academhack

The following is a guest post from UT-Dallas graduate student, Barbara Vance (@brvance). This past semester Barbara taught an atypical rhetoric and composition course. Barbara teaches Rhetoric 1302, the standard introductory college writing course. She was given a course with a group of students who she was told, were struggling with writing and needed, “more [...]

No secret to the readers of this site that I am a bit of an evangelist for Creative Commons. And those who follow the work of danah boyd know that she filed her dissertation under a creative commons license. Despite the fact that the CC license is easy to use, some institutions have been weary [...]

For those who follow my account on twitter you already no doubt know that between Christmas and New Year’s Eve I was in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association. Those who read this blog also know that I am critical of organizations and institutions (yes almost all of them), especially [...]

The cycle goes something like this: textbook companies make a lot of money selling books to college students, used bookstores cut in on profits by buying and selling these books to students, textbook companies raise prices to recoup profits and publish new editions every year attempting to muscle out the used book market. But, then [...]

I received an email yesterday, as I am sure many of you did, from the MLA (actually the email was from Rosemary Feal but I digress) requesting help funding graduate students. What interests me about this email is the direct appeal to “grassroots” funding rather than trying to find big donors. I realize that I [...]

Sorry not much posting going on here lately as the start of the semester has me not only immersed in classes, but engaged in the political blogosphere for my undergrad class (more on that later).
Anyway, if you are a graduate student looking to connect your research to those outside your immediate institution, you should check [...]

Updated
Yesterday I decided to post the working syllabus for my grad class for the upcoming semester in an attempt to elicit feedback before I make some final choices. I then posted that I had done this twitter. Not surprisingly I received some useful feedback. What I hadn’t anticipated was interest in taking this class from [...]

I just got back from a conference in Portland (Maine not Oregon). Honestly one of the more interesting/produtive academic conferences I have attended (the annual SLSA conference for those who are interested). While the quality of the presentations were high, it struck me that many a presenter could have benefited from a little free application [...]

Just yesterday I was talking with a fellow academic, who frustrated by Endnotes was wondering what other options exist for managing references. My no think response was Zotero. Which caused me to think about doing another plug for Zotero here on Academhack, but fortunately for me, another scholar has already done this work. Scott McLemee [...]

I discovered Gradual Progress the other day, a website that collects links that might be of interest to grad. students in various disciplines. I have shared here before some advice on taking exams, writing a dissertation,, and how devon can help. But, given that Gradual Progress collects the work of many, you are [...]