For the most part, this week’s readings resonated pretty deeply with me. In particular, the articles about Twitter touched most directly on my desires and fears as an Academic-in-Training and Millennial Medievalist. As far as Twitter is concerned, I used to have two separate accounts—one personal and one more academic—when I was transitioning into grad school, but I ultimately merged them into one.
Last year, when I taught a writing course around the theme of race and criminal justice, I had my students create their own accounts so that they would have more readily available sources from news sites, journalists, politicians, etc., all of which is really important when you need to keep updated on current events. Also, I thought it was a really good way for students to borrow ideas and brainstorm with each other, since Canvas discussions and email can be really prohibitive, clunky, and uncomfortable.
A professor I knew at UT-Austin used Twitter up on a projector while she was lecturing so that she could answer students’ questions in real time from her feed. I think this is really engaging way to keep students interested in lecture, although I can see the potential drawbacks and distractions it may present. Unlike this professor, I really used Twitter as a resource for outside the classroom.
As Gulliver mentioned in her article, I think that Twitter is an amazing resource to meet other academics or graduate students whom you would not otherwise be able to meet as easily. For instance, I have connected with many professors, researchers, and students in the UK and in Canada because of Twitter. Like she also said, it is okay to show the Twittersphere that you have a life outside of academia. This is a really attractive idea for me. So often, and particularly with graduate students, we dehumanize academics and equate their work with their personality, and it really comforting to see the human side of scholars.
I do, however, feel differently about the creation and utilization of a website, but only because it seems less widely available and slightly more prohibitive than Twitter. For the purposes of this class, I feel confident that I will be able to establish a decent website that will showcase not only this blogpost, but hopefully my CV and other work I have created or participated. My advisor has a website where talks about her work, the books she has published, how to contact her, and even the work of her students.
I am not sure that my website, which would honestly showcase very little since I have no published work, would have nearly the same clout. It is from this that I draw my hesitation. What is attractive to me about a website, and particularly for this class, is the presence of a blog. Long says, “The real value of academic blogging is the intentional, conscientious public articulation of your ideas. Whether they are read and by whom is of secondary importance.” It is not the reception of my website that matters, but rather the fact that I am putting forth an effort to cultivate my ideas, write them down, and publish them in the public (for now) domain.
Long also noted that one of the reasons academics, whether gainfully employed at a university or independently, should create a blog or website because it is good marketing. Normally, a statement like this would have me reeling because we so often think, “why do I need to market myself to the world? I’m an academic!” Well, if being a graduate student has taught me anything, preparation and marketing are key to finding a job in this market. A good scholar, just like a company, should be able to market themselves in order to appeal to a wide audience. After all, don’t we want people appreciate the often debilitating work we put into our essays, books, talks, and teaching?
Tryon speaks to this when he says that “blogs do allow both immediate and sustained forms of public engagement that might not otherwise have been available, democratizing access to a wider public, even if that public is increasingly fragmented, focusing on niche interests.” Of course, since books we publish with academic presses are usually fairly expensive, it is comforting to know that we have a means to communicate our ideas with a broader readership. If nothing else, a blog is a place where we can advertise our printed books (or other texts) so that people will go out and buy them.
I may be naive, but I think that blogs and Twitter when used appropriately, are a really attractive way to be involved with public scholarship and to get the public into scholarship.
