Recently in Scholarly Presentation Category

SUNDANCE, UT - Today I participated on a panel for the honors program at the Utah Valley University, whose director, Michael Shaw, invited Marina McCoy and me to present papers for a panel dedicated to Women in Sophocles.

Michael and Marina joined me for Digital Dialogue 20 (available on December 1) to discuss the panel and the honors program at UVU.

Marina gave an excellent paper entitled Exile and Blindness in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus in which she argued that Theseus is the real hero of Oedipus at Colonus because he shows himself to be capable of genuine compassion and is open to the persuasive words of those around him.

My paper entitled, A Father's Touch, A Daughter's Voice: Antigone, Oedipus and Ismene at Colonus, traces three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus that mark the emergence of a politics other than that of patriarchal domination. 

Here is a brief overview of the itinerary of the paper:

This paper pursues a path marked by three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, each of which articulates something of the logic of what I call the politics of the between and the economy endemic to the community it opens. The first occurs when Oedipus reaches for his daughters at the end of Oedipus the King. It marks the institution of a community between Oedipus and his daughters no longer dominated by patriarchal sovereignty.

The second moment of touching occurs in Oedipus at Colonus when Ismene and Antigone embrace Oedipus after their abduction by Creon. In this scene, a constellation emerges that beautifully embodies the very structure of the politics of the between. Here, situated between Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus is bound to a community of reciprocal support born of a trauma that anticipates the resurgence of the politics of violence and retribution that will condition its ultimate demise.

The destitution of this community of compassion between them is marked, however, by a third moment of touching, one that mirrors the first, as Oedipus hands his daughters over to Theseus thus opening the possibility that Athens herself might once again serve as the site of a politics of the between.

For more information on the nature of the politics of the between and my critique of patriarchal politics, see my article: The Daughters of Metis: Patriarchal Dominion and the Politics of the Between, available here as a pdf file.

Two weeks ago, I was asked to present my model for Integrating Teaching and Research with Technology.  Although today I return to that material in my presentation to the University Information Technology Faculty Advisory Committee, three exciting new developments have occurred that must here be emphasized. 

These developments concern the manner in the community of learning we have cultivated on the Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue blog has expanded beyond the boundaries not only of the classroom, but also of the institution itself.

1. Marina McCoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College has encouraged the students in her course entitled Rhetoric: Truth, Beauty, Power, to comment on our blog. Since we welcomed the BC students to our digital community last week, the conversation on the blog has exploded.
   
2. In order to encourage dialogue across universities, I worked with TLT here at Penn State to add Professor McCoy as a co-editor of the blog so she could write posts of her own.  She published a post on the question of the meaning of soul leading which generated a lot of commentary about contemporary political speech.
3. The Digital Dialogue, the podcast I have been producing dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age, now has a Facebook page and Professor McCoy has again invited her students to comment specifically on the latest episode, number 15 with Holly Moore, a former Philosophy undergraduate student at Penn State who received her PhD from DePaul University in mid-October.  My digital dialogue with her focuses on her dissertation. Professor McCoy has encouraged her students to subscribe to the Digital Dialogue via iTunesU [link opens iTunesU] and respond to episode 15 by commenting on the blog.

• This has generated a very interesting discussion around Dr. Holly Moore's work.  Although my favorite comment is the one that compares my "radio voice" to that of Peter Sagal, the most exciting thing about this is that we have on our course blog a class from BC engaged with a visiting Professor and recent PhD currently at Colby College engaged in dialogue about philosophical issues of mutual concern.
  

ARLINGTON, VA - The search for a job in any field in the midst of an economic downturn can be harrowing; for those seeking jobs in a field like Philosophy where even in good economic times, the competition for jobs is stiff, the job search can be especially demoralizing.

Here I have gathered some resources for the graduate student who attended the Graduate Student Colloquium at the 2009 Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy (SPEP) where I spoke on a panel entitled "The Job Market in Today's Economy."

