In this blog post, I would like to provide some data for my colleagues on promotion at our university. I have heard many different comments in regards to research and publications. However, there appears to be very little data, or evidence beyond anecdotes describing what’s going on systematically. So, I’ve sat down and put this estimate together. The following chart of search “results” for publications was created using our Daily Brief newsletter announcements, and doing searches on Google Scholar.
Overworked? Analyzing my workload
So I teach a lot. I teach an average of 254 students per semester without the help of teaching assistants (at the time this was written). I’m sure there are other others who have to do the same. In this blog post, I’m going to take a look at staffing at my institution.
What is top-tier?
This blog post is a follow up to my previous defense of scholarly writing and a response to something I have been hearing from some colleagues at my institution– that publishing in top-tier journals is “impossible” for most faculty at my university. In this post, I want to first unpack this problematic assumption and then offer my thoughts on getting work published.
Working Over The Summer
APSCUF (my faculty union) currently has a blog series that examines what professors do when class is not in session. This is a response to politicians characterizing our workload as being only 17 hours a week. Pennsylvania professors are not alone in sharing their “off contract” and summer activities. Faculty in Connecticut are keeping busy. So important are the summer months to our professional work, faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have written an advice piece for Inside Higher Ed on how to get the most out of the summer (and not burn out). I have my own blog post on summer writing written two years ago. For this post, I’d like to add to the discussion of – not just how much we work as faculty – but how important our so-called “off” time is.
What I Learned From Video Games
This post is not about video game scholarship. As a pop culture fan and sociologist, it is an area that maybe I will read up on when I have time. This post is about how video games made me a better student and later scholar (#academicgamer).
First, some facts about video games: According to the Entertainment Software Association, 155 million or 59% of Americans play some sort of video game (this includes a wide range of games from Call of Duty to Candy Crush). In 2015, the average game player was 35 years old. This is up from 31 years old in 2013. The average age of game purchasers is 38. As an older millennial, I am right in this age bracket. I grew up on computer and video games. The original Nintendo and Mario were a major part of my childhood. I also played DOS games on the family’s old XT computer such as Jump (Janitor) Joe. Given the number of hours I have (and continue) to pour into video games, I would like to think that they had a positive impact on my life.
Here are some things I argue that I have gained from playing video games:
- Critical Thinking Skills: I certainly believe that video games developed my critical thinking skills. I grew up playing the Sierra On-Line text parser games. This required you to type in simple English what you wanted your character to do, such as “open door.” If the door was locked, you needed to figure out how to get into the building in a different manner. Even in current AAA games, problem solving and puzzles are an important part of gameplay. Last year, I finished Batman: Arkham Knight. An optional ‘quest’ is locating and solving the Riddler’s puzzles across Gotham City. These puzzles require the player to figure out which one of Batman’s weapons is most appropriate for activating a Rube Goldberg-eqsue contraption in order to obtain a trophy.
- Knowledge: How many of us played Oregon Trail? Or the great Carmen Sandiego series? In addition to explicitly educational games, other games weave history and literature into their plots the same way historical fiction does. More recently, the Assassin’s Creed series has done an amazing job mixing historical figures and places into their gameplay. Last year, I visited Florence, Italy. I could not help by remember all the times I navigated the main character Ezio up the cathedral and other landmarks.
- Inspiration: I’m an urbanist and SimCity undoubtedly shaped my interest in studying cities, as did the Civilization. I remember a graduate class discussion on Malthus and soil quality. I distinctly remember thinking about urban expansion in Civilization that day. One of the things I would like to work on in the future is video game simulations of urban environments.
- Entertainment: I think the most important thing I currently get from gaming is a chance to have fun. As a busy teacher, researcher, and new parent, video games a chance to relax and escape into other worlds such as Skyrim, or Thedas.
Here’s my PSN ID and current trophy count
Millennial Faculty (Yes, they exist)
Every year, the Beloit Mindset List comes out and faculty freak out over it on social media. What bothers me about the reaction is that they forget that it is normal for different generations to experience different things. I am also bothered by some of the reaction that people have to studies regarding the millennials. In the case of higher education, I believe some of my colleagues forget that there are now millennial faculty members (which plays a part in #Ilooklikeaprofessor).
