Reblogged from The Herald Sun – Week’s End

Cathy Davidson, internet provocateur, co-founder of Duke University’s HASTAC (pronounced “haystack,” short for the “Humanities, Arts, Science Technology, Advanced Collaboratory” at Duke University) and sometime Herald-Sun guest columnist, has been nominated to the National Council on the Humanities.

We are impressed, but not surprised. If the Obama administration is seeking contributions from people who are thinking about how the digital era will not just enhance, but radically change the study of the humanities, they’ve found the right person.

When she’s not connecting educators to what HASTAC calls “new modes of learning for the digital age” — modes that include things like peer-graded courses and other radical-but-practical ideas — Davidson serves as the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke.

She actually helped carve the path for interdisciplinary studies at Duke and co-directs the annual HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions.

But, to our minds, Davidson’s best credential for the job and for this week’s Durham Grit Award is her apparently boundless curiosity and her enthusiasm for creating new systems where old ones no longer fit. (One remembers, in particular, her argument that badges that indicate mastery of a particular skill set might be a more useful measure of success than grades.)

Read more: The Herald-Sun – Week’s end