The Situation
There is no question that the job market in Philosophy and the Humanities is tightening.  Inside Higher Education emphasized in their article, The Tightening Humanities Job Market, published at the end of last year the particular difficulties in the discipline of Philosophy. Last spring, the New York Times was reporting that Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times, and it looks like we are seeing that play out in the list of job offerings in Philosophy this year.

On a more positive note, a number of institutions with which I am familiar, particularly the large state universities, have received substantive funds from the Stimulus Bill passed earlier this year.  This will allow them to proceed with some hiring this year. However, we might need to anticipate another downturn in job opportunities in two years when the stimulus money dries up.

Of the 140 jobs listed in the October 2009 Jobs for Philosophers, only 4 explicitly mention an interest in continental philosophy.  So SPEP students will have to position themselves to compete for jobs in areas that are not explicitly announced as "continental." This will not be difficult as the large majority of students at SPEP have a broad range of interests and expertise.

Good Preparation
There are a number of concrete ways to improve your chances on the job market:

• Write a marketable dissertation.  Decisions about what to write your dissertation on are complicated.  Primary consideration needs to be given to your passion for and interest in the topic.  However, such decisions ought not be made in a vacuum and one important consideration will be the degree to which you will increase your opportunities for placement by writing such a dissertation.
  
  Specifically, it is advisable to write a dissertation that goes into some depth with regard to a specific thinker or theme that cuts across a broader spectrum of traditions and is able to speak to a wide range of approaches.  Even if you don't orient your own work by those other approaches, be aware of them and able to articulate and position your work in relation to them.
  
  
• Publish something in a well-respected journal.
• Give a Paper at a Conference where they use blind review.
• Develop Pedagogical Excellence: work on your teaching, teach as much as you can, write your one page teaching philosophy, develop a teaching portfolio.
  
• Ask yourself: what distinguishes me from other candidates, what do I bring to a job that others don't?

Cultivate an online, digital identity
As we experience the transformative possibilities new social media opens for education, it is important for students to begin to think intentionally about how this media can be use to further the pedagogical and intellectual ideals of philosophy. With regard to placement, the question as to one's online, digital identity becomes critical.

• Use Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc., to articulate a serious, academic and engaged voice of your own.
• Leigh Johnson: readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore
  
• Joshua Miller: anotherpanacea
  
• Participate in social media related to Academia generally and Philosophy in particular:
• Academia.edu is a site where faculty, graduate students and institutions can establish profiles to highlight their work.
  
• Philosophywiki.org is a site where you can set up a profile about yourself and your work.
  

Opening Other Options
Post-doctoral Fellowships
Below is a list of a few post-doctoral fellowships that might be relevant to graduate student and early PhD members of SPEP working in contemporary continental philosophy and related areas in the history of philosophy.

• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for students doing work on German thinkers and topics related to German Philosophy who intend to spend time at a German University.
  
• Henry Frank Guggenheim Research Grants are given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence, aggression, and dominance in the modern world.
• Fulbright, Council for International Exchange of Scholars offers a wide range to funding opportunities for US Scholars, both post-docs and graduate students.
• The Spencer Foundation has fellowships for doctoral students and post-docs working in research areas related to education.
• The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has a dissertation research awards available for students working in Ethics and Religion (Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship) and Women & Gender (Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies).
• The American Association of University Women has dissertation and post-doctoral fellowships for women US citizen from accredited institutions.
• The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has post-doc fellowships for work related to German philosophy.
  

Fixed term positions at home university or local colleges
Despite the economic situation, teaching still goes on, students are applying to college and colleges are offering classes. Many colleges and universities are offering fixed term positions for their students or for students from other institutions.

• Ask department chairs, directors of graduate studies if such opportunities exist at your institution.
• Talk to faculty such possibilities at the institutions of their colleagues.
  

Some Resources

• SPEP has introduced a jobs announcement section of the website, but this seems only to be as good as the institutions who submit. It does provide insight into which institutions are interested in the work being done by members of the society.
  
