As a round-up of the academic stuff I have achieved over the past year, purely for my own benefit and in anticipation of like-minded posts from my Twitter followers with whom I would like to engage in group collective congratulations, here's a list! First, and most importantly, I have been doing my job as a Lecturer in Literature at the University of Lincoln for a year.
An argument by anecdote. My prized Christmas present this year (which I obtained by selling a load of old electronics that I didn't want/need) was a pair of Parrot Zik headphones. They're wonderful. They paired with my Android phone flawlessly and they also connected with superb ease to my Linux installation which is my primary setup. However, I have now spent several hours trying to get them to work under Windows 7. Will they pair?
I was very pleased, late last year, to have been invited by Jim Mussell to contribute to a Digital Forum in the Literature journal, the Journal of Victorian Culture , on Open Access publishing.
Dear "top journal": 1 year and 4 months to review is too long was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on December 20, 2013.
I have a new review of Belfiore, Eleonora, and Anna Upchurch, eds., Humanities in the Twenty-first Century: Beyond Utility and Markets (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) now published in Textual Practice . You can also read the Author Submitted Manuscript version, should you so wish.
Today marked the publication of the Government and RCUK responses to the UK's BIS Committee Inquiry into Open Access.
I'm pleased to say that I was able to participate in the first meeting of the HEFCE Expert Reference Group on Open Access Monographs a few weeks ago. Having confirmed with HEFCE, I can also now make available the minutes of that meeting on the 4th November and would be interested to hear from anybody with comments by either email or Twitter.
One of the aspects that people seem to disagree with most, when I write or talk about open access, is that there is a problem with journal “prestige”. Overly-ventriloquizing on behalf of the stereotypical conversant in this debate, he or she usually accepts (as do I) that, in an economy of journals dealing with niche subjects, some will be held in esteem and that others will not fare so well.
As I'm preparing to speak tomorrow at the Literature off the Page conference, I was, as usual, creating a set of slides for my talk. As I'm looking at the novels of Jennifer Egan, I decided to create some diagrams that show clearly the features of the novels that I am referring to. However, I also decided that this would be a good opportunity to upload this kind of material to Figshare for the first time.
It gives me great pleasure to announce that, should all go to plan, my book Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in April 2014. This book presents thorough, comprehensive and previously unaddressed philosophical and ethical readings of Thomas Pynchon's fiction through Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Theodor W. Adorno.
