Thanks Lawrence...this is fascinating. I've been struck by some related
dynamics wrt the weblog (GlobalHigherEd
http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/) I am running. Apart from the
sheer numbers outcome, open access helps (not completely, of course)
break down disciplinary, geographic, academic/non-academic, and
resource access boundaries. I've been engaged in a series of
discussions this week, for example, with a bizarre hybrid of
stakeholders related to the globalization of higher education and
research. The only way this would ever have been facilitated is via an
open access outlet.
We need our "traditional" outlets like IR subscription-only journals,
absolutely. Yet Geography seems to be relatively complacent when it
comes to creating a range of other outlets with respect to unsettling
research, publication and teaching practices. See this story (pasted
in below) in today's Chronicle for Higher Education, for
example:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3704/whitman-takes-manhattan
How far are we going, as a discipline, in inter-institutional
collaborative teaching like this, or via the creation of joint and
double degrees with partner institutions in other countries? I might
be wrong, but we seem to be somewhat conservative. Is this a correct
perception? If so, is this wise (as some would argue), or not? If this
is not wise, what else (besides ACME and some weblogs) could we do to
more systematically do to redress the situation?
Best wishes,
Kris
>>>>
April 8, 2009
Whitman Takes Manhattan
I too lived, (I was of old Brooklyn,)
I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters
around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon
me.
Those lines, from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” the version that appeared
in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, are a good reminder that Walt
Whitman was a Brooklyn boy as well as a citizen of the world. Next
fall, some modern New Yorkers — students at City Tech, CUNY’s New York
City College of Technology — will explore the Fulton Ferry Landing that
Whitman described in the poem and record their investigations on a Web
site. Meanwhile, thanks to open-source software, students at three
other institutions — New York University, Rutgers University at Camden,
and the University of Mary Washington, in Virginia — will be recording
their own literary and geographical explorations of Whitman’s work on
that same Web site.
The project, “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and
Work of Walt Whitman,” is the brainchild of a group of professors at
all four schools led by Matthew K. Gold, an assistant professor of
English at City Tech. It received a start-up grant of $25,000 from the
National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities.
James Groom, an instructional-technology specialist at the University
of Mary Washington, is the site’s architect.
The technological backbone of the project, according to Mr. Gold, is
the WordPress multi-user blogging engine. It will draw on CommentPress,
an “open-source theme” designed by the Institute for the Future of the
Book for use with WordPress, and BuddyPress, which makes WordPress into
a platform for social networking. The site will incorporate wiki tools
and such Web 2.0 staples as Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter.
“The basic idea is to bring all four of these classes together in this
one space,” Mr. Gold said in an interview. Each class will have its own
turf on the Web site, and each will concentrate on a different era of
the poet’s life. Students at NYU and City Tech will focus on Whitman in
mid-19th-century New York, those at Mary Washington will examine his
Civil War-era experience, and the Rutgers contingent will turn its
attention to his sage-of-Camden period. Each group will work with and
annotate the relevant edition or editions of Leaves of Grass. Each will
have access to the others’ work. So will the general public — at least
that’s the plan.
“We really don’t know what these interactions will be like,” Mr. Gold
said. “It’s one of the risks of the project but also one of the
exciting things about it. What can NYU students learn from City Tech
students and vice versa? Even as education is becoming more open, we
are still, many of us, in the silos of our universities. Breaking
through those walls is one of the things that’s innovative about this
project.”
Mr. Gold believes that Whitman would appreciate the openness of the
endeavor. The poet was nothing if not open source:
It avails not, neither time or place — instance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
I project myself — also I return — I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river, and the bright
flow, I was refreshed …
—Jennifer Howard
<><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Kris Olds
Professor
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Madison
550 N. Park Street, Science Hall
Madison, WI 53706
USA
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 1-608-262-5685
Skype: oldskris
GlobalHigherEd blog: http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/
WUN Faculty Coordinator: http://www.intlstudies.wisc.edu/wun/
Co-editor, Geography Compass:
http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/geography/
Managing Editor, New Perspectives in SE Asian Studies:
http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/cseas.htm