• American Philosophical Association publishes, of course, the Jobs for Philosophers; they also have a Job Seekers Database, which seems to be under construction at the moment, but which students should use when it is up.
  
• The Philosophy Jobs Wiki lists jobs offered by many institutions and is updated by the users.  It is only as accurate, of course, as the users are engaged and reliable. My experience, though, is that it is often very accurate, although it is important to recognize that it is not to be taken as the official mode of communication from colleges and universities.
• Penn State Philosophy Department Best Placement Practices page was developed to help our students think about how to position themselves to success on the market.  The suggestions are available for all interested students.
• Shortened URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/spepjobpanel09

Contact Information

Christopher Long
longc@psu.edu

This presentation is based on two insights that have grown over time but came into sharp focus over the summer of 2009 during which time I was a faculty fellow at Teaching and Learning with Technology here at Penn State:

1. Education is being radically transformed by technological advances that allow communities of learning to grow in ways that cut across time, space and philosophical perspective.
2. In higher education, these technological innovations can be leveraged to integrate scholarly research and teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in ways that extend the reach of research and deepen the scholarly roots of teaching.

The Project
The figure of Socrates who appears in the Platonic dialogues is shown to practice a very peculiar form of politics: he enters into dialogue with each individual he encounters, attempting to turn their attention to the question of the Good, the Beautiful and the Just. My current research focuses on the various dimensions of the Socratic practice of politics and specifically on the question of how to cultivate the excellences of dialogue that open possibilities of human relation that are socially and politically transformative.

The Structure of Integration
I use my blog, the Long Road, which has been redesigned in as three blogs in one, to integrate my research and teaching.

The blog platform offers me a dynamic digital environment in which to develop a community of learning that roots my teaching in my scholarship and infuses my scholarship with new insights and connections that emerge out of the living dialogue of the community.

• The Pedagogy of Blogging
• Blogging Rubric (pdf)
  

The Community of Learning

• The Digital Dialogue - a podcast dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age. (Subscribe via iTunes)
  
• Invites scholars from around the country working on issues related to ancient Greek philosophy, social and political theory, the question of deliberative democracy ...
  
• Generates interest in the work, cross-pollination of ideas, and attempts to model the excellences of dialogue it seeks to theorize.
  
• Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue - a blog that hosts the Digital Dialogue, my undergraduate course (PHIL200: Ancient Greek Philosophy) and my graduate seminar (PHIL553: Ancient Greek Philosophy).
• Undergraduate Teaching: blog rubric (pdf), weekly round-up podcasts, the emergence of a community of learners engaged with the material:
  
• Jordan's Why Are You Here? post generates self-reflection
• Participants from outside the class: Holly Moore, Asher; UPDATE Nov. 2, 2009: Marina McCoy, Associate Professor from Boston College, has encouraged her students to join our digital community.  See my presentation to the IT Faculty Advisory Committee where I discuss how we are blurring the boundaries between institutions.
  
• Dynamic and substantive commenting on posts about: Religion, typical post with comments;
  
• Integration of video: Conan, Big.
• Graduate Teaching: more sophisticated level of discussion, community of scholarship via Zotero - allows for collaborative collection of references: Socratic Politics Group.
  
• Integrating the blog into the classroom: using Evernote to identify posts and comments on which to focus in-class discussion.
  
• The Search for Justice video - an attempt to provoke responses from a wider audience and to encourage those who watch it to consider: What is Justice?
  

ALTOONA, PA - Today I gave the keynote address at the West Virginia Philosophical Society being held at Penn State Altoona.

This presentation is drawn from the penultimate chapter of the manuscript for my book, The Saying of Things: The Nature of Truth and the Truth of Nature in Aristotle. In the book, I draw on Aristotle's naturalistic phenomenology in order to articulate truth in terms of the ability to respond to the ways things express themselves. This understanding of truth as co-response-ability is rooted in Aristotle's recognition that human-being is natural being and its ways of saying naturally co-operate with the logoi of things, the manner in which things express themselves. This allows me to argue that truth is a question of doing justice to the saying of things.

