Question 1: Why



The Authority of Sharing: Postgraduate Blogging in ClassicsMuch of this paper is drawn from my own involvement with blogs (as a postgraduate tutor and blogger myself) and from a survey of the literature on what has been called ‘blogademia’. But in the spirit of sharing authority, I sent an early draft of this paper out to several postgraduate bloggers for comment. I’d like to thank them for their help which enabled me to avoid some misconceptions, and encouraged me to ask the right questions.Question 1: Why don’t academics blog?This may seem like a ridiculous question to ask, surrounded as I am by notable bloggers! But, present company excepted, it has often been observed that there aren’t as many academic blogs out there, in the online world, as we would expect, given the rates of blogging in the population as a whole, and given the propensity of academics to write stuff. It has also been observed that of the academic blogs that are out there, most of them are not involved in outreach or educating the general reader. No, most of them (one study puts the figure at 73%) are engaged in the airing of ‘dirty laundry, gripes, complaints, rants, and raves’, aimed at other academics in the same position. This is the ‘back-stage’ of academia.I’m inclined to look more charitably upon today’s academic blogs in Classics, many of which are successfully public-facing. However, the literature stresses that the combination of the inward-looking self-obsession of the academic blog and the remarkably low levels of blogging in academia as a whole has left a big gap. When people look for an accessible academic presence online, they don’t find much. We don’t have to look far to find reasons for this, of course. Blogs aren’t easily REF-able. They’re not peer-reviewed publications. They take time away from more important work. They may look frivolous to colleagues. They require the development of a different voice. They can be exposing. We’re not sure where to put them on our academic CVs, or even what to call them: outreach, media, public scholarship? They’re simply too much trouble, for too little reward – and sometimes institutions frown on them.But the non-blogging of most academics isn’t my main interest: I’ll leave this area to other people. The important thing, to me, is that this leads onto my more central question of…Question 2: Why do postgraduates blog?This is where it starts to get interesting, because this question links into all kinds of important, even urgent issues in our field, from mental well-being to equality and diversity in recruitment into the profession.ControlOne reason why postgraduate bloggers blog is, I would suggest, to gain a sense of control in an increasingly insecure professional world. The state of Higher Education employment has been much in the news of late, with tales of zero hours contracts and a growing casual workforce. A recent survey of academic job adverts in Australia found that institutions were advertising not for a lecturer but for an ‘academic super-hero’. The article defines this as someone who ‘must be ready to deal with the multiple uncertainties that beset the higher education sector… all the while collecting business cards for that next round of student placements, soothing hurt feelings and smiling graciously at the crowds of prospective students at Open Day while publishing prodigiously and creating innovative learning opportunities for their students across multiple media’. Sound familiar?Graduates entering a postgraduate programme are often warned of this situation before they even apply - particularly in Classics. As a Washington University website puts it, ‘There is a good possibility that you will never obtain a permanent position teaching Classics at a college or university, even if you successfully complete a PhD in Classics in a first-rate program’ (Washington University in St. Louis 2019). The University of Florida’s website states ‘luck plays a large role in most careers, which is another way of saying that even with hard work a classicist may fail to complete a degree, or fail to find a job after completing a degree, for reasons that are completely beyond his or her control’ (University of Florida 2019).This translates as ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’.Against this precarious professional background, characterised by unreasonable demands and a reliance on luck, postgraduates are setting up blogs. These are autonomous online environments in which the blogger can control everything, from the content to the font to the permissions given to visitors. The blog acts as a form of networking and a CV all in one, allowing the blogger to develop an authoritative style and an audience, to share examples of her or his research, and to reach out to other academics.IDENTITYThen we have the much-discussed issue of identity. People blog, it is often claimed, because blogging helps them to build an identity. When I asked postgraduate bloggers about this, phrases like ‘feeling like a real classicist’, ‘finding a niche’ and ‘carving out a space’ kept coming up. Identity, it is often argued, is publicly constructed through blogging, in what has been called a ‘performative self’. Sometimes this is also construed as a dialogic self – in dialogue with an audience – but the blogging literature stresses that this audience can be more imagined than real. