Journalist – Historian – Speaker
The great Anne Helen Peterson, who made the leap from academia to journalism, has a great piece on bridging that divide in her weekly newsletter. On talking to journalists My advice to the group of academics, then, was two-fold. First: recognize that both sides need to be more flexible. Understand that journalists have to have …
Today at the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto I will be giving a talk on Public Humanities in the Age of Trump. It’s been an intense period lately around right-wing attacks on academic freedom, not the least because I’ve encountered the worst sets of attacks of my career. They were exhausting, if …
Historians are receiving a weird email asking for their views on objectivity. Is this a right-wing trawl or a desperate student? I don’t know, but as I said last November: It has never been more important for academics to speak, to write, to engage, and to push. I actually don’t think it was less important a …
Good article at CNN Opinion urging historians to go public. This is great news for the discipline of history, for history teachers, for history professors, and for public historians who interpret the past for visitors at museums, historic sites and other such venues. But let’s not celebrate yet. We have work to do. Historians need …
Ben Carson is not going to be Secretary of Education. This is good. I’ve been guessing Michelle Rhee or someone similar, which is not good. Honestly, there’s no one that Trump would consider for any major cabinet position who I suspect I would endorse – that’s why I didn’t vote for him. But as Carson’s …
I write a lot about academia and public writing, fueled by my accidental stumble into a very public life (it’s all about the 13th century! The 13th Century is a hot media property!). But then once you’ve got some op-eds, some practice at a public voice, then what? It turns out that writing a book, …
I’m giving a talk at Western Michigan University today – With/Out Discipline – Public Engagement and the PhD. In this talk, David explains how public engagement works in the modern media age, draws connections between his scholarship as a medievalist and his work as an activist/journalist, and argues that we need to find ways to …
I am not a fan of the label: Public Intellectual. I think it’s used to valorize certain kinds of public activity – oped writing, essays in fancy literary magazines, prestige stuff – and not others. For me, activism, community arts (music, theater, fine arts, etc.), working with local farmers, volunteering, and more, are at least …
First, disclaimers: No academic who doesn’t study social media should have to spend one second of time on social media. No academic using social media for fun and personal contacts should have to promote their work in any way on social media. Institutions that push academics to go public, moreover, as Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote …
Laura Michele Diener is an associate professor of history at Marshall. She works on medieval textile history, and I first met her when she gave a terrific presentation on using textile creation in the classroom. Recently, though, I’ve become aware of her public writing on contemporary issues. One of my theories about academics turning to …