Recent ganders I've taken at not just the less well-crafted comment responses to various blog posts (on more and less "scholarly" sites), but the respectably thoughtful critical ones, have me wondering if there isn't rather a large missed opportunity happening here.
"My only concern would be that the academic/institutional aegis, and the educational angle, might mislead some into supposing this is a balanced, scholarly Web site".
Since the beginning of Season Five, "Mad World," a forum at the scholarly Web site Kritik, has been offering a lively if occasionally jargon-heavy discussion of the series, itself intended as an extended trailer for "Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style and the 1960s," a collection of essays coming from Duke University Press later this year.
That included three microblog accounts on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, another blog with his scholarly articles, a video site with his campaign clips, and two social networking pages, where 20,000 people followed his posts.
They were: Kaboombooks.com, Westport, Conn., a Web site with scholarly and special-interest titles, and Bowker.com, New Providence, N.J., part of Reed Elsevier, which operates online versions of Bowker's books like Books In Print and Ulrich's Guide to Periodicals.
Juggernaut, a small company founded in 1994 by Juilliard graduates, eventually set up a nearly yearlong free series of 20 play readings and discussions, a symposium, a poster campaign, a window display at the Drama Book Shop and a saucy but scholarly hot-pink Web site -- all under the umbrella title of "The First 100 Years: The Professional Female Playwright".
The two writers will each receive $50,000 and collaborate with Columbia librarians to create Web sites featuring scholarly articles and discussion relating to the content of the plays.
Being part of the trust "brought with it a scholarly approach that other sites may not have had the benefits of," Mr. McDaniel said.
High-powered executives pay five and six figures for new, bejeweled limited editions from companies like Montblanc and Cartier, while a scholarly contingent trolls Web sites and flea markets for vintage writing instruments used by the common man.
Scholarly consensus increasingly identifies the site with the Troy of antiquity, but the issue has occasioned sharp conflict among researchers.