Rob Kelly wrote in 2007, “Millennial Faculty Are Coming. Are You Ready?“ Millennial faculty now exist. We are in our late 20s and mid 30s. From the standpoint of age, this is expected. In many fields, the age of new PhDs and assistant professors sits around 33 [1]. Although the average age of tenure being granted in 39, some “early Millennials” born just after “Generation X” may have already received tenure and those born shortly after will be will be going up soon [2].
In this blog post, I want to talk about what college was like and how it influences our (or at least my) learning, teaching and research.
Higher Ed Goes Digital (late 1990s-2000s)
I hate the term “digital natives” – commonly associated with millennials. However, I think it’s important to talk about growing up with digital knowledge. Perhaps the most important experience that we had in college was having broadband internet access. Compuserve existed in the 1980s and AOL went online in 1991, but they were typically accessed via dial-up modems. Similarly, there were intranets on university campuses. However, the availability of broadband access to the World Wide Web in college fundamentally connected technology and learning for many of us. More specifically, we had dorm rooms with ready internet access (either wired or later with wifi).
This had a very significant impacts on our lives. The release of Napster in 1999 changed the way we relate to digital content. While, those of us early millennials owned physical media, the MP3 explosion altered our relationship with such physical artifacts. This had implications for knowledge. Books, articles and course readings need not be locked away in a library or within a physical book. In fact, according to Publisher Weekly, in 2011 those born between 1979 and 1989 bought more books than Baby Boomers (with 43% of those expenditures going to digital purchases).
Microsoft Encarta came out in 1993. This and other encyclopedia programs meant large unwieldy formats such as Encyclopedia Britannica (as well as other types of indexes) were simply inefficient ways to look up information. This was followed by Wikipedia going online in 2001. Card catalogs are a distant childhood memory (if at all). As an academic generation, there are those that rarely or never read bound editions of academic journals. Not coincidentally through the 2000s, university libraries began to invest less in study carrel spaces and more in “information commons.” Book acquisitions dropped, as budgets were reassigned for online journal databases.
In addition to digital versions of books, the way we learned was always supplemented by the internet. The Blackboard Learning System debuted in the fall of 1998, and by 2004 the company had thousands of “clients” using it to post syllabi, readings, and offer assignment submission. We used email as well as AIM, ICQ, and Facebook to interact with our TA’s and our classmates. RateMyProfessor went online in 2001 affecting what classes we chose to take.
If our undergraduate experience was about digitally consuming knowledge, graduate school meant producing research digitally. I certainly do not know anyone who used notecards to create bibliographies in graduate school. Most of us have never used a typewriter. Those who conduct historical research can now use digital archives in conjunction with “analog” sources in archives. This meant the “physical” act of research and dissertation writing was fundamentally different. EndNote Plus was released in the 1990s and grew in sophistication and popularity in the 2000s. Similarly reference management software such as RefWorks was released in 2001, and Zotero in 2006. Personally, I cannot imagine not using Zotero for my dissertation, much less having to re-format references for publication without it. For Millennial graduate students and faculty, other things like digital humanities, blogs, conference live tweets, conducting ethnography online, job rumor wikis, etc. increasingly play a role in our academic/professional lives.
Millennial Faculty (2010s)
The preceding paragraphs have largely focused on the cultural and practical differences that millennial faculty experienced. However, I want to also mention that we experienced a very different economic situation. As the PEW Research Center has found, our entire generation faces very different economic and educational challenges than Generation X, the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation. We have higher levels of student loan debt. We finished (or are finishing) our doctoral degrees in a world where we had to teach as well as publish much more to even be considered for a job (which might not even be tenure track). Peter Higgs (of Higgs Boson fame) has noted the brutality of today’s publish or perish world.
The narrative I have presented is not a digital versus analog debate. It is not about the virtues of the millennial experience, or that we had(have) it harder. Rather, it is a more serious take than on what the Beloit College Mindset List does every year – only with faculty not students. It’s also a reminder that things change, and it’s normal.
