Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with scholarly

Courting Ellen West

crush-onastick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:45:28 -0800

“The Case of Ellen West” was published by the Swiss psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger, in 1944–1945 and (as far as I can tell) appeared in English translation in 1958. Anyone know where I can get a copy? Usual search suspects are turning up only the Carl Rogers article, "Ellen West and Loneliness", in the Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry (which I've requested via interlibrary loan) and some other scholarly pubs on Rogers (behind the usual pay walls).

World-wide Journal Club?

The White Hat — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:22:52 -0800

Is there a MeFi-like site that deals exclusively in academic writing? Lunit's post today reminded me of how much I enjoy reading journal articles from fields outside my own. Then it set me to wondering if there was a single aggregator of scholarly articles from multiple disciplines-- a best-of site for science, engineering, and humanities writing. Is there such a thing on the tubes?

Place to discuss scholarly publications online?

ivarley — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:36:34 -0800

Is there a good place to discuss scholarly publications online? Peer reviewed journals and conference publications are the lifeblood of academic research. Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) provides a decent search of this domain, but what I'd love to find is a universal message board where scholarly articles can be pinned and discussed at length, ideally with a rating & filtering system a la slashdot.

Is there such a thing? If not, can Google build it? :)

I need scholarly research regarding online social networking!

pontouf — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:45:12 -0800

I need to find scholarly articles for a podcast assignment. My topic is online social networking. Advice? For my communications class I have to come up with a 4-6 minute podcast. I chose online social networking (I've been following it for some time now - since the time of bbs). I plan on spending half the time discussing the past and present of this topic and then predicting the future of it based on the trends/powers that be. My hope is that you can offer me some assistance in finding scholarly resources for this project (I am required to use two). Scholarly means it must have citations and be based on actual research such as that done by experts, grad students, professors etc. I do have some resources available to me as a student (through the Univ. of WA library system) but maybe the wide world of mefi'ers can point me in different / better direction.

Who are authors writing on the impact of the Internet as a communications medium?

Jaybo — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:55:17 -0800

Who are scholars and/or popular authors writing on the impact of the Internet as a communications medium, specifically those talking about how the Internet removes previous time and/or space biases that are inevitably present in other forms of communication technology (telephone, television, radio, etc.)? I'm writing a paper on the ways that the Internet is supplanting television as the dominant communications medium in our society. To keep it manageable, I'm specifically comparing TV and the Internet as broadcast methods for video (although I may talk about other forms of "broadcasting" including RSS, blogs, etc.)

The essay's starting point is last summer's Live 8 concerts which caused one reporter to observe: "Television seemed shockingly old-fashioned in how it followed Saturday's worldwide concert for poverty relief. AOL's coverage was so superior, it may one day be seen as a historical marker in drawing people to computers instead of TV screens for big events"

Although my main question is asking for authors writing about how the Internet is fundamentally erasing space and time barriers that exist in communication currently, I'd also be interested in any suggestions of topics/issues/examples to cover. YouTube, the role of "The Long Tail", convergence, copyright and clearance, unsuccessful TV shows gaining large viewerships when released online, costs of production - ie. Rocketboom, the role of memes in online broadcasting are just a few examples of things on my "brainstorm" list.

Thanks in advance!

Academic writer's block.

RogerB — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:45:03 -0800

Academic writer's block: tips, strategies, experiences, psychology for dealing with it? I am working on writing a Ph.D. dissertation, and my writing is going haltingly at best; there seems to be a constant threat of becoming stuck, blocked. So, I'd love to hear any tips or strategies for dealing with academic writer's block. (I'm in a humanities field in which the dissertation will be more about having interesting and original ideas, and writing a compelling argument about well-known texts, than about reporting new findings based on research. So this dissertation is, primarily, a large writing project, unlike in many other fields where the research being reported is at least as important as the writing.)

My writing style up to this point doesn't seem to be a good model going forward. I've usually written to deadline, in spurts of intense activity, after incubating an idea for a while beforehand. And I am not afflicted with logorrhea, like some academics I envy; I tend to write too little and too densely, not to overwrite and have to edit down to a page count. Still, I've produced short papers that I'm happy with, and published; and I am excited about my dissertation idea, so self-confidence would not seem to be the problem so much as procrastination and blocking.

More generally, I'd like to hear suggestions about becoming a productive scholarly writer. It seems like there's a big transition at the ABD stage, where a student who's used to writing smaller papers to given assignments and deadlines is faced with the requirement to produce longer works, write relatively constantly, and work with much less supervision for the rest of his or her career. Suddenly, becoming a productive academic seems a lot like becoming a productive writer of any other kind. How do people make this transition without getting stuck?

Let's assume that the rest of my specifics (topic, advisors, teaching and other responsibilities, institutional arrangements) are outside the discussion; I'm more interested in tips on becoming a productive scholarly writer than in getting therapy for my specific case. I've read a lot of books on this topic, and found most of them not very helpful (beyond delivering the welcome reminder that you need to sit down and try to write every day), but recommendations are still welcome.

Scholarly-but-accessible reference about Chinese history and culture.

enrevanche — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 20:09:07 -0800

SinoFilter: I'm looking for a scholarly-but-accessible book (or books) about Chinese history and culture. (Web site recommendations also welcome.) I have done some Googling and poking around amazon.com, but frankly my ignorance is so deep that I have no good way of evaluating the quality of what I'm finding.