Above all Eliot stressed that the creation of literature would require endless hard work over many years and quite probably a degree in the classics and/or modern European literatures.
via The Writer’s Job by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books.
I agree with the sentiment here and even thought is directed at “creative writing” non-fiction, scholarly writing should be creative and it takes quite a long time to get good at it and to create and polish a book.
If you are studying for a PhD, writing a dissertation or a book, or doing anything of worth that involves creativity then you need to stop what you are doing for the next two minutes and watch this film. It is Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life, talking about the secret of success in creative work. Glass’s reflections are depicted in kinetic type which is really neat looking but also adds a secondary interpretive dimension which is intriguing in its own way. In any case, just watch the video.
(via Brain Pickings)
Piggybacking off my previous post about social media and the scholar, David Carr, media critic at the NYT has some reflections on how to use Twitter without getting fired. No one wants to lose their job + scholars may want to use social media to help their careers = you should watch this.
David Carr has an interesting piece in the NYT concerning a CNN journalist who was suspended over a Twitter post which got me to thinking about the implications of this event for those in higher education. Academics are all over the board with respect to social media like Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs or websites. Some scholars don’t have an online presence at all while some (like me) have electronic footprints that zig zag all over the place. Furthermore, on an institutional level there is great diversity–some schools are ambivalent about social media while others practically make a Facebook account a condition for further employment because they see it as a recruiting tool.
Let me tell you a little about my experience with this stuff and then I’ll list a few ideas how I think social media can compliment scholarly activity.
I started this blog years ago upon the advice of the Chief Creative Officer of an ad agency I employed. I had just started my PhD and wanted a way to differentiate myself and get my name out there. It was a great idea and at the time I had no idea how it would help me. I’ve met tons of really great people and fantastic scholars through the blog and through these connections I’ve been asked to join publishing projects, editorial boards, received recommendation letters for various academic endeavors, and a university president even read my blog and offered me a job because it. I joined Facebook a few years later and then I just signed up for a Twitter account a few weeks ago. Facebook has built similar relationships as did my blog except I keep up with people much more regularly on it. These tools are not just silly little things that time wasters use–they are platforms that have vastly helped my professional career and have given me opportunities and relationships that I would never have had otherwise. Think of it as a professional meeting that instead of convening four days a year is always on 24/7 365 days a year (You don’t go to SBL and AOS for the papers do you? You go for the coffee breaks in between and during sessions and for the dinners and nights on the town after they are over.)
But, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. I’ve stepped into hot water on several occasions. Most of the time it has been inadvertent–I’ve posted a joke and because tone of voice doesn’t come across in text it has been taken the wrong way. Sometimes people do a cursory reading of a post and think I’m saying something I’m not. On a couple of occasions I have purposely caused a controversy. I think that one of the roles, maybe even the role, of a scholar is to tell the truth, at least as well as one understands it at any rate. And, sometimes power structures don’t like the truth. It comes with the territory, especially if you engage in biblical studies as I do. But, if you’re a scholar and no one is upset at you you probably aren’t doing your job.
In any case, some of these more unfortunate instances were caused, at least as I see it, from different expectations concerning what communication should look like in different mediums. Here is how I picture it:
An old essay but still interesting.
The migration of print media to the web and digital devices has stirred society to ponder many Big Questions: Is Google making us stupid? Has technology short-circuited our children’s attention spans? Are we frittering away our lives gaping at smartphone screens? All this while the most obvious question goes unanswered: what will Jews read on the Sabbath?
Even after he published Prufrock and The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot continued to work his day job at a bank. The new volume of his letters reveals his financial anxieties and his unexpected attitude towards work and writing.
From 1917 until 1925, T.S. Eliot worked in a bank. A simple, declarative sentence, a biographical fact.
via A Peaceful, But Very Interesting Pursuit – The Rumpus.net.
A Nobel Prize winning poet continuing his day job (until he landed an editorial job) even after acclaim. Interesting issues to think through for many who are pursuing or have completed PhDs in biblical and ANE fields as the job market gets increasingly tight…
Interesting essay on ancient jokes.
They are all the subjects of six 3,500-year-old riddles from ancient Babylon that researchers have deciphered but in many cases are still struggling to understand.
The riddles were written in Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language used by the Babylonians and Assyrians and recorded in logograms. They were found in present day Iraq years ago but had been forgotten until a German and Israeli professor, two of just a few-score people in the world today who understand the ancient tongue, translated them.
via The Media Line.
One of the most foundational elements of an intelligent and thoughtful engagement with biblical texts is calibrating one’s expectations. If one truly desires to try to begin the task of understanding the messages of the biblical authors then he or she must ask the appropriate questions from the text and expect it’s ancient authors to address particular issues in ways that make sense within their circumstances. Furthermore, a thoughtful student of the Bible should have a firm enough grasp of the history of thought to understand where modern expectations, assumptions, and perspectives differ from ancient ones. If we don’t calibrate our expectations then our observations concerning the Bible are likely to be little more than assertions of our own belief structures and opinions and in many areas we will misunderstand the unique messages of biblical texts.
Calibrating expectations is an ongoing task for us all; no one ever does this perfectly and individuals from every ideological position do it badly or not at all. Yet, a recent blogger kerfuffle provides me with an opportunity to illustrate two ways in which we can calibrate our expectations of biblical texts in order to avoid gross misinterpretations and hopefully understand the Bible better.
Now to the kerfuffle: Kevin deYoung wrote a post in which he outlined “10 Reasons to Believe in a Historical Adam” which generated responses from T. Michael Law and Christopher M. Hays (Chris Tilling purred approvingly) and, taking a respite from Dr. Who and Star Trek postings, James McGrath. There are many elements to this discussion but let me reflect on two aspects in particular which relate most acutely to calibrating expectations. We could address several misconceptions in point number two of deYoung’s list but he reveals at least two ways in which he has failed to properly calibrate his expectations:
