A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
For this week, I want to take a step back (we'll be back to our series on Rings of Power next week!) and talk about the craft of history: we've talked about "How Your History Gets Made" from the perspective of the different people who do it - research historians, public historians, educators and so … Continue reading Collections: What Do Historians Do?
Hey folks! Happy Valentine's Day. Fireside this week and then hopefully next week we'll start into our look at the Siege of Eregion in Season 2 of Rings of Power and also the larger Tolkien legendarium. I confess, watching the show, my suspension of disbelief fell much faster than the city did. But in the … Continue reading Fireside Friday, February 14, 2025 (On Grant Funding)
Hey folks, Fireside this week! For the musing this week, I want to talk about, at least for a humanities field, what 'research support' from a university means and why it is valuable, but before we get to that, I just want to make a note going forward. In particular, there have been a few … Continue reading Fireside Friday, November 15, 2024
Fireside this week! I know we're all anxious to get to the last part of our look at the Roman Republic - a discussion of Roman courts and the legal system - but academic job season is upon us and I needed to take a week to focus on getting some of those applications out. … Continue reading Fireside Friday, September 29, 2023 (On Academic Hiring)
Hey all, Fireside this week, as I look to take a bit of time to focus on getting some writing done and some syllabi written before the semester begins in earnest later this week. Also before we dive in I want to note that it appears that Patreon has been having some trouble processing some … Continue reading Fireside Friday, August 4, 2023
This week we're going to take a detour into understanding the structure of academia, in particular the different kinds of 'professors' and their academic ranks in the American system, with a particular focus on 'non-tenure track' faculty (which is to say, as we'll see, 'most teaching faculty.') This is intended as the first in a … Continue reading Collections: Academic Ranks Explained Or What On Earth Is an Adjunct?
So I stirred up a bit of conversation on Twitter last week when I noted that I had already been handed ChatGPT produced assignments. For those who are unaware, ChatGPT is an 'AI' chatbot that given a prompt can produce texts; it is one of most sophisticated bots of this sort yet devised, trained on … Continue reading Collections: On ChatGPT
Fireside this week, the first fireside of the new year! There might be a few more of these than usual over the next few months as I am continuing to work on my book project, but have to balance that with unexpectedly teaching a course on US Naval History, which is of course quite a … Continue reading Fireside Friday, February 10, 2023 (On Academic Freedom)
A bit of an editor's note before this post, since this is going to involve some 'inside baseball' for Classics and some necessary background (also, this is not going to be a 'family friendly' post due to the subject matter; reader discretion is advised). The following essay is one I wrote very early in July … Continue reading Miscellanea: What’s the Problem With Antigone?
Happy Holidays to everyone, however you observe them! I normally take this week off every year but since we had the whole of last month off and I had some things I wanted to expound on, I thought I would do a Fireside instead. Percy getting into the holiday spirit. In particular, I want to … Continue reading Fireside Friday, December 23, 2022 (W(h)ither History)