Welcome folks–

I’ve never used the default WordPress title on a blog before and its exciting to be starting a project for which it seems appropriate. After five years as a PhD student in the English program here at the CUNY Graduate Center, this is my first blog!

First a little about myself and what I expect this blog to be about. The usual questions PhD students have to answer are about their research. I’m currently writing my dissertation on trans-Atlantic nineteenth century maritime literature (think Moby-Dick or The Pilot, or Lord Jim). I teach American literature and literary theory at Queens College, CUNY. In addition to my academic work, I’m involved in numerous digital communities here at the GC. In addition to the Commons, I work the Program Social Media Fellows and OpenCUNY. The general idea behind all of these projects is that scholarly and student-run communities at public colleges and universities have a responsibility to share their scholarship and work with the public and to engage the public in discussions of their work. In the real world, we achieve this by inviting the public to our programs and conferences and in the digital world we achieve this through platforms like the Commons.

The idea driving this particular blog is that Commons is filled with interesting things if you only knew where to look. So each week I’ll be sifting through the the recently published posts and pages from all corners of the Commons and coming up with a short, curated list of links to examples of interesting ideas, tools, projects, posts, artwork, whatever is catches my eye. I’ll be trying to see if I can come up with a theme that brings these interesting tidbits from the Commons and that’s why this blog is title “In Common”–these sites will all be from the Commons but they’ll all have something in common. That’s the plan anyway. We’ll see how it works. But the spirit behind the project is really to draw attention to the innovative work being done on the commons and to help us make connections in this little community. You know, find something in common.

The first round-up will be next week, so look out!

Best,
Paul