Recently in Academic Category

One of the great privileges of my summer faculty fellowship has been the opportunity to work with creative and thoughtful educators and designers who were able to help me think more holistically about my identity on the web.

I have been blogging here on the Long Road since June 10, 2007, attempting to give voice to certain dimensions of my personal, political, academic and teaching life. Over time, however, it has become clear that my attempt to "blog the philosophical life" involves multiple dimensions that are somewhat separate even if fundamentally integrated. 

Perhaps this is simply the digital articulation of the deeper, existential question of personal identity.

In any case, the redesign of the website that we have rolled out in the course of the last few weeks grows out of an ongoing dialogue with all the great educational designers and IT managers at Education Technology Services, but in particular with two who deserve special mention and thanks here: Brad Kozlek and George Webster.

George has patiently and expertly worked with me to design the font, colors, look and feel of the site.  He was always willing to change things I found problematic and willing too, to change them back when I realized that the way we had it first was best.

The design itself is based on this image of an antique map of the arctic I found online as I was searching for an inspiration for the colors and feel of the site. The map captured the spirit of the central metaphor around which the long road is organized: the attempt to chart in words the course of a life.

The long road is now composed of three blogs feeding a main home page, which serves as a pathway into the larger site. George worked with me to design the icons that go with each dimension of the site.

 
the long road is the site on which you will find my attempt to put things personal, political, remarkable and mundane into words.

digital vita is the site that gives voice to my academic life, including information and resources related to the various presentations I make.

socratic politics in digital dialogue is the site related to my research and teaching regarding the nature and practice of Socratic politics. It hosts the Digital Dialogue.

One of the main purposes of redesigning the site was to host the Digital Dialogue, the podcast I developed during my faculty fellowship. The Digital Dialogue is designed to generate discussion around questions concerning but not limited to the nature of digital dialogue, its political possibilities, the excellences associated with it and the impact it might have on our pedagogical practices.

Brad added the Yahoo! player to the site so that people could easily listen to episodes of the Digital Dialogue right from their browser.  Everyone can also subscribe to the podcast through iTunesU by clicking this link which opens iTunes on your local computer.

I hope everyone enjoys the new look of the site and continues to return frequently. You are, as always, warmly invited to comment on anything that appears here should you be so moved.

Many thanks to George and Brad for their great work on the site.

Yesterday Alan Levine, aka cogdog, gave a presentation on 50+ Ways to Tell a Story using Web 2.0 technologies. The presentation was excellent as it introduced us to a variety of tools available online for telling stories. The power of Levine's presentation was the way he told and retold the same story about losing and then finding his dog, Dominoe, using the different tools.

I have just finished listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on the Lincoln Presidency, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  Although the book takes a largely uncritical view of Lincoln's political wisdom, it was compellingly told and insightful.  What struck me most was the political power of magnanimity. Goodwin does not make this point explicitly, but it seems to me that the central friendship of the book, that between Lincoln and his political rival turned close friend, William Henry Seward, was rooted in the core virtue of magnanimity which both men embodied.

I am beginning to notice something about my course blog for PHIL298H: Patriarchal Force and Political Power. As we discuss the material we have been reading for class and engage with one another online through the blog we are creating a communal document, a digital artifact of our work together this semester.  I am struck by this more this semester because of the structure I am using in which we all co-edit one blog rather than each editing a blog of our own.

For those of you who have noticed a lack of postings here recently, this is largely because I am doing a lot of blogging with my honors class over at the course blog for an honors course in Philosophy I am teaching on patriarchal politics. 

I woke, this much anticipated morning, to the news of the death of a colleague.  Professor Paul Lyons taught history, social work and holocaust studies for 29 years at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, where I began my academic career. He was a man dedicated to social justice and committed to teaching young people to think critically about the world and to orient their lives toward the question of justice.

Paul's response to the attacks on September 11, 2001 was powerful: he collaborated with his fellow Stockton professor David Emmons to teach a course on the event.  The power of this response lies in the thoughtful and expansive influence it has on future generations.  In the wake of oversimplified, dogmatic rhetoric, Paul responded with a depth of historical understanding and a passion to engage students directly about an event that changed the course of our lives.

So, this morning, as we our attention to the future with the inauguration of the first black president, I also pause to remember all those teachers, like Paul Lyons, committed to orienting young people toward justice and opening the possibility of this moment.

I am currently slugging through what I hope are the last few chapters of a book on Aristotle and it is not easy going. Although writing has always been something I love--crafting sentences, considering the nuances of words, playing with metaphors and images--it is also one of the most difficult things my job and career demand of me.

This week, though, as summer comes to an end and the pressure to make significant progress has increasingly taken a toll on my psychological well-being, I was released from my self-imposed obsession with the minutia of Aristotle scholarship by two moments, one involving Hannah, the other, Chloe.

Yesterday, I was particularly frustrated as I emerged from my basement office after a day of writing and torment. The effects of it must have written on my face, because when Hannah saw me, she said, "Daddy, why are you mad?" When I told her I wasn't mad, just thinking about my writing, she said, "Daddy, I missed you when you were at work. I love you; you're my best Daddy.  Do you want to sit with me and play?" It was a great gift, a reminder that forced things into perspective. 

Heraclitus put it best: "A lifetime is a child playing … the kingdom belongs to a child" (fr. 52).

The other moment was also very touching. I often bring Hannah and Chloe to the Penn State library when I need to pick up something. They love to run through the stacks of books and play on the ancient elevator with the gate in front of the door. We were in a corner of the basement where the books on Ancient Greek philosophy are and I noticed my book, The Ethics of Ontology, sitting on the shelf. (Shockingly, it was not checked out!)

I picked up the book and asked Chloe if she could read the name on it. She was able to identify some letters and ultimately came to the surprising conclusion that the name on it was that of her very own Dad. "Oh Daddy," she exclaimed, falling into me with a huge hug, "you wrote that book all by yourself?!? I am so proud of you! That's great! And how did it get in the library?" When I explained that they bought it from the publisher, she said, "They bought it!  I can't believe it. Your book is in the library."

Her pride and excitement were so affirming and genuine that I immediately felt the years of work that went into the writing of that book--and this one--come suddenly into poignant focus: this moment made it all worthwhile.

A Liberal Arts Education is committed to cultivating habits of thinking and acting capable of responding to the world in ways that open new possibilities for human community.  It is oriented in part by what may be called the reading life and the writing life.

This year witnessed the death of Richard Rorty, an important American philosopher and good friend to my own teacher, Richard Bernstein. I embed here a YouTube clip posted by my colleague at Penn State, Phillip McReynolds, who is working on a documentary entitled American Philosopher.

The book to which many of those who appear in this clip refer is:

Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.