CVs and Blogs
If I my CV is the topic of my blog then can I put my blog on my CV?
I'm just tossing this question out there because it's been an interesting discussion on the WPA listserve this week? Or at least at one point. It's so hard to tell know when information is new. It pretty much becomes new whenever I get to it. But I digress....
It's been an interesting conversation because it seems to get right at the heart of what many people still find unnerving about the web. If anybody can publish whatever they want then what happens to all of our standards. What happens to quality? To take it to it's (il)logical extreme, once we open the door to blogs on CVs why not just include diaries, grocery lists, and hmmm, how about tattoos (visual rhetoric).
Consensus did start to form around the idea that audience, purpose, and context had to be considered before a blog was eligible for inclusion on a CV. For example, one person posted that blogging and research on blogging was part of why she was hired, so it would seem silly NOT to include it.
So here's a just for fun question. Say you did have a blog with a, shall we say, scholarly purpose. Where would you put it on your CV? Publications? Pedagogy? Service? Scholarly Activity?
Comments
I'll tell ya where you can stick your blog, Fella.
I'd list my blog under Tattoos and Other Cool Stuff. I'm kidding of course. Mostly coz I don't have a blog.
Ok, Being serious....(but only for a second)....
This is a good question for which I had a good answer. But I don't. I think the WPA folks are right in saying that the blog should be "appropriate" to what kind of work you do/want to do and to the job you're applying for. I also want to take the stance that if a school/business DOESN'T want to hire you because of you blog then you probably don't want to work there (coward's way out, I know). I would think a blog related to your scholarly pursuits would go under Scholarly Activity or some place else you'd list special projects. But I don't know anything. I'm just saying what seems like an answer.
But in speaking to the questions about standards...isn't this the age-old question about education/writing in the first place? If we let "anybody" in the university what does that do to our standards? On one level, we could argue that an undergraduate degree doesn't mean the same thing as it once did, but we could counter that by saying that more people of different background (economic, gender, race, etc) are educated--or have access to education--today than in the past (and we could argue about what education means). If we allow room for alternative discourses or minority rhetorics to be included in language/English/Rhetoric education, what happens to our Canon? What happens to the "English Language?"
Let me bring up Andy Warhol for a second. Many people believe(d) that Warhol's goals were was to destroy the standards of art by doing things that a machine could do and calling it art. His work did, to some extent, bring down the but his work didn't destroy "art." I used to hate Warhol because I thought he ruined the "art world" for everyone who came after him (like me). Recently I read that he was working to create pieces that didn't rely on emotion to convey a meaning, that he was moving against the traditional Western way of art-making of putting the artist's personality into the work. When I read this I understood his motivation in a different light and stopped "hating" him. He made a Postmodern move and turned art away from Modernism. I was trained as a Modernist (even in a post-Warhol world) so I saw Warhol as a threat to my romantic ideas of what an artist should/can be. I say this to bring up the idea that RIGHT NOW in our historical context the possibility that "anyone" can publish something on the Internet seems terrible and scary and standard-crushing. Maybe it is, but we don' t know that for certain yet. And we don't know how standards are changing to incorporate what's being done already OR how what's being done already will become the new standard that something in the future will push against.
Does that mean we should ignore the questions until we see what happens? No. But that's all I got for now.
I also want to complicate the question a bit. What if someone is applying for a position that is,say, heavily new media focused and DOESN'T have a blog (or perhaps a web-presence of any kind)? Would NOT having a blog be a detriment? Would that harm a candidate's credibility?
NO
I totally don't think people should put their blogs on their CV. I think there are exceptions to this, like Sam's blog, that was published in our readings for this week as a helpful scholarly resources, but I think that in general people aren't ready to accept blogs as a CV line.
But your audience will be the deciding factor. I think that the readings for this week certainly point out that blogs have a legitimacy that is emerging, so for a New Media job if you could include your blog if it did have some academic panache, but in general I still don't think most people are ready. Plus if I saw a blog on a CV of someone I didn't know, I would immediately think of the most saccharine, journal-style blog. This even though blogs like Sam's and Clay Spinuzzi's are really helpful and interesting resources.
I personally never put my
I personally never put my blog on my cv until people started citing it in publications. I never really wanted my odd rantings to be listed there. Do people looking at my cv really need to read about Jim Watson having mad cow's disease or FEMA giving out prostitutes and Lincolns with the next natural disaster?