career, “the beauty of the moving wind in the trees.” At film’s inception, it’s said that viewers didn’t necessarily know where to rest their eyes. Film hadn’t organized itself into the streamlined patterns of cause-and-effect that we…
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Utopianism and its detractors
This year, the American Historical Association’s annual meeting included a THATCamp, which I was happy to attend. Andrew Hartman, a professor at Illinois State University, published an interesting response, which I wanted to take a moment to address. Hartman enjoyed himself but wondered if the scholars attending THATCamp evinced an unwarranted utopianism about the prospects…
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Why I went (back) to the AHA
Last week I attended the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in Chicago. Although I’ve always thought of myself as a historian, I hadn’t been to an AHA meeting since my first year of grad school in 2004. In part, I hadn’t been going because I’m affiliated with so many disciplines that it’s difficult to keep…
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Dissertation advice
Recently, a much-loved friend asked me for advice on dissertation-writing, not because I’m any paragon of efficiency, but because she knew I’d struggled myself. She wanted to know if I had any words of wisdom about getting through the process with a minimum of pain. My immediate impulse was to decline to answer, on the…
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Leaving Emory, joining UCLA
I’m equal parts delighted and heartbroken to say that I’ve accepted a new job. As of February 10, I’ll be the digital humanities program coordinator at the University of California, Los Angeles. January 13 is my last official day at Emory. The decision to accept the job was really difficult — I love being at…
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Research tools redux: What I use
I posted recently about tools for managing a research workflow, and one of the points I made is that no set of tools will be right for everyone. I’ve tried and failed to foist my favorite tools on enough people to know that this is true. Still, after I wrote the post, a few people asked…
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The subtle art of workshop-giving
Over the last couple of years, I’ve given a number of (somewhat) technical workshops for grad students and faculty here at Emory. I love doing it. It’s really gratifying to impart skills, and preparing for workshops gives me a chance to think through and develop my own knowledge in a systematic way. It’s not that…
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Reading Steve Jobs: labor, race, and growing up in the Bay Area
Not long ago I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Or I should say I listened to it, as an audiobook, on my iPhone. The experience was riveting, though not always pleasant. Like Steve Jobs, I grew up in the Bay Area. In fact, I was growing up in the Bay Area while Jobs…