[NOTE: This is the another installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] When I originally posted my ranking of Black Mirror episodes at the beginning of this year, I didn’t include “White Christmas” in part because, in the grand architecture of the series, “White…
Read More[NOTE: This is the another installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] “White Bear” (S2E2) is one of only two Black Mirror episodes that I use in class. (The other is “Be Right Back,” which I reviewed here.) In my regular, face-to-face classes, the…
Read MoreWhat follows is the conclusion to a three-part series of posts detailing a pedagogical experiment that I tried out for the first time this term, which I call “An Experiment in the Redistribution of Grades” (ERG). You should read all the details of ERG in the original post here, but the basic idea was to give students…
Read MoreThis is another installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know! [Note from Dr. J: What follows is a guest post from Jeffrey Gower, a brilliant philosopher, dear friend, and VAP in Philosophy at Wabash College. Like me, Jeff also teaches the “White Bear” episode of Black Mirror in…
Read MoreThis is another installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know! [Note from Dr. J: What follows is Part 2 of a two-part guest post from Jeffrey Gower. You can read Part One here.] Near the end of “White Bear,” as Victoria sits bound to a…
Read MoreSince I posted my list of tech book recommendations a few weeks ago, several people have asked me to explain why I describe myself as a “techno-optimist.” I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to give a quick account (and defense) of my position. But, first, a few preliminary remarks about…
Read MoreRecently, I took part in an excellent interdisciplinary symposium (hosted by Ted George and Kristi Sweet of the Texas A&M Philosophy Department) focused on “Hermeneutics, the Humanities, and the Future of Interpretation.” All of the presentations were great, but the one that has stuck in my craw, and which I suspect I will not be able to pry loose for quite some…
Read MoreThis is a follow-up to my post last May, in which I explained a new pedagogical device I planned to introduce in my classes this semester. I called it “An Experiment in the Redistribution of Grades” and, as of two weeks ago, the experiment has begun. The basic idea is that I am giving students an opportunity to…
Read MoreThere’s an old dad-joke that goes something like this: A bear jumps out of the woods, in a rage, and starts chasing two hikers. They both start running for their lives, but then one of them stops to put on his running shoes. “What are you doing?!,” the other hiker exclaims, “You can’t outrun a…
Read MoreWARNING: If you still believe that academia is a meritocracy, that higher ed assessment instruments are useful (or unbiased), that grades motivate students to learn, or that grades accurately reflect students’ performance, this essay is not for you. Now, let’s talk about grades. No matter how fastidious one is about one’s course design, every prof…
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