tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post6490587558261793564..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: Academic Blogging: Some Reservations and LessonsPaul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-56876184144075982332010-09-30T22:25:35.307-06:002010-09-30T22:25:35.307-06:00Excellent post, Ed. I agree with most of what you...Excellent post, Ed. I agree with most of what you say here, though I'm less concerned about the essential gatekeeping function of peer review -- I see that more as a pretension of the field than as a real feature of scholarship, but you're right that it's a pretension that matters in our profession.<br /><br />One point you didn't mention is the time-consuming nature of blogging. Admittedly mine took more than most because I ran a multi-author blog rather than just writing on my own site, but I ended up putting in at least 2-3 hours a day on my blog. That was time that couldn't go to scholarship, service, teaching, or letting off steam with friends. There's a concern, too, about the limited amount of creative energy we have: should we be spending any of that in a medium that doesn't advance our careers?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12862169376352388965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-18818943111113616042010-09-28T11:08:58.248-06:002010-09-28T11:08:58.248-06:00Thoughtful post, Ed. You, along with many others ...Thoughtful post, Ed. You, along with many others in the comments, offer useful and helpful perspectives on the possibilities and potential pitfalls of blogging and the academic profession. I do think—as Michael and others suggest—blogging provides a way to make our work intelligible to a wider audience, and can bring needed historical perspective to analysis of contemporary issues. For my own part, I’ve come to really enjoy the blog interview format. It can allow for extended discussion about selected topics, or provide a forum for authors to make their work perhaps more relevant by responding to “what’s happening now.” And as Matt B insightfully writes, what we post and blog about sometimes becomes “both weirdly permanent and weirdly ephemeral; even though it's sort of like publishing, and even though the internet never forgets, our posts vanish into the aether pretty reliably.” Sometimes, oddly, as the saying goes, perspectives are hidden in plain sight. <br /><br />I think Kevin identifies something really important as well—blogging as to work as a sort of bridge between multiple audiences. And I think Kevin’s work as a high school history teacher is critical in this regard. Plus, as Kevin’s blog attests, blogging can be useful as a pedagogical tool as well. I was also fortunate to employ this strategy when teaching high school history. While time intensive, I found it enjoyable, and students seemed to respond to it. We tend to think of blogging about scholarly topics and the latest project, but its use as a teaching tool can also be a way to think about blogging as an academic exercise.Phil Sinitierenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-11324666874965743242010-09-28T02:11:07.373-06:002010-09-28T02:11:07.373-06:00What a delightfully timely and thoughtful piece!
...What a delightfully timely and thoughtful piece! <br /><br />I think you've captured precisely the spirit of my father, who admonished me for blogging under a pseudonym because my ideas would be stolen and I'd have trouble recovering them but also that if I used my real name I could risk future employment. <br /><br />Nevertheless, I have recently begun blogging under my own name. Your perspective is invaluable, but it seems limited in its application because of how narrowly it views the products found on the blogs of young professionals. I also worry that it doesn't adequately identify how to avoid pitfalls nor does it suggest the potential rewards of blogging. (I'd cite <a href="http://itself.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">>An und für sich</a> as a place where the intellectual conversations are intensely rewarding for the authors.)<br /><br />I've written a longer response to your points, if anyone is interested in my fledgling efforts:<br /><br /><a href="http://mcconeghy.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/should-i-blog/" rel="nofollow">A Lively Experiment</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-25215728484662652142010-09-27T14:13:46.248-06:002010-09-27T14:13:46.248-06:00Thoughtful post, Ed.
