Wow, in my perusal of Invisible Adjunct this evening, I found an essay by Kenneth Mostern, a former professor of African American literature at the University of Tennessee. He taught there when I was doing my M.A., but I unfortunately did not take a course from him. I have benefitted from hearing his story.
I'm Clancy Ratliff, an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where I am also the Assistant Director of First-Year Writing. I'm married with three children.
See my vita to find out more about where I've been and what I've done.
Email me: clancy.ratliff, gmail
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Clancy Ratliff.
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Comments
the purpose of electronic writing spaces
Interesting piece. One part really caught my attention:
"The scariest thing a young faculty member experiences is not, as is conventionally supposed, the "need to produce" and therefore her/his experience is not aided by the "mentorship" of an experienced scholar. Rather, the young scholar's fear stems from the fact that no one in the department is talking to each other about scholarship."
If this is, indeed, an accurate generalization across institutions, it would help to account for, and support an even increased need for, electronic writing spaces which allow academics in similar disciplines to discuss scholarship across institutions. So when academics share their research and ideas on a blog, it's not just a form of knowledge building, but may be satisfying a basic human need of the academic. Thus the popularity of discipline specific email lists. The question for bloggers would be how blogging might satisfy this need more than other writing spaces.
Charlie