Perhaps those of us interested in American Art and new media should try to catch the webcast of the SAAM’s 2006 symposium over the next couple of days. Too bad we need to use Windows Media Player to view it.
Opportunities for qualified and energetic folks interested in history and new media: check out the recent openings.
Being a student of U.S. Catholicism, and someone who is interested new media, I was intrigued to see the other day that Sean Cardinal O’Malley of Boston is blogging his current trip to Rome. Of course, most U.S. Catholics have no idea what happens inside the secretive walls of the Vatican — and in some senses, we don’t really want to know (if you do, you should read Inside the Vatican by Tom Reese, S.J., the former editor of America).
The design on this blog certainly isn’t the best, but it is a shining example of the burgeoning of Roman Catholic media usage. This engagement with media has long history in the US — from widespread usage of radio by the local chapters of the National Councils of Catholic Men and Women, and fraternal organizations in the 1920s, Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, first on the radio and then on television from the 1920s through the end of the 1960s, and right up to our current Catholic media with radio, and the distinctly conservative Eternal Word Television Network. In fact, the new Archbishop of Washington DC, Donald Wuerl, had a long-running Sunday morning television show during his 18 years as bishop of Pittsburgh.
Clearly we’re bound to see a greater web presence from the U.S. Catholic clergy and hierarchy if Cardinal Sean feels this venture is a successful effort at outreach to his demoralized archdiocese.
So, I’ve switched over to wordpress…. but because most days I only half know what I’m doing, I installed the stuff in a new directory. So, the address of this blog is changing. Come visit the shiny new site http://chnm.gmu.edu/staff/sharon/bracket/, and update your RSS feeds.
I’m teaching a course this semester in the American Studies program at Georgetown University, generally known as CIV III. [I'm using the beta version of Jeremy Boggs and Josh Greenberg's courseware plug-in for Wordpress to run the class, and I really like the set-up. Hopefully, soon the plug-in will be available to the world.]
This is an exciting chance for me, because this was the actual course that really pushed me into academia. I fell in love with the time period — 1880-1945 –, and the wonderful flux of racial formation, immigration, citizenship, gender definition, and scientific and religious questions that mark this liminal period. As a student, I was silent for the entire semester when I took this class, and that was the last thing that I wanted from my own students.
There is all kinds of smart in the room this semester, and I really want these folks to actively engage with the material and one another. Hence, I’m doing a new kind of blogging assignment this semester. In the last few courses I’ve taught, I’ve asked students to keep reading journals, and last semester my students did this by blogging their reflections. Blogging each week is a lot of work for an undergraduate, and I found that the students spent so much time concentrating on drafting their own reflections that they didn’t actually interact with their peers or comment on one another’s posts.
So, this semester I divided the class up into groups. Each group is responsible for posting the initial reflections for two weeks during the semester. The students in the group each compose a 500-750 word reflection on the materials for that week. Then, the rest of the students in the class must respond to one of those four or five initial postings. This system seems to take some of the pressure off the students–each person is on the spot only twice a semester. And, if yesterday’s discussion is any evidence, it seems to promote a vibrant in-class discussion. Students come primed with an opinion about the readings and they have already interacted with one another in text form.
Having just spent the weekend in lovely Chicago, I had the opportunity to take one of the wonderful walking tours of the city done by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. We did the Historical Skyscrapers Tour and were really pleased. I highly recommend making some time for the CAF on your next visit to the city.
Of course, Chicago is a great city for historical architecture. Some other places are not. This point was made nicely today by Zach Schrag in his CHNM Brown Bag Lunch presentation of Washington DC History Matters, when he explained that Washington DC and Manhattan both have long traditions of “creative destruction” by which the cities have been knocked down and rebuilt many, many times.
