Category Archives: scholarship

Highlighting, Measuring, and Managing Your Research

Posted on by
Reply

Are you a graduate student or faculty member? Do you want to understand the current scholarly landscape for measuring, highlighting, and sharing your research?

zotero   academia   webofscience

Tools like Scopus, Web of Science, and Journal Citation Reports provide indicators of research productivity. Portals like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Humanities Commons, and Google Profiles allow researchers to share their work and network with other scholars. Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley make organizing and sharing sources a snap. Publishing in open access venues and posting your research to scholarly repositories can enhance your research impact. Familiarity with these new tools and strategies helps researchers find colleagues, collaborators, and funders, as well as facilitates the tenure and promotion process.

The Temple University Libraries will be offering a series of four workshops in the Digital Scholarship Center on highlighting, measuring, and managing your research. Bring your laptop or borrow one in the DSC.

scopus   researchgate   mendeley

Workshop 1: Managing Your Research
Wednesday, March 29, 11-12, DSC

  • Attendees will gain an understanding of the features of these reference management and sharing tools and their areas of overlap with academic social networks. They will understand some key functional and disciplinary considerations when selecting the proper tool.
  • Register for Workshop 1

Workshop 2: Developing Your Scholarly Profile
Wednesday, April 5, 11-12, DSC

  • The professional and ethical uses of academic social networks such as ResearchGate and Academia as well as preferences of scholars in different disciplines will be explored.  We will talk about ORCiD and other researcher IDs and how they can be used to enhance your online profile.
  • Register for Workshop 2

Workshop 3: Amplifying Your Research Impact
Wednesday, April 12, 11-12, DSC

  • Attendees will learn how to effectively promote and share their research online. We will discuss best practices for using social media, explain how to deposit research outputs in disciplinary repositories, and explore tools and platforms that can help authors expand their readership.
  • Register for Workshop 3

Workshop 4: Measuring Research Impact
Wednesday, April 19, 11-12, DSC

  • Attendees will gain strategies for identifying and measuring their research impact using available online tools. Important buzzwords like citation metrics, impact factors, and the h-index will be explained and applied in a variety of disciplinary contexts.
  • Register for Workshop 4

Vikings Visit Minnesota in 1362

Posted on by
Reply

davidkrueger

Well, not really, but that’s a story that had significant purchase in early 20th century Minnesota. In 1898 a Swedish immigrant discovered a buried stone with runic letters and the date 1362. The archaic Scandinavian script described a fishing party that returned to its camp to find “10 men red with blood and dead.”

8 Swedes and 22 Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland westward. We had our camp by two rocky islets one day’s journey north of this stone. We were out fishing one day. When we came home we found 10 men with blood and dead. AVM, save us from evil. We have 10 men by the sea to look after our ships, 14 days’ journey from this island. Year: 1362. [Translation by Erik Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone: A Mystery Solved]

The news of the apparent visitation of fourteenth century Scandinavians to the great state of Minnesota was enthusiastically received by their latter day heirs. With so many immigrants entering the United States, it was reassuring to learn that these norsemen had staked a claim to the United States more than 100 years before Columbus. Better yet, they had baptized the soil with their own blood, consecrating it as holy ground.

As the authenticity of the “Kensington Rune Stone” came under question, supporters dismissed much of the evidence produced by pointy-headed academics in their ivory towers. Though the scientific consensus has clearly declared the stone a fake, books are still written “proving” its authenticity. In Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America, historian and religion scholar David Krueger investigates the century-long story arc of this cultural artifact. He explores the passion for the Rune Stone among Scandinavian and, later, Catholics, who were intent on establishing their rightful place in the American community.

Beyond the history of the Rune Stone itself, Krueger’s work provides valuable insights on the history of immigrant communities and the ways they seek to blend their ancestral histories into a new and imagined cultural landscape. Readers will find the themes of Myths of the Rune Stone illuminating in this time of increased tension and inflammatory rhetoric surrounding immigration.

I spoke with David Krueger on November 9, 2016, the morning after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.