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether anyone is reading; the blogger is performing anyway.So what does it mean to build a performative identity? Well, in part it offers a way of turning a perceived disadvantage into a strength, and constructing a community around it. So distance-learners, for instance, blog about being distance-learners, and in doing so they attract a readership of distance-learners. The same goes for students with other distinctive circumstances or characteristics. These facets of identity are expected to be airbrushed out in formal academic writing for journals and other traditional publications, so that the student from a non-traditional background sounds exactly the same as everybody else. Suppressing such a fundamental element of the self can be an uncomfortable and artificial thing to do. But a blog can offer an outlet, and a way of developing a more authentic voice that doesn’t involve the suppression of a non-traditional classicist identity.The wider effect of this, of course, is that readers see new role models emerging, new ways of being a classicist. That has to be good for the profession as a whole, in diminishing the dangers of ‘imposter syndrome’. Imposter syndrome is, perhaps, an over-used term; but here it gives us an important way in to the identity problems of the aspiring classicist. If we look again at that website from the University of Florida, we see that classicists are advised not to pursue postgraduate Classics if they ‘require complete financial security’. So who are we inviting in to our academic community? That’s right: only people who don’t actually need money. And who are we excluding? Those who have dependants; those who have complex needs – oh, and those who need an income in order to eat. So any postgraduate who is not independently wealthy is likely to succumb to imposter syndrome: because they are continually being told that they are not supposed to be a Classics postgraduate.It is frequently argued that Classics is ‘classist’, and while this is only one perspective on a complex social and educational issue, it is difficult to dispute the common claim that students from privileged backgrounds with an early classical education have a head start in Classics. If blogs offer a way of celebrating the inherent differences of aspiring classicists drawn from a wider range of backgrounds, this has the potential to make significant changes to the discipline itself. As Sarah Parcak recently asked, ‘To whom does the past belong? We need more voices to show the complexity of that question – and to reflect the full diversity of all the groups for whom the past means something’. Postgraduate bloggers represent those extra voices, and the freedom that blogging allows them to speak in their own way opens up an opportunity for them to reflect the diversity of interested groups and the nature of their interest in the past.Which leads me on to my third question…Question 3: What are postgraduate bloggers doing with their blogs?I’d like to start by looking briefly at blogs set up not by postgraduates, but by professional academics, and at the current trend for calling out and tackling social justice issues online.There is a significant moral dimension to some of the most notable academic blogs in the field of Classics and Ancient History, including those written by speakers at this conference. These blogs engage with classism, racism and sexism, both current and historical, within academia and outside it. These moral positions allow bloggers to identify their dialogic self as existing in opposition to a traditional and morally questionable norm. The moral obligation is often portrayed as the opposite of academic isolationism. The much-mentioned ‘ivory tower’ is an apt metaphor, because it suggests both a whiteness and a colonialist mindset that needs to be challenged. As Matthew Sears put it in his recent call for academics to emerge from their ivory tower, ‘classicists should not stay silent—they must correct the record and bring facts to the battlefield, so that disciplines aren’t misappropriated to fuel modern-day hatred’. There is a moral imperative here and in many similar calls to action, often expressed through militaristic language, which positions those who do not take action as complicit in the misappropriation of Classics; and one of the weapons in the fight is the academic blog. But blogposts which call to change, challenge or reconstruct the discipline of Classics or the priorities of classicists tend to come – with only a few exceptions - from securely employed professional classicists. Postgraduates, on the other hand, who tend to see themselves as positioned on the outside looking in, still seem to see much to admire in the profession. Securing and exploring the identity of ‘classicist’ is the goal of many postgraduate bloggers. Postgraduate bloggers do not ignore issues of social justice; but they tend to frame them as debates about terminology and concepts rather than as attacks upon the state of the discipline. As one blogger commented in response to this paper, ‘there’s still a part of me that just wants to get on with the primary sources and not get bogged down by all the academic infighting’. It seems, then, that one of the elements which separate the postgraduate blog from the academic blog is the moral dimension (or its absence) in the performance of self.So the postgraduate blog offers space to develop a way of writing, and a performative, dialogic identity, which does not need to conform to the constraints of traditional academic writing, and as such, it offers a level of freedom and professional exploration to postgraduate students who have not come to Classics through the traditional routes or from a traditional background. However, that freedom is used as a different “way in” to the identity of ‘classicist’ or ‘scholar’ or ‘teacher’, rather than as a platform for challenging what the discipline should be. The moral imperative and the social justice call to action are reserved for those who, once secure in their professional identity, see that identity as lacking, or as being in conflict with their identity in society. So if postgraduates do not occupy the space of social justice bloggers, how do they construct their performative selves in relation to a real or imagined audience? I would suggest that the answer lies in developing ideas of the ‘modern educator’.An analysis of academic blogging recently argued that blogging in itself, whether in the act of reading blogs or writing them, is evidence of the ‘mass uptake of the educative approach to life taking hold’. The drive to engage in a continuing process of reflection, reading and comment is seen as evidence of an approach to learning which – for want of a better term – is conceptualised as ‘a form of lifelong education’. As one blogger explained to me ‘the blog is a good way of pursuing all those interesting rabbit holes that didn’t quite “answer the question”!’