The chapter from which this presentation is taken is designed to suggest the degree to which truth as justice must not only be rooted in concrete encounters with individual things, but that it also must attempt to articulate things within the larger context of the whole to which they and we belong. This chapter, then, attempts to account for the peculiar way in which human-being is bound up with and related to the manner in which the whole expresses itself as beautiful and good.

"... we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization."

-- Andrea Lunsford, in Wired article "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy"

Preface
The web log, or blog, opens up new possibilities for teaching and learning by cultivating social communities of education. The power of blogging as a pedagogical practice is rooted in the recognition that meaning is made and knowledge created in social interaction. As Dewey put it in Democracy and Education:

STATE COLLEGE, PA - As one of the Teaching and Learning with Technology summer faculty fellows, I am on a panel at the 2009 Learning Design Summer Camp that focuses on new forms of digital scholarship.

This post is designed to facilitate a round table discussion of using blogs for assessment at the 2009 Penn State Assessment Conference: Putting Your Assessment Plan to Work. Over the past four years, I have used blogs regularly in my classes to facilitate philosophical discussion and assessment philosophical writing. I have used two implementations models:

1. Multiple Blogs - student owned and operated blogs with a course blog that aggregates material from the student blogs.
2. Common Course Blog - one blog with students either posting through comments or set up as editors.

There are positive and negative dimensions of each model and the assessment techniques differ in each case.

Multiple Blogs
Pros

• Student Ownership
• Diversity of Perspectives
• Student Work easy to Identify & Evaluate

Cons

• Difficult to Establish Community of Discussion
• Lack of Cross Fertilization of Ideas
• Aggregated Community
  

Assessment for Multiple Blog Model
Individual Assignments/Individual rubrics; see:

• Antigone and Current Events; example: Stephanie Marek's post on Gay Marriage
• Reading a Picture; example: Amanda Wise relates a picture of leaves to the Antigone

Ongoing Assignment, single rubric; see:

• Weekly blog posts (PHIL204 Syllabus); examples: Samantha Miller, Marianna Suslin and David Klatt.
  

Common Course Blog
Pros

• More Organic Community
• Centrally Managed
• Facilitates Cross-fertilization of Ideas through Posts and Comments
• Unified Discussion
• Cultivates Social Learning

Cons

• Work of Individual Student is More Difficult to Access and Evaluate
• Minimizes Idiosyncratic perspectives, creative outlets
• No Individual Student Ownership
  

Assessment for Common Course Model
Ongoing Assignment with a single, comprehensive scoring rubric:

• Blogging Scoring Rubric.pdf
  

PHILADELPHIA, PA - Today I presented a paper entitled The Metaphysics of Truth at the annual meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America at the American Philosophical Association's 2008 Eastern Division meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

The paper was part of a panel with Vincent Colapietro, my colleague at the Pennsylvania State University, and Brian Henning from Gonzaga University.  My paper focused on the many ways truth is said in Aristotle, arguing that the two fundamental ways in which Aristotle speaks of truth--as noetic touching and as declarative saying--must be thought together as part of an organic and unified understanding of truth. 

The panel as a whole was very well received and the discussion was lively and insightful.  I am grateful to the MSA for inviting me to be part of this panel.

NEW YORK CITY - Today I returned to the New School to present what will be the first chapter of my forthcoming book, The Saying of Things: The Truth of Nature and the Nature of Truth in Aristotle.  It was wonderful to return home to the New School to present my latest work and to engage in the tradition of rigorous and lively dialogue that makes the New School such a rich site of intellectual development. The questions were welcomed and pressed me to think through more rigorously my understanding of "doing justice to things" and "ontological response-ability."

I was happy to know that although the building has changed, the spirit of the New School for Social Research endures.