It's summer and time to focus on the wonderful minutiae that professors love. My own work is currently pointed at a scholar of religious studies, Anesaki Masaharu 姉崎正治. I'm looking at a series of open letters that he published in the Meiji journal Taiyō 太陽 in 1902. The content is a dissertation in itself, but as an aside I've been musing about the language that he uses. Those of you studying modern Japanese would not recognize it. Sure, it is in classical Japanese, but besides that, the punctuation is anomalous and the diction is entirely different from the prose that the same writer produced in the same decade.
All this has led me to wonder about linguistic "rules" (as such) of the Meiji period. Did this essay seem unusual to the readership? It certainly seems odd now. And other material written at the turn of the century didn't necessary use the same conventions. Don't get me wrong--it isn't just a difference between classical and modern grammar--there is a qualitative difference beyond that which I find odd.
Thoughts, anyone?
Monday, June 16, 2008
Refurbishing the Web Site
The University at Albany has decided to entirely re-vamp its website, beginning this summer. You might not have noticed any changes at all if you've been surfing because they're making the changes gradually and in many cases the appearance of the page will be the same. In any event, I will also be changing the EAS website over to the new system (for those of you in the know about web servers, we're moving from an independent DreamWeaver based system to a "content management" system, RedDot) sometime next academic year. At least, that's what the administration has told me to expect.
What does this mean? Well, among other things, it means that I'll be revisiting the content of the department site and thinking about how it might be improved. Imput from students would be a big help--are there features you use all the time and don't want to see changed? Is there something you think could be done better? Is there anything superfluous on the page that we could get rid of?
Ultimately, I'd like the page to serve BOTH the "outside" community (prospective students, etc.) and the "inside" community (current students, faculty, staff) well. And--here's the rub--I don't want to spend every waking moment webmastering. Whatever we do should be relatively low-maintenance. The "content management" system prevents me from making any changes to the graphics (colors, fonts, layout, etc.) of a basic university web site, so there's no point in thinking about that. Really all we have control over is the actual text.
Please send me your comments, either by e-mail if you want them to remain private (fessler@albany.edu) or here on this blog.
What does this mean? Well, among other things, it means that I'll be revisiting the content of the department site and thinking about how it might be improved. Imput from students would be a big help--are there features you use all the time and don't want to see changed? Is there something you think could be done better? Is there anything superfluous on the page that we could get rid of?
Ultimately, I'd like the page to serve BOTH the "outside" community (prospective students, etc.) and the "inside" community (current students, faculty, staff) well. And--here's the rub--I don't want to spend every waking moment webmastering. Whatever we do should be relatively low-maintenance. The "content management" system prevents me from making any changes to the graphics (colors, fonts, layout, etc.) of a basic university web site, so there's no point in thinking about that. Really all we have control over is the actual text.
Please send me your comments, either by e-mail if you want them to remain private (fessler@albany.edu) or here on this blog.
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