PDS on the Rhetoric of Blogging: Ideas and Advice

I’ve been asked to share my experience with blogging to instructors at the University of Kentucky.  What better strategy than to go meta and write a blog post about blogging?  In a year (allegedly) the University of Kentucky Writing Program will spearhead a significant curricular shift, which is part of the university’s larger general education [...]

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The Well Wrought Urn: One Year Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of The Well Wrought Urn.  According to WordPress, just over eight thousand people have visited, many of them stumbling on the site via google searches, no doubt.  Thanks to all of the loyal readers, all six or seven of  you!

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The Problem With “Stuff White People Like”

One of the fastest-growing and most popular blogs online right now is Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like. For those unfamiliar, Stuff White People Like consists of expostulations and riffs on cherished white practices: buying expensive water bottles, raving about the film Juno, supporting Obama, driving hybrid cars, and backing environmentalist causes. Lander crafts a [...]

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Can Blogging Derail an Academic Career?

When I started this blog several months ago, I cited my status as an unproven academic as the chief reason for my reticence to blog.  Ultimately I decided that “if I don’t blog, I may never be in position to accept an assistant professor position, a career goal that I once believed blogging would potentially [...]

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Blogging and the Triumph of Consumer Capitalism

Just about once a week, I have the same reoccurring epiphany: the Internet exists solely to make money. The event that led me to that realization today, my stumbling across Thisisby.us, has effectively split my online writing persona. But better yet, it’s encouraged me to create a distinction between things I want to write because [...]

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