break from blogging

I'm thinking of shutting down the blog...life and writing have gotten the upper hand...as well as a new office "Director the UCI Humanities Center": I don't want to compromise the voice here, but I also don't want my readers to mistake any statements I make here as emanating from that office.

Thank you to my readers! And feel free to email me and send me stuff you think will be of interest. I will do my best to reply and respond. I hope to finish the manuscript -- Modernity and its Discontents by December!

Wiki of Academic Blogs

Check out this Wiki of academic blogs created by Harry at Crooked Timber. It gives you an idea of the warp and weave of who is blogging in academia. While I wouldn't go so far as to call it, as Brad Delong did, "An Invisible College" it is something like an invisible network of academics who are choosing to "publish" outside of the main channels of professional life. I was recently forced to listen to some off-handed disparagement of blogs and blogging from academics and it occurred to me that this is primarily a defensive position against the development of a new form of academic exchange. It really may change the shape of professionalization, but for now it remains a para-university to me...but a very, very interesting one.