I mentioned in the previous post that, before I started teaching for the first time, I asked some colleagues for advice about how to establish myself as an authority in the classroom. At that point, before I’d ever walked into a classroom as an instructor, I phrased the problem in terms of “controlling” the room. [...]
Tags: history, students, teaching
Posted in academic | 1 Comment »>I’ve been trying for a few days to put together my thoughts on the extremely complicated issue of classroom authority; in the end, I’m breaking it into a couple of parts, to make it more manageable. Part One is a story, because telling stories is one of my favorite ways to make sense
At the [...]
Tags: authority, gender, teaching
Posted in academic | 5 Comments »>One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a series of articles for an upcoming encyclopedia of world history; I’m writing a set of short pieces for them about various aspects of science and technology in the ancient and early medieval periods. Two of my assigned articles deal with Indian mathematics [...]
Tags: bias, history of science, teaching
Posted in academic, writing and editing | 3 Comments »>Yesterday, in my lecture class (Science in the United States), we ended up having a bit of a class discussion about the borders and boundaries of science. I love this type of question, and I think that we learn a lot about our own assumptions and categories when we try and work through [...]
Tags: boundaries, history, science, teaching
Posted in academic | 5 Comments »>There’s something singularly irritating about coming in to campus on a rainy Saturday, hoping to get some work done, only to discover that you no longer have after-hours key-card access to your building. We’ve sorted it out, finally–it looks like my building access was accidentally listed as expiring at the end of fall semester, [...]
Tags: comedy of errors, flu, teaching
Posted in academic, personal | No Comments »>I’ve had a string of days full of tiny irritations–each little thing is insignificant on its own, but as they accumulate I start to feel like I’m being nibbled to death by cats. I’ve locked myself out of my campus office five times in two days, locked myself out of the house once, and [...]
Tags: berkeley, comedy of errors, powerpoint, teaching, teaching evaluations
Posted in academic, personal | 6 Comments »>If you’ve missed the recent, er, “bright gumdrop unicorns” academic-blog fuss-up, you’re a luckier person than me. That said, I’m going to drag you into it. Short version: sometimes academics with tenure-track positions apply for other tenure-track positions. Some academics, presumably ones with tenured positions, think that these people are selfish and [...]
Tags: academic craziness, job market, teaching
Posted in academic | 2 Comments »>Yesterday evening, at the gym, I was changing back into my clothes when I noticed a five- or six-year-old girl staring at me. My locker is in the downstairs kids-allowed locker room, as opposed to the upstairs grownups-only one, so having kids around is pretty normal. The staring part, I’ll admit, was a [...]
Tags: body image, feminism, teaching
Posted in personal | 2 Comments »>I’ve mentioned my courses already, but in case anyone’s interested, the course websites are up and running.
History 30A: The History of Premodern Science
History 103S/103D: Science and Fiction in Twentieth Century America
If any Berkeley students are reading and are interested in taking either of these classes, welcome! History 30A is currently full, but we expect [...]
Posted in academic | 1 Comment »>Somehow, it’s August already, and the start of the semester is rushing towards us. I have two courses at Berkeley this fall: a lecture course on the history of premodern science (the same course from last fall) and an undergraduate seminar. The seminar should be interesting–last fall, I taught a seminar on Darwin [...]
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