. For students, blogs offer the opportunity to escape the constraints of a formal programme of study and explore a subject just because it is interesting, and in that sense they showcase the ‘educative approach to life’. The question of whether blogging constitutes ‘education’ is a thorny one: but certainly the blogging process as an ongoing dialogue with readers over an area of common interest positions blog writers as both educators and learners. As we have seen, however, there is a gap – or at least a surprising mismatch of supply and demand – in the blogging market, with academics mostly writing for people like themselves, without a wider educative intent. This is a gap which postgraduate bloggers are well positioned to fill, and which is suited to the nature of postgraduate blogging in several ways.This graphic has been much shared at recent Education conferences, and is held up as a model that encapsulates the ideal ‘habits of mind’ possessed by the ‘modern educator’. It is striking that the emphasis throughout the criteria is on not being an expert. According to this graphic, the 21st-century teacher should be vulnerable, should make mistakes and should even be seen to fail at things, by moving into new territory and embracing change. The important thing to note about this list of characteristics is that, while it does not describe most Classics lecturers, it does do a good job of describing postgraduate bloggers.From Reid Wilson at distinctive characteristic of postgraduate bloggers, which relates directly to these criteria for the modern educator, is that they tend to separate themselves from academic bloggers through confessions of vulnerability.One area of vulnerability, rarely seen in professional academic blogs, is intellectual vulnerability. Postgraduate bloggers are often quite open in their confessions of struggle with new material, including terminology and theory. Their admissions of ignorance, and their charting of a growing understanding, can be seen by a wider readership as a bridge between the novice and the expert. One blogger put it this way: ‘A regular blog post is a great way of tackling such issues - thrashing it out first in your head, then in draft, and finally in its online form - to undo the knots in your own muddled misunderstandings’. The blog is, in this sense, a tool for self-development and personal learning - but through its performative element it extends into pedagogy. In Classics, this educative vulnerability often extends to areas of knowledge seen as ‘core’ knowledge – particularly ancient languages. As postgraduate bloggers ‘run towards their area of weakness’, particularly in Latin and Greek, they take their readers with them in a way that is encouraging rather than daunting. By modelling ignorance and representing the struggle to learn, postgraduate bloggers are offering a different model of what ‘a classicist’ is, a model which seems perhaps less remote from the educated general reader than the expert academic is.This confessional vulnerability represents a voluntary abdication of authority: instead of claiming to be experts, postgraduates are often painfully open about why they are not experts. It is this very quality of not-being-an-expert that gives postgraduate bloggers their authority: it is the authority of sharing a learning experience, rather than the authority of speaking from a lofty pinnacle of academia. In this respect postgraduates come much closer to the model of the ‘modern educator’ than many professional educators do: their multiple and visible vulnerabilities are sites of connection with an audience.ConclusionThe usual criticism levelled at the classical blog is that it is too caught up in meta-classicism, avoiding serious ideas or research and focusing instead on the nature of Classics. For postgraduate students, the blog is much more than this. It represents control and community and connection, as well as offering a way of developing a scholarly identity, independent of institutional or scholarly gate-keepers who might privilege a certain way of thinking or writing. It allows for the development of an educative voice which gives the blogger a way of ‘carving out a place’ as an authority. And it offers readers the ‘modern educator’ which Classics as a discipline tends not to provide, at least online.It seems likely that the value of postgraduate blogs, to readers at all levels, does not rest in expert subject knowledge, but in the ways in which bloggers model and negotiate vulnerability - ways professional academics won’t (because they choose not to appear vulnerable) or can't (because they simply aren’t vulnerable). Postgraduate bloggers, without necessarily championing a cause, model different ways of being a classicist, and in doing so they set out a path for others to follow. Postgraduate bloggers, in their willingness to speak with a non-traditional voice and occupy multiple identities with associated risks and vulnerabilities, are in a position to open up a new norm, in much the same way as we see happening – slowly – with the current drive towards diversity in the classroom. It is worth considering, then, that the space between ‘scholar’ and ‘non-scholar’ which is occupied by postgraduate bloggers could be seen as an educative space in which professionals may develop who are less bounded than previous generations of classicists. In order for that to happen, however, we need to work on new ways of seeing and valuing scholarly authority, by accepting that the expert is not always the most effective teacher. ................
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