(For suggestions for how to use the book in a class setting, visit the book website at https://mythsoftherunestone.com/2015/12/15/using-myths-of-the-rune-stone-in-the-classroom/.)

—Fred Rowland

Who is Fethullah Gülen?

Posted on by
Reply

Jon Pahl Professor Jon Pahl

On the evening July 15, 2016 elements of the Turkish military executed a failed coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Tanks and armored vehicles rolled into the capital Ankara and Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, bridges were blocked, and helicopters and F-16s flew overhead. Battles between the coup plotters and government loyalists left over 250 dead. President Erdogan, on vacation in the coastal city of Marmaris, flew into Istanbul and urged followers to take to the streets to resist the coup.

Within a day of the coup attempt, President Erdogan and his government were back in control of Turkey and he began a widespread purge of the military, media, courts, and educational institutions. Before the details were even known, it became clear that Erdogan saw this as an opportunity to eliminate his enemies and consolidate power. On August 2, the Financial Times reported that “almost 70,000 people have been arrested, suspended or fired.” (Turkey’s purge reaches beyond the coup plotters) The New York Times Online made comparisons to “Joseph McCarthy‘s anti-Communist witch hunt in 1950s America, the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s and ’70s.” (Turks see purge as witch hunt of ‘medieval’ darkness’, 9/16/16) Though there was little support among Turkish citizens for the coup, the scope of the purge threatens basic democratic governance in Turkey.

Responsibility for the coup quickly settled on the Gülen Movement, whose members were arrested, jailed, and in some cases possibly tortured. The followers of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Sufi cleric living in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, constitute a decentralized movement that is international in scope, with schools in over 100 countries. The Gülen Movement in Turkey, its country of origin, was – until recently – represented in the highest reaches of the military, judiciary, media, and economy. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have targeted Gulenists for several years now and these purges continue his effort to eliminate their influence across Turkish society. Gülen has been accused of masterminding the coup and an arrest warrant was issued against him in an Istanbul court in August. The Turkish government is seeking Gülen’s extradition from the United States to stand trial in Turkey.

As accusations against Gülen began piling up in the Turkish and international media in the aftermath of the coup, I thought of Professor Jon Pahl of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. I knew he was working on a biography of Fethullah Gülen and I was interested in hearing what he had to say about Gülen, the Gülen Movement, and recent events in Turkey. Professor Pahl posted a blog at the University of California Press titled Don’t Make A Mystic into a Martyr: Fethullah Gülen as Peacebuilder on July 24, 2016.

I spoke to Joh Pahl on October 6, 2016.

 

2015-2016 Livingstone Award Interviews

Posted on by
Reply

I was able to catch up with four of the six 2015-2016 Livingstone Prize Winners before they dispersed for the summer. Below are the interviews I recorded with these intelligent and talented undergraduate men and women.

  • Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award in Creative Works and Media Production
    Mother Internet : Blessed Virgin : A Coming of Age Story by Elizabeth Baber

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=SWZxaxau4kuRnXlnnd4Idw audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

  • Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award in Policy, Practice, and Public Life
    Cultural Property Repatriation: History, Legality, and Ethical Precedent for Museums in the United States by Rhiannon Bell

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=WLa6p8FtH0eSm6UAgyAYug audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

  • Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award in Sustainability and the Environment (sponsored by Gale, part of Cengage Learning)
    The Mobilization of the Environmental Justice Movement in Louisiana: EJ Disputes and Grassroots Organizing in the Mississippi Industrial Corridor by Joseph Gallagher

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=fqdiHpoqekqmypzXsXv0AQ audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

  • Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences
    “Glory of Yet Another Kind”: The Evolution & Politics of First-Wave Queer Activism, 1867-1924 by GVGK Tang

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=jMOW05r6x0GFXpQeEgdWCA audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens

Posted on by
7

A Gottesman

[ensemblevideo contentid=JbUmcDHhe0SQYggwDeDrSQ audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

In his new book, Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens (Cambridge University Press, 2014, Print / Online), Alex Gottesman explores the informal political structures that helped to shape events in the more widely documented institutions of assembly, council, and courts in Democratic Athens. Identifying the cryptic utterances and odd descriptions of ancient Greek literature for evidence of puzzles not yet explained by historians, Professor Gottesman patches together patterns of interactions and associations that point to a public sphere centered around the Athenian Agora.

