Author Archives: alex

Advice to starting profs

By alex | Published: 4/26/2021
Someone on Reddit was nervous about starting as a new professor at a new school and in a new city. Here is my idiosyncratic advice: In the first few months, you’ll probably get quite a few invites from people for a coffee/beer. Obviously, take them up on this. But once that academic tradition is done, […]
Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Kids’ Carnival

By alex | Published: 3/10/2021
I ‘ve been away from blogging long enough that I forgot we didn’t do comments any more. Otherwise, this would merely be a comment on the teaser to his new book Henry Jenkins recently posted. He is looking at the ways in which authority plays out in children’s literature, and how it reflects the values […]
Posted in General | Leave a comment

Pandemic: The Return

By alex | Published: 3/10/2021
We are coming up on one year of near complete isolation. While “conservative” has never been an adjective I would use for our family, in this instance we have been. We saw little reason to risk our health unnecessarily, and knew that removing ourselves as a node from the network also increased the survivability—in some […]
Posted in Policy & Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Pandemic Planning Document

By alex | Published: 5/21/2020
Planning for anything right now is folly. I’m not even sure what I am doing today, or tomorrow, let alone this summer. Fall seems endlessly far away, and 2021 too far to contemplate. But I am a planner. Everyone seems to be looking to peers to figure out what to do: How are you even […]
Posted in General | Leave a comment