(Un)intentional scholarship

Building on the work of Lee Shulman, Mark Sample defines scholarship thus: "a creative or intellectual act becomes scholarship when it is public and circulates in a community of peers that evaluates and builds upon it."  Sample is trying to articulate the boundary between service and scholarship, specifically as it relates to the digital humanities (where, as in the immediate case of Sean Takats, scholarly work may well look like service to academics not in that line of endeavor).  What intrigues me about this definition is that there is no intentionality about the "creative or intellectual act" in question--that is, an act not intended to function as "scholarship" may well become scholarship if Sample's criteria are met (although he is clearly discussing DH scholars who define their work as scholarship from the get-go).  In effect, scholarship becomes such at the point of reception and circulation.  Obviously, this definition separates scholarship from the various modes of its production and distribution, which is a key part of Sample's point.  However, it also suggests that the academic community may creatively appropriate, as it were, certain "creative or intellectual" products, no matter what the medium or the intent, and then incorporate them into scholarly discourse--whether or not the original author/coder/whatever may have anticipated entering into such discussions.

Sample's definition speaks to blogging, I think, because academic bloggers have long been mumbling away at the problem of how to categorize their practice.  Is it service (because you're engaging in a form of academic PR work?)? Is it scholarship (because you're actively discussing your work in a public forum?)? Is it teaching (because you may, in fact, be conducting curricular activities on the blog, analyzing pedagogical best practices, etc.)?  But if we focus on "what does the academic community do with your work?" then the blogger's intentions no longer matter very much at all.  This post, for example, was not intended to be a serious scholarly contribution,  although it certainly articulates, in sardonic form, some serious observations about neo-Victorian fiction (in particular, its frequent faux progressivism--Rules #2-#4 especially).  And yet...it has worked its way into books and articles on neo-Victorian fiction, which, using Sample's definition, would make it "scholarly." 

Comments

[Jseliger.wordpress.com]

Mark Sample defines scholarship thus: "a creative or intellectual act becomes scholarship when it is public and circulates in a community of peers that evaluates and builds upon it."

By this definition, as Mark Bauerlein shows in "The Research Bust," a lot of the writing published in peer-reviewed articles is barely research: no one "builds upon it," or the vast majority of "it," through citations. If that's actually true, then we really do need to re-define what counts as "scholarship."

[Miriam]

Oh yes, that had very much occurred to me...