Many humanities journals still select papers for publication in this manner (UIP has several journals that follow this practice), but Aaron J. Barlow, an associate professor of English at the College of Technology of the City University of New York, argues that “blind peer review is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet.” On the panel of another session, others such as Illinois State University English professor and Kairos editor Cheryl E. Ball, offered up alternatives to the traditional peer review process. As Ball notes,

Peer reviewers don’t need rubrics. They need good ways to communicate.

It looks like change may come sooner rather than later, and like communication, change is usually a good thing.

Best wishes to you and yours for a bright and snazzy New Year!

*Please ignore the deflated flamingo in the background. He does not represent the true meaning of the season.

All woodland creatures are welcome at UIP.

We've got snowflakes inside the building!

This one looks dangerous.

A penguin gets ready to sled down the hill.

A little mouse hunting for food. Cardinals look on bemusedly.

This penguin is ready for winter! After sledding, he'll read some UIP books.

Season’s Greetings, everyone!

Swartz has been involved in numerous efforts to make more information available free to more people. But the charges he faces make no distinction between his possible philosophical goals and any other kind of theft.

As of this blog post, Swartz has yet to comment, but he has many supporters online who have been circulating a petition that has so far collected more than 15,000 signatures on his behalf. There are some serious charges being leveled at Swartz, to be sure. But I have to wonder, did he download any articles from UIP journals?

PS All new and past content for JEGP may be found through JSTOR.

PPS Clicking on the above NY Times story link won’t count towards your monthly allotment of digital content.

“the tone and prose should follow the usual academic standards of politeness and respect in phrasing. We recognize that these are not consistently met in this particular issue…. We regret any deviation from our usual standards.”

The issue includes discussions on evolution, creation, and intelligent design, which are certainly hot-button topics. But it was the disclaimer that caused the most furor, with some scholars calling for a boycott of Synthese. There’s no word yet on how the regular editors of the journal will respond.

Might I suggest that they don’t include a disclaimer in their response?

RT @slate: RT @nytimes: kidz diss blogs 4 #fb and #twitter http://slate.me/g0nTzG 

For those between the ages of 34 and 73:

So apparently youngsters are moving in droves to sites like Facebook and Twitter in large part because they’re easier to use and require less writing. 

Meanwhile, the rise of blogging among the 34-to-73 set continues apace, driven by our need to express ourselves in a less-fragmented online medium that allows more than 140 characters.

More evidence that while everything changes, nothing really does. I am reminded of a favorite tweet from a fellow attendee at last week’s TOC (O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing for those of you not wearing skinny pants). She wrote, “Pardon me, but is anyone here under 25?”

Of course the real question is, will McCabe and Snyder eventually publish their paper via an open-access journal or a subscription-based journal?

In 2006, UIP published University of California, Santa Barbara professor Jane Duran’s Eight Women Philosophers. Recently, Prof. Duran contributed to the Winter 2009 issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education with an article titled “Education and Feminist Aesthetics: Gauguin and the Exotic.” Prof. Duran’s “Margaret Fuller and Transcendental Feminism” was subsequently published in the Spring 2010 issue of The Pluralist.

Speaking of The Pluralist, a large portion of the Fall 2010 issue will be devoted to Donna R. Gabaccia’s Coss Dialogue lecture, “Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?,” and the response papers that were presented at this year’s Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. A professor in the department of history at the University of Minnesota, Gabaccia has co-edited two books for UIP: Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States (with Fraser M. Ottanelli) in 2005 and American Dreaming, Global Realities (with Vicki L. Ruiz) in 2006.

Prof. Leta E. Miller (of UC, Santa Cruz) is also a familiar name for both books and journals. Prof. Miller co-authored, with Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison (2006), a book about Harrison’s life, works, and his place in the history of twentieth-century American music, as well as Composing a World: Lou Harrison, Musical Wayfarer (2004). And now, Prof. Miller’s article, “Elmer Keeton and His Bay Area Negro Chorus: Creating an Artistic Identity in Depression-Era San Francisco,” will appear in the Winter 2010 issue of Black Music Research Journal.

I can’t neglect to mention Michael Hicks, composer, professor of music at Brigham Young University, outgoing-editor extraordinaire for American Music, and author of several UIP books (Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions [1999]; Henry Cowell, Bohemian [2002]; Mormonism and Music: A History [2003]). Word on the street is that he’s working on another book project with UIP, but until that book’s published, be sure to check out his swan song editorial, “The Threshing Floor,” in the Winter 2010 issue of American Music (for a taste, check out Heather’s blog post from June). Here’s hoping that he’ll pop up in UIP journals again soon.

So this blog post is getting very long. I know that I’ve missed many authors, many connections, but you get my point. It’s fun to work with authors that you might not have gotten the chance to work with otherwise. That’s why I hope that one day, my colleagues in the books department will get to work with Bill Ayers.

*It’s so intense!

In the December 2008 issue of Radical Teacher, Prof. Ayers contributed a piece on the pedagogy of questioning to the “Forum on Radical Teaching Now,” the overall theme for the issue. According to Prof. Ayers, in order to liberate and humanize education, students and teachers must “remove that distorted, congenial mask of compliance. You must change.”

And the 2009 inaugural issue of Packingtown Review, with its editorial office located at UIC, published Prof. Ayers’s “What I Might Have Said… ,” a commentary in which he recounts what would have been the focus of his talk at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on March 15, 2008, if the university had not rescinded their invitation due to university and public commentary and anonymous threats. In the piece, he suggests that we “try now to create open spaces in our schools and our various communities,” and later builds on that theme:

Here everyone will live in search of rather than in accordance with or in accommodation to. Here we will join one another and our democratic futures can be born.

Both contributions are available in print and online (click the links above). If you’re not able to get your hands on a copy of either Radical Teacher or Packingtown Review, subscribe now!

And best of luck to you in your retirement, Prof. Ayers. I imagine we’ve not heard the last from you.