Last week I spoke with some of my colleagues about the "challenges" posed by generative AI to our teaching. As anyone who follows me on Bluesky -- or followed me on Twitter, prior to its nazification -- will know, I am not a fan of generative AI. Its proponents and salesmen tend to dismiss critics … Continue reading Why I am not using AI in the classroom
Author: Ted McCormick
Whereof one cannot speak
One of the more frustrating, if unstated, presumptions of the early excitement about generative AI's classroom potential -- or, rather, coursework potential -- was that papers (essays, texts) are the product of which courses are the production process. Students write papers; ChatGPT writes papers; ergo, ChatGPT produces the same thing students produce. Does it do … Continue reading Whereof one cannot speak
A quick, mid-apocalyptic update
First, everything is on fire; as bad as things have been looking, and continue to look, for English-language universities in Quebec (a long story I won't bother with at the moment), the Trump administration's war on academia has ramped up so dramatically in the US, and on so many fronts -- from arresting and deporting … Continue reading A quick, mid-apocalyptic update
The Illusion of a Future
Say the line! "Faculty need to tell the truth about the academic job market." Unobjectionable in itself, this is a constant refrain in online and print performances of academic self-criticism. Why? One implication is that faculty members have been cornering unwary bystanders to share the Good News about tenure-track jobs. Another implication is that the … Continue reading The Illusion of a Future
The Sorcerer’s Amanuensis
So there I was, reading Silvia Federici's bestseller, Caliban and the Witch.1 It argues -- to be brief and I hope not unjust -- that the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should be ranked alongside the enclosure of land, the elimination of the commons, the conquest of the New World, and the … Continue reading The Sorcerer’s Amanuensis
Better CVs will not save us
In lieu of a full-length post here, here is a link to a full-length post I wrote for the North American Conference on British Studies blog, Broadsides. It's one of a series looking at the state of British studies -- considered rather more as a profession than as a discipline, if you take my meaning. … Continue reading Better CVs will not save us
Reading advice for young historians
This is a sheet of reading tips I've developed over the past few years for my first-year students in history. I posted it on Twitter yesterday, as a png image and a tweet thread, and it got quite a few positive responses and several requests for copies. So I'm putting it here in what I … Continue reading Reading advice for young historians
Discipline and Profession
The introduction to one of the textbooks I'm assigning for next term's "Early Modern Europe" history survey contains an interesting sentence: Overall, at least in the editors' judgment, the academy has emerged bruised but resilient: more conscious of its limitations, more tolerant of alternative pathways, more cautious about general conclusions, but otherwise in remarkably rude … Continue reading Discipline and Profession
Why Was This Document Never Written? An Unsource Analysis Exercise
Who would the author have been? Where, when, and why did they not write the source? What conditions made not writing such a document possible, probable, desirable, necessary? Why was the source not written in this particular form? What stylistic or social conventions shaped its not being written in this way? What aspects of its … Continue reading Why Was This Document Never Written? An Unsource Analysis Exercise
History: What Everyone Needs to Know
A scientist I know, arguing for the importance of practitioners in her discipline learning fundamental theory as well as technical skills, asked me whether there are similar debates in history. That is: are there debates in the historical profession about what kinds of thing everyone learning to be a historian needs to know? I found … Continue reading History: What Everyone Needs to Know
memorious 