Blogging and Academia

Wait--You think people actually read the archives of blogs? I think most readers think of a blog as being only as good as its most recent post.
GayProf at "Does blogging hurt or help an academic career?" Historiann

I hope people read blog archives, or I'm wasting my time. Except that I'm not.

On the one hand, my blog is designed around its archive. I'm slowly working through an old, classic, ideologically oriented survey of American history--A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn--alongside a much newer, ideologically motivated, and almost entirely ignored within academia, survey of American history--A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. If and when I ever finish these two books, Patriots and Peoples will have become a comprehensive resource for students of American history.

My blog started as a notebook, and it serves that purpose. The more I write, the easier writing becomes. My academic writing had become almost non-existent due to more than a decade of part-time teaching supported, in part, with income from an entirely non-academic avocation. However, being the way I am, even that has an academic aspect. One of my high school friends was complaining about that--or laughing at me--after he asked a question about the history of chess the other night, and then said, "don't answer that." "James can never say yes or no, but must give us a lecture," Brett noted. This personality quirk observed by the kid that used to poke me in the back with his pencil in George Chalich's U.S. History class more than thirty years ago reveals that my long-windedness to make a simple point is not a consequence of graduate school, but its cause.

I started blogging because any writing stimulates more writing, especially when that writing attracts one or two readers. If I'm not writing, I get depressed.

I'm not struggling with the tenure and promotion questions, and the place of blogging within, that is the focus of much of the conversation at Center of Gravitas and Historiann. My career in academia is hanging by a thread, and proceeds course to course, each with a separate contract. If I get good teaching evaluations, another contract comes along. Fail once, and I'm slinging tacos at some fast food outlet in your town. Adjuncts don't have the pleasure of worrying over blogging in the annual review. Even so, the issues Historiann and GayProf raise about blogging and academic work are central to both. Both of their blogs reveal the scholar's mind even in stories of fishing trips or Facebook. Not that such writing necessarily meets the terms of service or scholarship as understood by university promotion and review committees. But the tremendous output of both these bloggers merits some consideration as a worthy endeavor for professors. Other blogs, such as Larry Cebula's Northwest History, appear central in their focus and content to the author's professional work. The possibility that such a blog could be credited in promotion decisions should be kept open. Not all blogging is the same.

Note to Students and Parents

In the spring I will be offering a new class for the students at Deer Park Home Link. This post augments information in the course description.

Home Link Historians is a writing class designed for students that read history as part of their curriculum. Students will keep a journal of their reading in the form of a blog (short for web log). Instead of writing for an imagined audience, as in most writing classes, students will write for readers that will be able to leave comments.

I will use several writing prompts to offer structure and stimulate thought about issues central to the study of history. It does not matter what era, nation, culture, or special topic the student is studying: the writing prompts will be flexible.

The first prompt: What are you reading? Why are you reading it? What do you expect to learn?

The student blog will be located at Home Link Historians. It will be single blog with many authors writing under pseudonyms to protect their individual privacy.


Sample entries in Patriots and Peoples

For students and parents coming here to get a sense of how keeping a blog as a history reading journal might work, these samples might be of interest. For regular readers of this blog, this listing highlights some of my better entries over the past year.

“Thinking Historically”

On keeping a journal: “Spiral Notebooks”

Primary Source focus: “Lee Resolution”

A topical blog entry concerning a common myth: “Columbus and the Flat Earth”

Another popular myth: “The Burning of the Boats”

Investigating a text’s footnotes: “Depopulation: Ubelaker’s Low Estimate”

Comparison of two texts on a limited subordinate topic: “Sixteenth Century Spain: Contrasting Images”

Current events connection: “Booker T Washington’s White House Dinner”

Now that you're already looking at my online writing, you might also find my Chess Skills blog of interest.

Spiral Notebooks

A bit more than twenty years ago I started carrying a spiral notebook with me almost constantly. I usually wrote in it while reading—taking notes, jotting titles and authors of other texts that I planned to examine, proposing theses, writing initial drafts of key paragraphs, outlining course syllabi, composing poems, …

The habit of always having a spiral notebook with me has ceased since computers have become ubiquitous. These days I’m more likely to carry a notebook manufactured by Gateway than one made by Mead. Still, I have not entirely abandoned the practice. My computer bag has room for a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen, and I still use them. Too often, however, it is easier to open Word and start typing.

As created text morphs from rough notes to polished prose, much is lost. Some of the loss is beneficial, but not all. My initial condemnation of some book or article may give way to cautious acceptance of another scholar’s perspective, or exuberance for a fresh approach may become the jaded recognition that notions discredited long ago might be resurrected once their refutations have been forgotten. My spiral notebooks preserve a record of these journeys. Those saved as files, even when new drafts have new names, are quickly lost. I’ll never again see the notes I saved just a few years ago on 5 ¼ inch floppies, for example.

Sometimes notebooks from decades ago are painful to read because they reveal astounding ignorance. Such humbling reading, however, can put into perspective my frustration with younger scholars (or with aged ones still pushing discredited ideas that I too once cherished). Other times reading these old notebooks offer fresh recollections of knowledge I’ve lost.