Manchester
Institute for Popular Culture Website
Manchester could very well be the prototype for twenty-first century urban
life. It exemplifies the regeneration of a derelict industrial city for
post-industrial urban use. In the 1980s, British youth found its deserted
warehouses the perfect places to host raves. While it's easy enough to dismiss
raves as "all-night dance parties," the fact that the phrase "rave
community" exists suggests that there was some minor social revolution
going on. What better location for a think tank devoted to the study of
popular culture? So, the existence of the Manchester Institute of Popular
Culture (MIPC), based at the Manchester Metropolitan University, is no surprise.
And, with the entry of the Web into the lexicon of popular culture, the
MIPC would just have to have a Web site to have any kind of credibility
as an authority on popular culture.
According to Dan Hill, a research graduate at the MIPC, the medium of the Web amplifies the positive aspects of popular culture. Mr. Hill says the Web allows "artists to distribute their work via the net, bypassing the cultural industry infrastructure and the power structures of the art world." The technocracy of the Internet is a lot easier to negotiate with than the art buyers, gallery owners, and critics of the art world. One agenda of the MIPC, and of many cultural theorists worldwide, is the promotion of democracy. This does not refer to the political structure, but to the notion of every member of society having a voice. So, MIPC is working to ensure "that the new digital popular culture is not limited to the privileged minority who currently have access."
But the MIPC Web site is not just a forum for studying culture; it's a part
of that culture. The funky design of the logo is more suggestive of modern
graphic design than the title of a stodgy academic paper. One purpose of
the site is to disseminate information on conferences sponsored by the MIPC.
A recent one was titled "Fanatics! Football and Popular Culture in
Europe," which is scheduled to coincide with the 1996 European Football
Championship. A further example of the eroding delineation between critical
studies and subject matter.
-WKC
A
Australasian
Philosophy Network Home Page
While this is supposed to be some kind of nexus for philosophers working
in Australia and New Zealand, it really comes up short, primarily because
of a lack of content. It does have the table of contents listings from the
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, but no online articles. There's also
a directory of philosophers working in Australasian Universities, but, besides
addresses, there's no information about areas of study.-WKC
B-
Classics
and Mediterranean Archaeology Home Page
It's appropriate that a site dedicated to the past is so stuck in it. Don't
get me wrong: Someone did a terrific job of gathering far-flung Web links
and centralizing them in a format handy to scholars. But in the end, it's
just an extension of a Gopher site: text-based, with few helpful internal
links or explanatory texts, and user-friendly it ain't. Don't expect any
commentary on which sites are worthwhile (or even appropriate to your needs).
Still, content is more important than technical flash in academia, and this
site is a wonderful portal to other resources.-TG
B-
CTHEORY
Remember those dense "journals" the English majors published in
college? CTHEORY is one such journal, translated into HTML and released
onto the Web. It's about average. Article quality ranges from the insightful
and well-researched to the embarrassingly self-serving. It's part of the
English Server at Carnegie Mellon University (http://english-server.hss.cmu.edu/),
which offers vastly more (and more interesting) material. Still haven't
had enough of the genre? Well then, zip on over to ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/,
and you'll find literally hundreds more. You have been warned.
-TG
C
Diogenes' Links
To The Ancient World
Diogenes, a cynical philosopher from Plato's time, used wit and humor to
drive home his points. While this site has flashes of wit (e.g., calling
Homer a "media correspondent for the gods"), the underlying values
seem absent. The site is broken into five areas - Mesopotamia, the "Holy
Land," ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Each area has a dozen links
to others' sites, usually with a brief and caustic remark. The place looks
nice, with a cool background and some good graphics, but they ultimately
don't serve the site well. Maybe next time, Dio!-TG
D
Egyptology
Resources
The *Indiana Jones* movies shattered the myth that archaeologists are stodgy
and mildly eccentric old men; this site reminds us that their real community
is living, thriving, and online. Community is a big selling point of this
site: besides offering the usual links to other sites, there are some bulletin
boards, relevant news, and valuable resources, such as a German/Ancient
Egyptian wordbook. The techno value is low: the main graphic is at too high
a resolution and there are few features more complex than a standard link.
But the tone is congenial and smart, and the community is warm.-TG
B-
Literary
and Critical Theory
This collection of mostly student essays seems very useful on the surface.
It covers the greats of literary theory, such as Barthes, Baudrillard, Derrida,
and and Foucault, but the texts of the essays isn't online. The only use
for it is as a syllabus of important authors that could be used by the independent
scholar, or the student who wants to impress a professor with a little bit
of name-dropping.-WKC
B-
Modernism
Timeline, 1890-1940
Electronically mediated educational interaction is commonplace nowadays,
one example being this sparse site by an English professor, John Mark Eckman.
His "Modernism Timeline," though, doesn't live up to the promise
of today's medium. It's just a set of links - one link for each year - that
lead you to pages listing nine or 10 events from the year. No commentary,
no background, no graphics, no nuthin': just "1919: R. P. Feynman born,
Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio." C'mon, perfesser: you can do better.
-TG
D-
Objectivism
- The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
This site is a perfect example of an informational forum for an active philosophy.
