Hacking the Academy--Now in Print

Hacking the Academy is now available in print. Hacking is the product of a digital humanities experiment to write a book in a week, on the theme of "hacking the academy." The volume includes an essay from myself, a repurposed version of one of my most popular blog posts: "How to Read a Book in One Hour."  The book is released under the University of Michigan Press's new Digital Culture Books series.

I am very glad to see the volume and may adopt it in my next relevant class. I am not sure why it took this long to come out--we wrote the book in a week and waited two years for the print version!

That said, my initial description of the project holds: "Hacking the Academy is interesting for both its content and its approach to publication. The content focuses on "how the academy might be beneficially reformed using digital media and technology," particularly "writing that moved beyond mere complaints about the state of the academy into shrewd diagnoses and potential solutions." The essays are organized into three broad categories: "Hacking Scholarship," "Hacking Teaching," and "Hacking Institutions." The essays alternate between provocative big-picture, "this is how we ought to start doing things" pieces (such as David Parry's Burn the Boats/Books and Jo Gildi's terrific "Reinventing the Academic Journal") and more immediately practical pieces such as "Unconferences," a how-to guide by Ethan Watrall, James Calder, and Jeremy Boggs."

So go buy a copy--or read it here for free.