Rob Weir

Rob Weir is a native of Pennsylvania who has lived in New England for the past 26 years. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he currently teaches. Weir has published six books and numerous articles on social and cultural history, and has been cited for excellence in teaching on numerous occasions during his 20 years in the college classroom. Weir also teaches at Smith College and is a freelance journalist. For over 20 years he was been the principal Celtic music writer for SingOut! Magazine, the nation's oldest folk music publication.

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Most Recent Articles

March 14, 2013
Essay on why professors should object to the failure to teaching cursive
There are skills that keyboards don't teach, writes Rob Weir.
January 22, 2013
Essay argues that Aaron Swartz was wrong
Aaron Swartz was wrong about the law and the economics of journals, writes Rob Weir.
November 5, 2012
Essay on how academics should negotiate with publishers
Just because your book is unlikely to make you wealthy doesn't mean that there aren't important things to push for, writes Rob Weir.
March 21, 2012
Essay on how to use YouTube as a teaching tool
You don't have to be a digital native to add video to your classes, writes Rob Weir, who explains how to do so.  
November 11, 2011
Essay on how to deal with complaints about grades on papers
Rob Weir discusses how to deal with student complaints about grades on papers.
October 19, 2011
Media Cool
Rob Weir offers advice on how professors should handle calls from reporters.
September 7, 2011
Priorities for Year One
Rob Weir suggests ways to avoid panic and confusion as you launch your career at a new institution.
July 20, 2011
Starting From Scratch
Sometimes just revising a course isn't enough, writes Rob Weir.  
July 5, 2011
End Large Conferences
Mega conclaves of humanities scholars have outlived their purpose, writes Rob Weir.
March 9, 2011
It's Not Harry Potter
We tell them, but do we show them how? I’m talking about the academic sources we implore undergraduates to consult. We toss out the word "journal" so often that we could fill one with our own references. We get histrionic about the need for "credible sources," only to read papers culled from search sources that don’t show up on Google Scholar. We rail about the need to consult "experts," but plod through papers with thoughts purloined from pop culture icons and bloggers whose rants are better-developed than their command of fact. We get frustrated.

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