Looking for slightly academic community blogs about humanities, social sciences, current events, and cultural studies.

April 21, 2004 8:50 PM

Does anyone know of any MeFi-like "community blogs" that are oriented towards humanities/social sciences academic-ish discussion, including current events and especially cultural studies?
posted by statisticalpurposes to Society & Culture (13 answers total)

Crooked Timber
posted by amberglow at 9:20 PM on April 21, 2004

oops, but it's not community really, more of a group blog. It's good tho. Maybe one of their links?
posted by amberglow at 9:21 PM on April 21, 2004

I second Crooked Timber. It may not be a "community blog" like MeFi but it certainly feels like the center of the academic blogging community, and its large amount of links to academic blogs make it feel something of a community, along with extensive commentary on posts.
posted by Gnatcho at 9:44 PM on April 21, 2004

Yeah, I was going to say Crooked Timer as well. That's what comes to mind. But I find myself wanting more specificity. Especially in a "social sciences" and "academic" context, the term "cultural studies" is pretty broad. Can you elaborate or specify? Sociology? Gender Studies? Anthropology? Linguistics? Ethnic Studies? Folklore? What academic framework do you have in mind?
posted by scarabic at 10:35 PM on April 21, 2004

Response by poster: I was looking for both general suggestions ("social sciences") as well as whatever specifics people came up with. I am most interested in finding things like cognitive psychology, pop-cultural studies, and visual culture studies in particular.

Basically, is there a blog out there where people might discuss Foucault, Baudrillard or Stuart Hall. The only things I've come across so far are school-specific newsgroups.
posted by statisticalpurposes at 10:49 PM on April 21, 2004

You might find what you want at Barbelith. There are a lot of frighteningly intelligent and knowledgeable people there.
posted by Nick Jordan at 1:54 AM on April 22, 2004

A&L Daily is a linkblog (sorta) that wears its political leanings on its sleeve, and it's not discussion oriented, but it's a goldmine of good stuff.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:24 AM on April 22, 2004

Heya - if you want to join up on Barbelith send me an e-mail. We've had a bit of a spate of weird activity from some slightly dodgy people recently and have had to restrict membership while we try and resolve the problem. tom [at] plasticbag [dot] org
posted by barbelith at 3:53 AM on April 22, 2004

Thanks, Tom.
posted by Gyan at 4:40 AM on April 22, 2004

From the barbelith FAQ:

When starting threads, please try to title them as clearly and concisely as possible. For example, if you are starting a thread about a specific artist in the Music forum, it is best to make sure that the artist's name is in the title rather than just some in-joke or osbcure lyrical reference...

This makes life easy when we want to go back and find the thread months later, trying to remember something someone said about whatever it is we were talking about. Which happens more than any of us like to admit.

God forbid we should do anything like that around here!

Ahem. Anyway, barbelith looks great -- thanks for the pointer.
posted by languagehat at 8:57 AM on April 22, 2004

Response by poster: Yeah, I've found a lot of good stuff on A&L Daily, but don't they seem to have a disproportionate amount of links to articles about Orwell, Dennett, and atheism?

Barbelith looks like it has a lot of potential. Thanks everyone!
posted by statisticalpurposes at 10:16 AM on April 22, 2004

edge.org (whose often kooky contributors are to be taken with grano salis though)
posted by 111 at 11:21 AM on April 22, 2004

Grand Text Auto is a group blog, run by a professor at Georgia Tech that I work with. It's got an cultural studies slant on interactive fiction, video games, and general technology. Some smart stuff.

Also been reading at Barbelith as well.
posted by zpousman at 11:40 AM on April 22, 2004