I've been engaged recently in a discussion on Twitter as to the appropriateness of Creative Commons licensing for Open Access journals wishing to remove permission barriers, ie. become "libre". It seems there is a real problem as to how to define academic work. My original instinct was to go with a CC-BY-NC license as this would allow redistribution, use etc. in a context that was non-commercial.

Today is the day that we've all been dreading waiting for. The final unveiling of the UK Higher Education White Paper. It's expected later today, but here's some early reactions. The Guardian runs with "'Naming and shaming' for degrees with poor jobs record", which gets to the core of the matter: The BBC are going with "Universities shake-up eyes greater competition", focusing on a fight for proportion of places.

In the spirit of writing up my recent conference visits, I thought I would share a rundown of the conference entitled "Enslavement: Colonial Appropriations, Apparitions, Remembrances, 1750-present day" hosted by the Centre for Studies in Literature at the University of Portsmouth. This report is incomplete as my notes for the day were sporadic, this being so far from my usual field, but I'll put up what I can reconstruct.

A quick roundup of goings on from the final day of the 8th Biennial Symbiosis Conference! Again, the summaries are potted and do great damage to the nuances of the originals, but are presented here for interest. Apologies to Elif Arrmbruster; my notes on your paper went walkies and so I felt unable to write up a review! Many thanks to Chris Gair for organizing this event, which was thoroughly enjoyable in every respect. Richard E.

As before, I will present here a brief rundown of the conference panels I attended with comments as they occurred to me! Obviously, in such reductive accounts, I do great damage to the content of the papers, but I do so in the hope that it will be of interest. If I have misunderstood any authors, I will, of course, be happy to make corrections. Julia Stetler (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) Julia's paper was on William F.

As with my previous posts on International Pynchon Week 2010, I thought I would try to take a little time on each day of this conference to write a few words with some thoughts. Symbiosis is a conference designed to study Anglo-American relations, be that trans-atlantic, post-national, in literature and in history. Having held previous events in London, Boston and (I believe) Edinburgh, this year's conference takes place in Glasgow.

After the success of the piece that I co-wrote with Jennifer M. Jones for The Guardian last week, I have had several requests to read the original version from which the final published version was excerpted. When the press writes disparagingly of dangerous university radicalisation, it should be remembered that radicalism sits among the core functions of the University.

The Excursions editorial board are pleased to announce the launch of Excursions , Volume 2, Issue 1: Virus (2011). Issue: Virus See also: Archive / CFP Featured image copyright Luke Jerram, 2011. Used with permission. Excursions, Vol. 2, Issue 1: Virus (2011) was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on June 21, 2011.

Call for Papers ‘States of Emergence, States of Emergency’ Deadline for articles: 15th August 2011 Benjamin’s remarks on states of emergency have been fundamental to an understanding of political life which considers the roles played by threat, danger and fear in processes of political control.

An announcement that I will be speaking at the "Symbiosis" conference at the University of Glasgow on the 24th of June giving a paper entitled "Whose Line is it Anyway? Geographical specificity of Enlightenment in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon". Featured image by jbachman01 under a CC-BY-ND license. Conference paper: Geo-specificity of Enlightenment in Mason &

A quick post to mark the publication, co-authored with Jennifer M Jones, of "Taking Back the University"; a piece that gives a quick rundown of radical alternative re-imaginings of the University over the past year. The piece was written collaboratively in Google Documents originally under the title "Angry Young Academics", with each of us blasting down thoughts before restructuring.