For this installment of Weekend Reading, I present: two blogs, one journal article, and another piece by Amy Knight concerning the recent act of terrorism carried out at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. Good stuff all around, so enough dawdling- to the blogs!
One of the most visited set of posts here at Peasant Muse are my explorations on boardgames as complex cultural artifacts. (Visit Part I and Part II) Increasingly, I find myself interested in how games allow an individual to create and interpret a view of the past by constructing a narrative through play. That's why I was excited to come across Play the Past, a collaborative blog that discusses some of the deeper issues encountered in gaming. One example of the type of material they produce would be "Seeing Like Sim City" by Rob MacDougall, which looks at the issues of reading code and procedure in game simulations and how they produce a 'de-historicizing' effect through their operation. A very intriguing blog worthy of your attention.
The other blog I want to talk about is the newly debuted Russian History Blog.
When I started Peasant Muse, there were not a lot of good examples of quality blogs covering topics related to Russian history. I felt that this was a gross oversight by members of my profession, as more and more people are increasingly turning to online sources to acquire their knowledge of the world and its historical events. Blogs are less stuffy than traditional academic papers or journals- you can receive instand feedback (some would debate the worth of this feature) and the ability to control not only your words, but also the media presentation elements presented, allows historians, among others, to bring their expertise to a wider audience. In an era of budget cuts and questions on the relevancy of liberal arts education, the more exposure we as historians can bring to our profession the better. The Russian History Blog promises to do just that, and so far they are doing very well. Right now, there are posts up discussing 'Atrocities in East Prussia, 1914' by Joshua Sanborn (viewpoint provided by a translation of a Russian soldiers war journal) as well as 'Creating Cover Stories: A National Pastime' by Andrew Jenks, discussing how Yuri Gagarin's historic space flight revealed a contradiction in Soviet politics in that the absolute secrecy surrounding issues of national defense, then proliferating across both the Soviet Union and the USA, often ran aground the desire to share these accomplishments to the larger world public, albeit in a way that still maintained the secrecy by creating a 'distortion zone' around the subjet in question. A great blog that will, hopefully, spur the development of greater digital awareness by Russian historians.
Two blogs down, one journal article and Amy Knight to go.
Digital Culture and Education is the journal I came across after reading Thomas Apperley's 'Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global'- he is a co-editor of the journal, which covers "the impact of digital culture on identity, education, art, society, culture and narrative within social, political, economic, cultural and historical contexts." The article I want to pull out from the latest edition is "Digital Publics and Participatory Education." Here is a quote from the article:
A key part of the curricular approach, therefore, involved intentional forays into public spaces—both material and digital. While explorations of local publics were crucial to this approach (via activities such as observational note-taking in public spaces), we focus here on the ways that sociotechnical networks enabled student participation in broader digital publics—specifically through continual student engagement and conversation within Google Reader [http://reader.google.com], our collaborative course blog, 'Repurposed' [http://repurposed.posterous.com/], and backchannel interactions on the microblogging site Twitter [http://twitter.com/]. Work on our collaborative course blog was very much structured as a public writing project from the outset—all student work created in conjunction with the blog was and still is fully public and available at any time by anyone. Students were given an opportunity to choose a pseudonym for the public writing they produced, but most chose not to do so.
When I was taking a graduate course on Higher Education Pedagogical Practice, we discussed methods of getting students to participate using digital sources. With the ubiquitous rise of 'smartphones', students of the future will want to have on-line access to course materials and assignments. Finding ways to get students more engaged- a constant challenge- involves meeting them on ground of which they are familiar. This article does a great job describing the digital process of having students engage in 'participatory education'. Definitely a worthy read.
Last, but not least, is Amy Knights new article in the New York Review of Books Blog, "Why the Kremlin Cain't Fight Terrorism".
Knight addresses the question of why Russia's security forces seem so inept at preventing terror plots from hatching across the nation. As usual, Knight brings some much needed background to an event that many would be quick to write off as terrorism at its worst- as made clear in the article, the blame lies much more with policies of the FSB than with dedicated terror operatives. A quote:
This alarming lack of vigilance on the part of the security services is eerily reminiscent of earlier attacks, such as the hostage taking at Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater in 2002 by a group of Chechen terrorists. No one was ever able to explain how the perpetrators, some of whom had earlier been in police custody and then released, managed to gather in Moscow for several months before the attack without attracting the attention of the security services. Similarly, in the case of the terrorist siege of the school in Beslan, North Ossetiya in September 2004, most of the large group of attackers—there were believed to be between thirty and fifty—had been living for several weeks in the woods in the neighboring republic of Ingushetiya without being detected. This, despite the fact that Ingushetiya was on high terrorist alert. The terrorists even managed to conceal a large number of weapons in the school before the attack. It is difficult to explain such incompetence, given the vast investigative and punitive powers of the security services. Whether in some cases the police or security officers are bribed by insurgents or whether they are simply negligent, they are rarely punished.
That's all for this installment of Weekend Reading- those lucky enough to have President's Day (US Holiday) off, take advantage of your three-day weekend. Maybe by taking some time and reading what I posted above? Now that's a productive plan.
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