The boundaries between formal and informal political structures were rather porous and they changed over time. Professor Gottesman describes an ancient form of publicity stunts which raised awareness among the public of legal and political issues and procedures. These publicity stunts brought citizens and non-citizens, high born and low, men and women, and slave and free together in a complex network of informal association. Professor Gottesman then speculates on how these informal networks influenced the more famous democratic political institutions of ancient Athens.

I spoke to Alex Gottesman about his new book, Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens, on March 27, 2015.

Download (mp3)

Audio Embed Code:

—Fred Rowland

Daniel Tompkins discusses Moses Finley

Posted on by
Reply

Daniel Tompkins interview

[ensemblevideo contentid=iucNBAWP30OfDP1OaFTFfA audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

Classical scholar M. I. Finley (1912-1986) was involved in many of the momentous intellectual, political, and social issues and debates of the 1930s and 1940s. He came to the study of the ancient world by a circuitous route, graduating with a B.A. in psychology from Syracuse University in 1927 (at age 15), an M.A. in public law in 1927 and a PhD in history in 1951 (both advanced degrees from Columbia University).

Between his M.A. and Ph.D. Finley worked briefly at General Motors, was an editor of the groundbreaking Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, fought against Nazi race theories, and organized Russian relief during World War II. Finley was in contact and collaborating with thinkers like Franz Boas, Karl Polanyi, and members of the Frankfurt School at the Institute for Social Research.

When finally his dissertation, “STUDIES IN LAND AND CREDIT IN ANCIENT ATHENS, 500-200 B. C.: THE HOROS-INSCRIPTIONS,” landed him a faculty position at Rutgers University, he was forced out due to his left-wing political affiliations. He appeared before the McCarran Committee (United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security) in 1952 and pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked about his affiliation with the Communist Party.

Finley took a position in Classics at Cambridge University and eventually became a citizen of the United Kingdom. As a scholar, Finley brought his own contemporary concerns and interests to questions about the ancient world.  His research on ancient slavery and economy, and democracy and culture, resonate with the intellectual and social struggles of the mid-20th century.

Professor Daniel Tompkins is researching the life of Moses Finley. I spoke to him on December 15, 2015 in my office.

Audio Download Link

Audio Embed Code:

—Fred Rowland

What is spirituality?

Posted on by
Reply

bregman

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=DVy75_6cYkKYFXU4eoM3mg audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

Do a search for spirituality in Google’s NGRAM Viewer, an online tool that graphs the incidence of words from the Google Book corpus, and you will find that in and around 1980 this word spiked. The rise is more or less consistent with the increasing appearance of the word spirituality in book and journal titles (pre-1980 books / post-1980 books; pre-1980 journals / post-1980 journals) in Temple University’s collection. The pattern appears in both popular and scholarly publications. About this time the category of “spiritual but not religious” became familiar to pollsters of religious attitudes and trends. What explains this sudden emergence of spirituality? Did anything really emerge, or was this just a definitional shift? Was spirituality colonizing new territory? Or is spirituality a “glow” word that makes everyone feel good but signifies, well, very little?

In her new book, The Ecology of Spirituality: Meanings, Virtues, and Practices in a Post-Religious Age, Lucy Bregman investigates this phenomenon. She looks at the broad changes in religion and intellectual culture that preceeded the blossoming (or metastasizing) of spirituality, and then describes spirituality’s career over the past three decades. I interviewed Lucy Bregman on July 3, 2014.

[This is the second interview I have done with Lucy Bregman. Listen to our discussion on her previous book: Preaching Death.]

Audio Download Link

Audio Embed Code

—Fred Rowland