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OLD SCHOLAR TRIES TO LEARN NEW TRICKS

11/1/2016

3 Comments

 

​ 
A few days ago Michael Lurie sent me a link to an article demonstrating how rarely published scholarship  gets read. Here is the link:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-professors-are-writing-crap-nobody-reads

At first I dismissed the article as old hat.  My hunch is that if scholars write about issues that genuinely concerned then, people will read what they have to say.  But, if I could figure out how to get scholars to write about what they really care about, I would have done it years ago. All I can do now is try to figure out how to write that way myself. If I succeed, the headline will be OLD SCHOLAR LEARNS NEW TRICK!
 
But the issue is more complex than that.  This morning I picked up the New York Times and read David Brooks’ op ed piece  on Martin Buber:   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/opinion/read-buber-not-the-polls.html?_r=0 .  His essay  made md wonder if the I-Thou relationship can apply to the past as well as to personal relationships in our lives.  I recognize that scholarship often has to be an I-It relationship to the past? But must it always be  that?  Are there forms of engagement that, whether we recognize it or not, involve an I-Thou relationship to texts, works of art or cultural phenomena? We see that now and then, I think, in works where a scholars’ love of his or her subject matter shines through.  We crave, I-Thou relationships, wherever we can find them, and, I  suspect, will read whatever work emerges from such a tie.
 

3 Comments
Michael Lurie
11/1/2016 01:50:16 pm

This is very depressing indeed. But the main problem seems to me that there is too much stuff that simply didn't have to be written ain the first place and is written only for promotion, tenure etc. There is an enormous pressure to write and publish more than what each one of us has to say. Second, even articles on things that matter are often dull and written in such a way that no one wants to read them, unless they have to.

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Neville Morley link
11/2/2016 06:36:58 am

Is it just me, or is there in fact no proper evidence cited to support these dramatic claims about numbers of readers and citations, just a link to an equally evidence-free article? Conflates and confuses scholarly and policy impact, too. I'm sympathetic to the ideas (which is one reason I spend time blogging), but it's a pretty thin basis on which to base prophecies of doom...

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local women photos link
1/7/2017 11:44:31 pm

Others adopt a guard-down posture that is openhearted and open-minded. They regard others as unique persons and not objects. They have histories in which trust and vulnerability are rewarded.

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