Tenure as a Risk-Taking Venture

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I want to offer some context about my particular experience with tenure and promotion, because George Mason University (GMU) has a new tenure policy that allows candidates to go up for tenure either on the basis of “genuine excellence in research” or “genuine excellence in teaching.” In either situation, the other criteria are also held to a high standard (for example, “genuine excellence in teaching” also demands “highly competent research”).

Building and Sharing (When You’re Supposed to be Teaching)

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Much of what I do in my classroom doesn’t necessary count as “digital humanities.” I certainly don’t present my classes as digital humanities classes to my students—or to my colleagues, for that matter.

If anything, I simply say that we’ll be doing things in our classes they’ve never done before in college, let alone a literature class. And literature is mostly what I teach. Granted, I teach literature that lends itself to digital work: electronic literature, postmodern fiction, and even videogames. We do a great deal of close readings in these classes. It’s familiar, even comfortable territory for my students. But we also—and this is what surprises my students—spend much of our time building and sharing.

Msample on Journal of Digital Humanities

Tenure as a Risk-Taking Venture

Building and Sharing (When You’re Supposed to be Teaching)