http://expostfacto.historytools.org Unsolicited Historical Commentary Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:49:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Welcome History 302 Students! Ex Post Facto includes several of my blog posts that are optional reading. For your convenience, here is a list of the relevant posts, in order: Thoreau's Principles Early American Murder Narratives Enlightenment and Its Discontents Franklin, Paine, and the Enlightenment Emerson's Giant Margaret Fuller's "Great Lawsuit" Thoreau and Disobedience You are not required to make ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/problems-in-american-thought/ I don't normally blog on current events, but (thanks to my wife Ruth), I've found two journalistic productions that work wonderfully together to illuminate the ties among the mortgage crisis, the larger credit crisis, and the potential economic meltdown that we have been facing for some time. I think that ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/making-moral-sense-of-the-credit-crisis/ I normally don't go in for "self help" or faddish systems, but I've been using David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) system for a couple of years, and I've found it to be a highly effective tool not so much for "time management" as for improving my productivity and efficiency ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/getting-things-done-tips-for-college-students/ I wouldn't be writing about something so banal as email if I didn't think that I'd found a set of useful tools for coping with a constant influx of messages.  After years of being frustrated by having to spend too much time managing my email, I have finally hit on ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/why-email-is-no-longer-the-bane-of-my-existence/ I've recently started using a new social bookmarking service called Diigo to collect and share online resources with my students. (Diigo has features similar to del.icio.us, which I have also used for teaching, but it's substantially more powerful.) The appealing thing about Diigo is that it allows me ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/diigo-as-a-teaching-tool/ (This posting is a companion to my essay on "Blogging for Your Students" in the May 2007 issue of the AHA Perspectives.) SETTING UP A BLOG If you would like to set up a blog, there are many blogging services to choose from. Ex Post Facto, for instance, runs on WordPress, ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/blogging-for-your-students/ During the spring semester of 2008, I will not be making regular use of this blog for my courses. I will return to regular posting in the fall of 2008. In the meantime, I may be making a few more general posts. --DV http://expostfacto.historytools.org/hiatus/ Reading: Curtis White, The Spirit of Disobedience (Sausalito: PoliPointPress, 2007), 69-119. This book is a work of criticism, and, as such, it forces us to confront ugliness. But White clearly also intends it as a work of hope. (Ignoring ugliness, surrendering to it, is an act of despair -- ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/curtis-white-the-spirit-of-disobedience-3/ Reading: Curtis White, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work (Sausalito: PoliPointPress, 2007), 19-68. This selection of White's book includes two chapters, which I will take up separately. In chapter 2, "Imagination Dead Imagine," White begins to formulate a "spirit of ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/curtis-white-the-spirit-of-disobedience-2/ Reading: Curtis White, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work (Sausalito: PoliPointPress, 2007), 1-18. (By way of introduction to the book, see also my brief interview of Curtis White.) Curtis White, writer and Distinguished Professor of English at Illinois State University, ... http://expostfacto.historytools.org/introduction-to-curtis-whites-the-spirit-of-disobedience/