Visualizing the 100 Largest Cities in the U.S. (1840-2010)
In a previous post, I discussed how I like making visualizations for my classes using Google products. It’s a good exercise for me, and hopefully it leads to something useful in fall. My weekend project was this map of the 100 Largest Cities in the U.S. (1840-2010) using Google Charts’ GeoChart. It was largely based on this code. However, I had to make a number of changes to have it do what I wanted it to do. I also had to organize the data in way that was useful. The dots on the map mark cities that are amongst the top 100 urban centers in the United States in a census. The slider is a date filter that allows one to either move decade-by-decade to see the rise of cities in the Sunbelt, or see the persistence of a city in the top 100 depending on how you move the sliders.
The neat thing about the GeoChart API is that it rendered within the browser using SVG. While the GeoChart API will recognize place-names, it loads much faster if you use latitude/longitude coordinates instead of place-names. There are 269 cities in the map above, with data drawn from 18 census years.
This was meant to be a fun weekend project playing with the GeoChart API. I’ll probably play around with this a bit more, so that I can make use it in my urban sociology course in the fall.
Why I wrote about Spider-Man
Although my primary area of specialization is urban studies, I recently published an article entitled “Fear of a Black Spider-Man: Racebending and the Color-Line in Super Hero (Re)Casting” that is now online ahead of print. In this blog post, I figured I’d talk a bit about why I wrote that piece and link it to why I think personal interests, research, and teaching are closely connected.
My article seems timely given the recent news that there will be a new Spider-Man movie starring a new actor produced under the watch of Marvel. It may also seem timely given the recent suggestion that Idris Elba play James Bond or the recent news of Mehcad Brooks playing Jimmy Olsen in the upcoming Supergirl television show. However, this is not a new issue and the issues of race, racebending, and casting is a recurring debate amongst fans of superheroes and other genres. This debate is something that I have been following as both a fan and a social scientist for the past few years. However, this is my first research article on the topic.
The origin of my work on race and superheroes goes back to my dissertation. In a chapter, I use Zorro to discuss the not-so-fine line artists, authors, and writers walk when they appropriated non-WASP culture for popular dissemination. I specifically discuss how Johnston McCulley was very careful to make Zorro of Spanish and not Mexican descent. This choice to make Zorro specifically European was not simply to tell a good story. It was a choice that was influenced by racial attitudes of the time. However, my dissertation wasn’t about Zorro or superheroes. It was about the use of “Spanish” culture in California’s built environment and visual culture.
The reason why I became interested in the Donald Glover controversy is that I enjoy comic books, superhero movies, and video games. However, as a critical social scientist, I cannot help but be persistently aware of the under-representation of different groups in popular culture. As a sociologist, I’m always using my “sociological imagination” to see the connection between aspects of everyday life to larger social realities. Essentially, I wanted to put my training and curiosity to use, while digging deeper into something I enjoy.
Another reason why I chose this project is that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to explore a different topic and employ different methods to test myself. To put it simply, I made myself write this article for the same reasons why I make my students write papers. Doing the research and writing the paper allows me to develop and test my skills and knowledge in another area of interest.
Finally, I was teaching courses on race and ethnicity every semester when I was working on this project. So reviewing the literature, conducting the research, and writing helped me in the classroom. Bringing this research into the classroom – partially since it was about Spider-Man – was enjoyable for both myself and my students. It was a fun way to show my students the connection between personal interests and research.
It’s unlikely that I’ll continue to do research on superheroes, but I think it’s an exciting time to be a fan. The news that Spider-Man can be included in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the coming Captain Marvel and Black Panther movies, as well as the recent shake up of the Avengers in the comic books are intriguing on so many levels.
Reflections on Addis Ababa, Urbanization and Globalization
I’m currently back in Addis Ababa after teaching in Gondar and visiting Bahir Dar. After spending about 2 weeks here in Ethiopia, here are some of my thoughts (or some brainstorming for future research) in my last 24 hrs here in Ethiopia.
