May 2008 Archives

A silver lining...

Not long ago, James Twitchell, a professor at my alma mater, admitted to plagiarism.  It was weird for me, because Twitchell's work had been one of my earliest introductions to the study of consumer culture as a legitimate academic endeavor and one of the inspirations that set me down the path to CMS. It's also weird because one of the people he plagiarized was Grant McCracken, an anthropologist and CMS affiliate whom I admire greatly, whose work was one of the reasons why I wound up at CMS.

I've been following the blogosphere's reaction pretty closely... This situation is rough, depressing, and more than awkward. I am trying to find the silver lining, though, by trying to look at this as what we (formally) at the front of a classroom refer to as a "teaching moment." What follows is a hopefully productive bit of observation about the citations and blogging.

Interviewing and Learning with Henry

Finally I understand it clearly. I can know say I have a fundamental understanding of what the New Media Literacy project is after having a very informative interview with the principal Investigator Henry Jenkins. We had a very interesting lengthy interview, which I will post up in audio format, but due to its length I will also post highlights of the interview in a transcribed version.

Henry Chat1.mp3
Henry Chat 2.mp3
What is your name and what is your role in NML?
I am Henry Jenkins. I guess I'm principal Investigator, which means that I'm supposed to do the vision thing. I helped to spark the effort and helped to identify some of the socials skills and cultural competencies we were working towards. I work closely with every member of the team and I'm part of the brainstorming intellectual development around the materials we are working with. But mainly the most important role is I'm chief propagandist and missionary for NML. I go out and give talks, I write on the blog, I write articles my job is to get what we do here at MIT is visible the larger community where its going to make a difference.