This syllabus describes an interdisciplinary course for first-year students in the NC State University Honors program in Fall 2015. “Interpretive Machines” offers a historically ranging, critically intensive, and hands-on learning environment about the technologies by which humans transmit our cultural inheritance and ideas. The course also…[Read more]

This syllabus describes an interdisciplinary course for first-year students in the NC State University Honors program in Fall 2015. “Interpretive Machines” offers a historically ranging, critically intensive, and hands-on learning environment about the technologies by which humans transmit our cultural inheritance and ideas. The course also…[Read more]

This syllabus describes a first-year interdisciplinary honors course undertaken in fall 2014 at NC State University. It welcomes students into a hands-on environment for thinking about and practicing with new and old platforms for reading, interpretation, and understanding. It attempts to bridge book history and digital humanities into an…[Read more]

This syllabus describes a first-year interdisciplinary honors course undertaken in fall 2014 at NC State University. It welcomes students into a hands-on environment for thinking about and practicing with new and old platforms for reading, interpretation, and understanding. It attempts to bridge book history and digital humanities into an…[Read more]

Montesquieu’s ideas on China have been the subject of much study and controversy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that, as discussed in twenty-two books of the Esprit des lois, China serves to illustrate Montesquieu’s fundamental principles and to elucidate his method. References to the empire appear frequently in the concluding chapters…[Read more]

This course, designed for a graduate program in education which focuses on leadership, explores works of literature that have had a significant cultural impact and shaped ways in which societies view social issues from the perspective of how leadership is enacted within the texts. For students from disciplines outside of literature studies, this…[Read more]

In 2011, U.S. News & World Report indicated that online courses had been increasing for nine straight years in a row. Or, the online presence has been continuously growing since roughly the turn of the century. The Online Learning Consortium just published a report on online learning for 2015, from which we can the pervasiveness of the online…[Read more]

How do we offer feedback to essays? Over time, the response as narrative has become problematic. Class sizes have increased, more classes are being taught, fewer professors are teaching composition. Time has become even more scarce as duties outside the classroom multiply for full-time faculty. In addition, technology has changed the way by…[Read more]

contribution to the 2016 MLA Convention Panel sponsored by “Connected Academics”

I used to share with my classes that ebooks are outselling books, and like the music industry, the book market is now digital. While the record business has shifted in profound ways with the rise of digital technology, the book press is still in flux. Digital book sales over the past couple of years have been fluctuating around book sales. As a…[Read more]

“You taught me language, and my profit on ‘t Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!” (The Tempest, I.ii.362-4).

What does a home mean to you? Have you left it? How did you get there? Would you go back? Starting with the foundational travel narrative in Western literature, Homer’s The Odyssey…[Read more]

Where do we come from? Our families play an instrumental role in our development. Indeed, the idea of the individual, apart from the family, challenges notions of family as a continual process, as something permanent. How old is the idea that the individual can strike out on her own, separate from her family, and thus do as she pleases?…[Read more]

“Expository Writing” is crafted to help students learn to write and think critically. In an effort to hone our critical minds and strengthen our writing, we will focus on the learned skills of summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing. In addition to several short essays, you will also be writing a mul…[Read more]

This panel was designed to address the convention’s featured issues of the academic profession, publishing & editing, open access, and new technologies. Using a roundtable format, the panel discussed how open access publications are transforming the kind of research that is possible and necessitating new editorial practices. The session hosted an…[Read more]

Open access has great potential to transform the future of scholarly communication, but its success will require a focus on values — and particularly generosity — rather than on costs.