When I first read Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums in graduate school in 2007, I noticed a table using United Nations data that suggested at 99.4% of Ethiopia’s urban population resided in “slums.” In comparison, neighboring Sudan had 85.7%. Another point of comparison for my friends who are reading this blog entry, Turkey had a 42.6% slum population. At the time, I couldn’t help but think that the percentage for Ethiopia made no sense, unless one is only using very Western definitions of urbanization and slums. Informal settlement would be a better term. This is why AbdouMaliq Simone in his introduction to Urban Africa discusses the importance of local social practice and organization as the lens to use when examining cities in Africa. If one uses terms such as percent urbanized a great deal of nuance is overlooked. For example, according to the World Bank, Ethiopia’s urban population had only grown from 15% in 2000 to 18% (of ~91.7 million) in 2013. Addis Ababa represents about half that percentage. Similarly, according to the World Bank the percent of Ethiopia’s urban population in the same time period with improved sanitation only improved from 22% to 27%. In other words, there appears to not have been a great deal of “urbanization” or “development” is taking place given those numbers.
However, there have been dramatic urban transformations in recent years. For instance, Wendel Cox at New Geography has looked that the evolving urban form of Addis Ababa. There clearly is urbanization taking place. There are unavoidable new construction projects in many areas of the city, especially around Bole. Streets are torn up for Chinese backed transit projects such as a new boulevard in commemoration of the African Union’s 50th anniversary in 2013 and a massive (elevated) light rail project projected to open in 2015. The Chinese Communications Construction Company was given a 1.5 billion dollar contract for the light rail project. More recently a Turkish firm was given a major road construction contract. In other words, there’s a massive transformation going on that is re-shaping the city. It’s not uncommon to see “shacks” adjacent to new buildings. I’ve seen several vacated communities of shacks made of earth, corrugated steel, and other materials next to new development of multi-story concrete apartment buildings as one travels from Bole to the old Piazza area of Addis.
There’s a very interesting story regarding globalization and urbanization here to be told (or will be unfolding), since outside of Bole, there isn’t a strong (Western) multinational corporation presence in the visual urban landscape. However, behind the scenes, in the periphery, factories by Chinese and Turkish firms are being built. Billboards for Arçelik appliances in English, or a Turkish restaurant with Ethiopian staff blasting American hip-hop, as well as authentic Chinese banquet hall style restaurants and shoe shine boys have greeting me in Mandarin reveal an amazing social-cultural tapestry (amidst the extreme inequality) as well as the dynamics of the so-called South-South economic expansion.
Summer Travels and Teaching Overseas
Last summer I taught at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey and this summer I’ll be headed to the University of Gondar in Ethiopia. As I get ready for departure, I want to do a blog post on teaching overseas.
Although, I cringe when people call me a “teacher” (since I’m a researcher as well), teaching is very important to me. I enjoy being at a teaching oriented institution. However, I’m often jealous of friends and colleagues at research institutions who have resources and schedules that make going abroad easier. In the absence of those resources, teaching overseas during the summer is a great opportunity to both develop myself as a teacher and conduct research. Importantly, working with students overseas makes me something other than a tourist. While, I don’t horribly mind being a tourist (sometimes), being one certainly limits you. As a social scientist, it’s important to have first hand knowledge that isn’t filtered through pre-packaged vacations. I don’t want to just visit places, I want to get to know as much about a society as possible.
I teach and write on globalization and cities, as such, being able to live and work in other parts of the world (even if briefly) is vital to my intellectual and professional growth. As Donald Hall writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the benefits of teaching abroad include “important pedagogical, research-related, and life lessons.” It allows me to bring experiences back into the classroom and it informs my research writing. Overseas teaching not only gives me intimate knowledge of places and people, but forces me to critically think about the material I teach or write about.
From the standpoint of research, I was able to meet with colleagues (old and new) to share ideas last summer in Istanbul. I also learned a great deal from my students. My time there led to two article manuscripts and a new perspective on the city’s dramatic growth since my first visit in 2006 (and subsequent visits in 2008 and 2011). Perhaps most interesting was being able to teach an environmental sociology course amidst the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul.
This summer, I’ll be visiting Ethiopia for the first time. This trip will greatly support my ongoing work on global urban development issues. While most of my time will be in Gondar, I’m looking forward to seeing Addis Ababa. As an urbanist, it’s always interesting to see different types of cities. I’m hoping to learn about the city and the country, as well as examine the connections that shape different types of urbanism around the world.