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Randall Stephens Michael Kammen It is with heavy hearts that historians, former students, and others are reporting on the death of the Pulitzer Prize -winning historian Michael Kammen.  He leaves an enormous legacy as an inspiring teacher, mentor, and scholar. H. Roger Segelken of the Cornell Chronicle writes that Kammen focused "his scholarship at first on the colonial period of American history."  He then "broadened his scope to include legal, cultural and social issues of American history in the 19th and 20th centuries." Kammen's Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991), says Segelken, "helped to create the field of memory studies."  (See a short biography of Kammen here .) Indeed, Kammen won high praise as a writer. In a New York Times review of Mystic Chords of Memory Thomas Fleming conceded that "not everyone will agree with all his conclusions, but they are presented with superlative style la...

Elliot Brandow Wikipedia is ubiquitous. It's at the top of your Google results, of course. And since 2012 it's in the right-hand sidebar of your Google results, dubbed the Knowledge Graph , as well. With this year's Apple iOS7 upgrade, when you ask Siri factual questions, those are Wikipedia entries you'll be offered in response. Even some library systems, like Serials Solutions' new Summon 2.0, can include Wikipedia entries alongside your list of books and articles. It's also our dirty little secret. We know that students use it , but faculty use it, librarians use it, we all use it. Why? We like it for the same reasons that we've always liked encyclopedias: it's fast access to basic information on a topic you know nothing about. It gives you an overview in language written for a novice, offers you key terms that are helpful when you proceed with your search to more scholarly resources, and it increasingly cites some of that scholarly material right ...

Randall Stephens When I teach writing I use a short piece by William Zinsser from the American Scholar : "Writing English as a Second Language" (Winter 2010). Yes, my students are native speakers.  Regardless, this essay is spot on for college students. (I've blogged about it before here .) A WPA poster from 1937. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Zinsser offers up a host of great tips: Cut horrible, long Latin-origin words: "communicated, conversion, reconciliation, enhancements, verification."  When these are used/overused they lead to stilted or stuffy prose. Use good, short, simple nouns: "infinitely old Anglo-Saxon nouns that express the fundamentals of everyday life: house, home, child, chair, bread, milk, sea, sky, earth, field, grass, road." "I have four principles of writing good English. They are Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity." "So remember: Simple is good. Writing is not something you have to embroider with fa...