Monthly Archives: September 2013

Hometown Heroes

Looks like Martha Burtis and I are hometown heroes thanks to ds106. Reporter Lindley Estes of the Free Lance-Star published an edited version of a post from yesterday’s UMW Newsletter EagleEye announcing ds106 as one of five winners of the Reclaim Open Learning … Continue reading

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Crimes of Terror: Piracy and Slave Revolts

Over the last two weeks the True Crime seminar Paul Bond and I are co-teaching has started to catch its groove. As of last week groups of three students have been tasked with introducing the readings, running the class discussion, … Continue reading

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(Assignment) Banking a ds106 Thank You

Jim, I have to thank you (and your cohorts) for the awesome ds106 assignment bank. http://assignments.ds106.us My digital media students and I have been using it as an absolutely vital resource since the beginning and it continues to delight and … Continue reading

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Decentering Syndication or, a Push Away from RSS

Yesterday Steve Covello tweeted a post at wpmu.org my way. @jimgroom New WPMU hub/spoke architecture: http://t.co/x0RLL0qBPr — Steve Covello (@apescience) September 17, 2013 I was prepared  to read about a premium suite of plugins that I could buy for the … Continue reading

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An Invitation to a Hanging

Literally! We have been talking extensively about public execution narratives in the True Crime I am teaching, which made this scanned invitation to the 1875 hanging of California bandit Tiburcio Vasquez pretty freaking timely and awesome. Thank you, Tom Woodward! … Continue reading

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Benjamin Franklin a Serial Killer?

While looking up information regard Benjamin Franklin’s short newspaper article from 1734 titled “The Death of a Daughter” I found this bit of sensationalism—or is it?—on the Huffington Post: While working on the renovation of Benjamin Franklin’s London home, a … Continue reading

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Legends of True Crime: Sawney Bean

While reading America’s Bloody Register (the subject of my last post for True Crime) one of the things that gives away the shift of crime narratives from moral correctives to popular entertainment are the cliff hanegrs and advertisements. Just as … Continue reading

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America’s Bloody Register: It’s all about the “Joes”

In the True Crime seminar last week we discussed Foucault’s Discipline and Punish alongside some of the more sensationalized texts of class and racial others like William Fly (Pyrate), Joseph Mountain (Mulatto/Highwayman), and Thomas Powers (“a Negro”), this week we … Continue reading

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Mario Bava must have gotten bit by Rabid Dogs

Paul Bond and I were as good as our word, we worked through ten of Mario Bava’s best films for the Bavafest we’ve been doing since March. This post has the tenth and final (for now!) discussion of what might … Continue reading

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With Good Reason Radio Coming to OpenVA

I learned this past week that Sarah McConnell of NPR’s With Good Reason radio show will be coming to OpenVA on October 15th. The With Good Reason crew will be interviewing various people throughout the day from around the state as well as taking … Continue reading

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