This post is based on a Twitter thread I started back in 2021 and have expanded since. Its origins are in a sense platform-specific. Twitter discourse is awash in accusations and counteraccusations of informal logical fallacy; pretty much any criticism of anyone will meet with charges of ad hominem, any defence or elaboration of a … Continue reading Informal Historical Fallacies
Faculty[,] Don’t Run It Like a Business
The subtext of nearly every practical discussion about hiring, promotion, or retention in academia -- on the faculty side, that is -- is that everyone is replaceable. One might say this is the subtext of any discussion where there is a labour market to speak of, but in academia it is sharpened by the massive … Continue reading Faculty[,] Don’t Run It Like a Business
Don’t Think of an Elephant
I'm sticking with Twitter for as long as I can for the simple reason that I have a much larger and more varied following there than I can imagine building anywhere else. It's possible that the place will implode or vanish, but what feels more likely is that it will simply fade from significance as … Continue reading Don’t Think of an Elephant
That Noble Scream
James Sweet is worried about the state of historiography. Beginning in August with an ex cathedra editorial in American historians' trade magazine, Perspectives, and continuing now in an interview with David Frum in centrist pundits' trade magazine, The Atlantic, the president of the American Historical Association names "presentism" as a clear and, er, present danger … Continue reading That Noble Scream
Knowing when to quit
When I was still working on my dissertation, but near enough the end of it to begin looking for jobs, the question loomed: how long to keep at it? Asking this of some senior faculty members over a post-seminar dinner, I received the canonical answer: three years. "If you're on the market for three years … Continue reading Knowing when to quit
The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world
An artist’s rendition of a future space colony. (Shutterstock) Ted McCormick, Concordia University It was a time of political uncertainty, cultural conflict and social change. Private ventures exploited technological advances and natural resources, generating unprecedented fortunes while wreaking havoc on local communities and environments. The working poor crowded cities, spurring property-holders to develop increased surveillance … Continue reading The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world
And now for something completely different
Now that the second book is safely out of my hands, I've been working for the last little while on some new things: perpetual motion machines (see this earlier post for a very preliminary version), Spanish ghosts in English-conquered Jamaica, scientific projectors in Restoration England, and so on. One of these, as previous posts might … Continue reading And now for something completely different
The Best Compliment I’ve Received on My Teaching
It was not the evaluation that said I was a snappy dresser. It was the time fifteen years ago when a student in an introduction to modern history who had identified himself as conservative said that, thanks to our class's discussions of The Communist Manifesto, he wanted to read more Marx. Today, when the notion … Continue reading The Best Compliment I’ve Received on My Teaching
Enlightenment Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Coming fashionably late to the culture-war party, The Economist published a piece this week on the evils of "Critical Race Theory" (CRT), a body of scholarship associated with ideas such as "intersectionality," "white privilege," and (though so far as I am aware it did not originate the phrase, much less create the phenomenon) "systemic racism." Though I … Continue reading Enlightenment Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Men of Their Time, Standards of Ours
It's a common idea that figures of the past -- and what this really means, without exception, is heroic or widely celebrated figures of the past -- should be forgiven what look like misdeeds to us, because they were "men of their time." The claim has several variants, some more specious than others. With respect … Continue reading Men of Their Time, Standards of Ours
memorious 