While references to and homage for Ayn Rand permeate the site, the focus
is on the philosophy of Objectivism she defined. Not sure what Objectivism
is, or if it's right for you? Read the FAQ located on this site. Linked
resources include a newsgroup for the active discussion and debate of Objectivism.
Curiously, the creator of the page has divided it into "good"and "evil" sections (other philosophies come under "evil"),
which suggests a reading of Nietschze is in order.-WKC
A
Perseus Project
Home Page
Many of us know about the Gutenberg Project, which mostly focuses on putting
seminal Western texts of the last 200 years into electronic form. The Perseus
Project is similar, but with a more esoteric bent: it's interested in the
texts and images of archaic and classical Greece. Managed by a Tufts Universitiy
professor, the site has heavy-duty corporate support and it shows: its depth
of study is amazing, and it's tied together with various search engines.
The entire site is also being released as a four-CD set (!) by Yale University
Press next year. That's a lot of stuff!-TG
A-
Philosophy
I always like to find online texts. It's a great way to save a trip to the
library. The philosophy section of the English Server at Carnegie Mellon
University is a pretty good repository of material, from Aristotle to Rousseau.
There are also some more general thematic texts thrown in, such as "Women
in Philosophy." The Web page is only an index for a Gopher server,
so all the pretty HTML ends at the top level.-WKC
B+
Popular
Culture Links
Popular culture has become fair game for academic analysis, allowing episodes
of "Gilligan's Island" to merit the same amount of attention as
Joyce's *Ulysses*. Sign of a bankrupt culture, or do academics just want
to have fun? No matter, this page is a bunch of links to all sorts of popular
culture resources, and the only reason it's mentioned here is because the
design is so bad that the text can only be read by putting your face about
two inches from the monitor.-WKC
C
Semiotics
for Beginners
Those who need a quick course on signs and signifiers for literary and cultural
analysis, or anyone interested in a different critical tool, will find this
quick and dirty explanation of semiotics very useful. A semiotic question:
When you say Internet, are you referring to the global computer network,
or the word that is our agreed-upon sign for the network. Roland Barthes
was into it, so it should be good enough for you.-WKC
B+
The
Ancient World Web Main Index
There's no reason academic studies have to be dry and daunting. If you have
a good guide, the world opens up to you. In this case, the world in question
is the ancient one, and your guide is Julia Hayden, a masters' student at
the University of Virginia. She knows her stuff: Every entry is sorted,
classified, and annotated, and weekly (ha!) updates keep the place fresh.
The home page includes archaeology news of interest, though some "news"is outdated. No matter: the quantity of links and the commentary makes this
a must-see stop for Ancient World tourists.-TG
B+
The Metaphysics Research
Lab Home Page
The name alone evokes so much, it's either a complete parody or a lair of
serious strangeness. The "stanford.edu" in the address indicates
the latter, but it turns out not to be all that strange. This site exists
to promote a paper called "Principia Metaphysica," which is based
on the ideas of an Austrian philosopher named Ernst Mally. The gist of it
is defining abstract objects as encoding properties, as distinct from concrete
objects displaying properties. Had enough? If not, head for the address
above.-WKC
A-
Welcome
to Critical Mass
Critical Mass calls itself a "Webzine of communications issues,"and it delivers. The communications issue it focuses on is the Internet,
so if you want help talking to your children, this isn't really the place
to go. It's published monthly during the academic year, and the issues seem
to be generally theme-based. For example, issue two of volume two dealt
with government on the Internet. It should be noted that this is a Canadian
publication and has that great, white north slant.-WKC
A
World of
History and Literature
Håkon Winther, a 24-year-old Norwegian student of English and Germanics,
has arranged his favorite links in an organized, rigorous fashion, showing
not only breadth of interests, but impressive depth. It helps if you share
his interests; here goes with a brief listing: in history, he has links
on the A-bomb, World War II, Vikings (how Norse!), and Germany. For literature,
his turn-ons are Shakespeare, von Goethe, and Dickens. Be sure to visit
his main page at http://www.uio.no/~hakonw/home.html for some lighter fare,
including a picture of him as a child. How cute!
-TG
B
WORLD
WAR I
This University of Mississippi site on World War I is rather spare, with
only four articles and links to three sites, two of them external. But click
on the "Return to USA page" link and you'll find the real riches
- an extensive history of the U.S., based at http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/usa.html.
This parent site covers not only military history, but also prohibition,
the development of black citizenship, and women's suffrage. So, don't stop
only at the WWI area: U. Mississippi's U.S. history site is more than the
sum of its parts.
-TG
B+
World
War II Archive
Boy, this site is well done. Lots of internal links leading to historical
text documents, sounds, and movies in your choice of format. But it's a
bit sinister: though it appears to offer a complete picture of the war,
nothing could be further from the truth. The server is a propaganda site
for our military in Europe, plain and simple. It shows only American good
works (sidestepping some of our hideous wartime abuses), and is paid for
and developed by Army brats on your tax dollars. Remember this next time
Congress cuts funding to school lunch programs. Enjoy the site!-TG
B-
