[Air-L] Digital Scholarship: Invitation to my Blogged Doctoral Exam

[jason c young]

Dear Air-L Members,

First, let me introduce myself to the wider community, since this is my
first post here... my name is Jason Young, and I am currently a graduate
student in Geography at the University of Washington. While I am still in
the beginning stages of my PhD program, I am planning to use my doctoral
research to explore the implications of digital technologies for Inuit as
they engage in politics of environmentalism in the Arctic.

I am writing to the listserv because I would like to invite you all to
participate in a digital, scholarly experiment that I started last week. I
have become increasingly interested in leveraging digital technologies to
open up traditionally closed aspects of the graduate experience. In this
spirit I decided to blog an aspect of my graduate work which is
traditionally only open to the members of my doctoral community. In
particular I blogged my Preliminary Examination this past weekend, which is
essentially a practice version of our General or Comprehensive Exams. This
exam is designed to explore what knowledge I currently have of relevant
literature, in order to suggest further readings which will help me
progress in my intellectual development.

Opening the Exam process to many eyes has left me feeling a little
vulnerable, especially since Prelims is designed to expose holes in my
current academic knowledge. However, I am really hoping that this process
might help me to gain access to and learn from a wide range of perspectives
on my work, and also perhaps to provide a resource for other students as
they go through similar exam processes. I thought Air-L might be a good
target audience, both because you all might be interested in this type of
digital scholarship and also because most of my scholarship has been
limited to geographical understandings of technology. I would love
suggestions and ideas on readings, etc., which might help me to explore the
great work going on across other disciplines.

If you are at all interested in the process, you can find more information
here: <
http://jasoncyoung.com/home/digital-experimentation-expanding-the-preliminary-examination/>.
I would certainly appreciate any time you might be able to spend taking a
look at the exam, and highly encourage commenting!

Thanks so much,
Jason

PS. Apologies for any duplicate emails via cross-posting!