As The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed both reported, The MLA has come out with “new guidelines” urging the consideration of digital work in the review, tenure, and promotion process for English department faculty. Which is good, I guess. But as I wrote about way back in January:
- Since there have been “English” department (or at least comp/rhet) scholars have been trying to get “digital scholarship” to count for decades, this is a little late;
- Lots of places– including EMU– figured out quite a while ago how to count alternative formats of scholarship toward tenure and review, and lots of places– also including EMU– have a significantly more reasonable process toward getting tenure than the “book plus” of research one institutions; and
- I will believe that these new guidelines and truly digital scholarship will be seen as valuable as monographs/print when people like Cathy Davidson, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, David Weinberger, and other prominent and current digital media scholars proudly announce their new web site rather than their new book.
So yeah, thanks, I guess.