Gillian Gower, PhD

fellow academic shitpoasters 🖤

Sorry for the sincere post but I love you all even if I only know you by the pun in your handle

Should've added alt-ac mutuals, too. Scholarly editors, adjuncts, ex-acs all rallying together for our values is just the best.

Very grateful to all of my academic mutuals, whether you're a professor or independent scholar. Grateful to the folks who aren't my mutuals, too. The University of Bluesky is truly one of my favorite things.

I also do not care for it, particularly when it's coming from people who have no fucking clue what they're talking about

The slippages of this word have not been great! Making my classes more accessable has opened them up to surveillance and theft and I do not care for it!

Trying to stay in academia has been so demoralizing even without [waves hands]. And yet every time I log onto this website I'm met by a diverse community of scholars working in a broad range of fields, all of whom believe in and fiercely advocate for a better academy. What could be more hopeful?

it's a sign of how badly we've collectively failed people with ADHD imo

This is so bleak.

The desire for the One Tool That Will Fix Me™️ is so strong when you've spent years burning through tools everyone else swears by.

disability studies-illiterate bullshit ‪dame‬ ‪@dame.is‬ · 1h Bluesky Elder you can hate AI and want nothing to do with it, but denying its accessibility applications is just denying reality 2 5 4 ‪dame‬ ‪@dame.is‬ · 41m Bluesky Elder Cornell: teaching.cornell.edu/generative-a... Carnegie Mellon: www.cmu.edu/computing/ne... Wichita: www.wichita.edu/services/mrc... Apple: www.apple.com/lae/accessib... 3

I assume all four of these links were sourced from a chatbot because a) all of them point out the very real pitfalls of using genAI as an accessibility tool and b) none of them include disabled people's perspectives, let alone peer-reviewed scholarship. The fourth link is effectively a press release

Saw a thoughtful thread about AI, don't want to QT or argue. But. The biggest rage factor with LLMs is the people who, because genAI is transformative for coding, think it's transformative for everything else, because they devalue every other form of work and labor and knowledge.

Disabling AI: power, exclusion, and disability This paper explores how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in education reproduce systemic inequalities by embedding ableist and normative assumptions into their design and use. Drawing on f...

send her this

People can’t grasp that Christianity is like 2,000 different religions wearing a trench coat.

the two phases of writing: (1) writing and (2) wandering aimlessly like an unmoored ghost and complaining about not writing

Musicologists agree

considering the guy we’re all dunking on went back to X to gloat about owning the libs, I think you’re right on

Even the idea that PA and TX are comparable is bizarre

I think Elon did this and called it X? I may be wrong

A classic red phone box perched at the edge of a sandy beach. the beach is a beautiful light brown colour and the sky behind blue. The scene is lit by bright clear light.

the start of the south west coast path in Dorset is a nice place

On a bit of a tear this morning but I do think increased commodification and quantification of research output has a lot do with AI adoption in higher ed

This is both a good joke and an accurate description of what using genAI to compile a bibliography does for you cognitively. You’re not learning anything if you don’t do your own generating. This is basic pedagogical stuff!

I expect people who aren’t academics not to understand this distinction because it’s generally our job to teach them.

But it’s truly alarming to me that there are apparently tenured professors in humanities and social sciences who believe that the process of research matters less than the product

Like most students, I didn’t truly understand what the task was teaching or the test was testing until much later. It was really challenging but I enjoyed it. Still do—probably to a fault, considering I read exponentially more than I write

oh my god, Claude I love your work!!!!!!

I don’t remember if the list was meant to be annotated but it probably should have been. I do remember that my advisor (hi if you’re reading this!) was integral to the process but ultimately it was my responsibility to find and digest sources. A tremendously valuable exercise

My PhD program required we prep for quals by compiling a list of fifty relevant texts. (It was literally called the “Fifty-Item List.”) It took months if not years but ultimately served as the basis for the bibliography of my dissertation *because I read all fifty of them*

“Compiling” is also integral training for life as a teacher and syllabus-builder.

There is no shortcut to doing hard things; you just have to do them, and then keep doing them until you get better at doing them.

This reminds me of when I was a PhD candidate during comps (prelims). I was surprised that *I* had to put together all 3 of my reading lists instead of my committee. But then I realized that the act of compiling was an important learning experience.

no, LAPD. there are two police helicopters in the air over greater LA at all times and my neighborhood pulled the short straw today