Targuman interviewed by Chronicle of Higher Education

DEAN CHRISTIAN BRADY, a.k.a. Targuman (cited in immediately preceding post) is interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education about his use of blogging and Facebook:

'It's Not Schizophrenic'

Christian Brady, an associate professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, has split his social-media identity, as Ms. Feal does. "It's not schizophrenic and it's not to hide anything," he said. Both of his Twitter feeds are public, and he expects that someone who searches for his name on Google will quickly find both his personal feed, @targuman, and the one he uses for his role as dean of the university's Schreyer Honors College, @shcdean.

Deciding which account to post to is a matter of considering his audience, he says. Those looking to hear from the honors-college dean may have no interest in his research into Targums (ancient Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible), or in his collection of comic books. "I wouldn't call them multiple identities, but views or perspectives on yourself," is how he puts it.

Though Facebook was born only a few years ago, Mr. Brady says scholars have long made adjustments in their public personae: "If you're writing an op-ed piece for the local newspaper, you're going to use a different tone than if you're writing for a journal in your discipline."

A lot of my Facebook posts are just notices of interesting PaleoJudaica posts. Others note ancient history or technology items not directly relevant to PaleoJudaica. Most of the rest have to do with zombies. But then the article does point out that zombies can be a problem on Facebook.