You, along with many other...Thoughtful post, Ed. <br /><br />You, along with many others in the comments, offer useful and helpful perspectives on the promise and (possible) peril of blogging and the academic profession. I do think—as Michael and others suggest—blogging provides a way to make our work intelligible to a wider audience, and can bring needed historical perspective to analysis of contemporary issues. <br /><br />For my own part, I’ve come to really enjoy the blog interview format. It can allow for extended discussion about selected topics, or provide a forum for authors to make their work perhaps more relevant by responding to “what’s happening now.”<br /><br />Yet as Matt B insightfully writes, what we post and blog about sometimes becomes “both weirdly permanent and weirdly ephemeral; even though it's sort of like publishing, and even though the internet never forgets, our posts vanish into the aether pretty reliably.” Sometimes, oddly, as the saying goes, perspectives are hidden in plain sight. <br /><br />I think Kevin identifies something really important as well—blogging as to work as a sort of bridge between multiple audiences. And I think Kevin’s work as a high school history teacher is critical in this regard. Plus, as Kevin’s blog attests, blogging can be useful as a pedagogical tool as well. I was also fortunate to employ this strategy when teaching high school history. While time intensive, I found it enjoyable, and students seemed to respond to it. We tend to think of blogging about scholarly topics and the latest project, but its use as a teaching tool can also be an important way to think about blogging as an academic exercise.Phil Sinitierehttp://philliplukesinitiere.weebly.com/index.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-54528017818610162042010-09-27T13:11:37.062-06:002010-09-27T13:11:37.062-06:00Thanks for this post, Ed. You make a number of im...Thanks for this post, Ed. You make a number of important points. As you know I've been blogging at Civil War Memory for close to five years and although I am a high school history teacher perhaps I can offer a slightly different perspective. Here is a link to an essay I did on blogging for Common-Place: http://www.common-place.org/vol-11/no-01/school/Kevin Levinhttp://www.cwmemory.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-23295466893556951262010-09-27T11:33:59.909-06:002010-09-27T11:33:59.909-06:00Ed, great post. Really great. Janine and Matt have...Ed, great post. Really great. Janine and Matt have already covered most of what I wanted to say. But I'll add this one point. For me, as a graduate student I look at my writing online here and at RD as part of an overall project of professionalization. Above all, I think that it must be a balanced project. The research--dissertation, articles, etc.--hs to be there, the teaching experience has to be there, and the networking/professionalization side has to be there. Writing for blogs, RD, other such things functions as an important part of networking and practicing how to serve as a public intellectual.<br /><br />Now, when a grad student's online presence takes precedence over their research and their teaching, when it's not the colorful icing on the top of the graduate cupcake, then there's a problem. We can't rely on the internet to make us good job candidates, but the internet will be part of what makes us good job candidates.Michael J. Altmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17352048990586521566noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-22125434945981553622010-09-27T09:20:32.981-06:002010-09-27T09:20:32.981-06:00Thanks for this post, Ed. Essential reading.Thanks for this post, Ed. Essential reading.Steven P. Millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02068897035889270986noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-71926790861866108972010-09-27T09:18:09.324-06:002010-09-27T09:18:09.324-06:00Ed - This is important and useful, like most thin...Ed - This is important and useful, like most things you say. Anyhow, as you may remember, I have some of the same thoughts as Janine; we've all been burned by peer review and conference selection committees. Sometimes, at least for me, this happened simply because we were naive graduate students: a number of those early proposals (and even, actually, my first article or two) I would do differently now if I could. Blogging is tempting precisely because it can be a sort of trial run at peer review, a place to get informal before formal feedback.<br /><br />Blogging, as you point out, is both weirdly permanent and weirdly ephemeral; even though it's sort of like publishing, and even though the internet never forgets, our posts vanish into the aether pretty reliably. And because of that, I think the best analogue is not actually academic publishing but the hallways of the AHA or ASCH, the lunch tables at Calvin, or whatnot. They're a place to network, to talk out loud, to play with your sources and get feedback. Your point about the possibility of setting yourself up to be scooped is important to think about, but I've never - and would probably never - put anything like a paper draft up as a post. I have, and would probably again, extracted a particular twist in a paper from its context and trotted it around the electronic horsetrack to see how it runs. And who hasn't done that in conversation?<br /><br />Finally, I think that scholars _should not_ restrict our discussions to our own circles; there's a little Arthur Schlesinger in my head that says an important aspect of the profession is explaining why normal people should care about what we do. And to the extent that writing for RD or the History News Network is slowly becoming the new op-ed in the New York Times, we should follow.matt bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14309743350629299770noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-75376710797044907782010-09-27T08:54:37.671-06:002010-09-27T08:54:37.671-06:00Thanks for this, Ed. This is most helpful.Thanks for this, Ed. This is most helpful.Ben Parkhttp://juvenileinstructor.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-949159881465640502010-09-27T08:37:39.117-06:002010-09-27T08:37:39.117-06:00Really good points Janine Giordano! The gate keepe...Really good points Janine Giordano! The gate keepers have a lot of power, you are right. And book reviews can be tricky - because oftentimes a graduate student may be the best person for it, but also has usually not published a monograph themselves (some, of course, have). In retrospect, I wish I had not published book reviews until after I had published a book because I didn't fully understand all that went into it. But that's just me.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-89447941600968644622010-09-27T08:32:46.890-06:002010-09-27T08:32:46.890-06:00Ed, you know I agree with everything you say so we...Ed, you know I agree with everything you say so well here. I think it should be required reading for every academic considering entry into the blogosphere. As you know, too, I would probably be even more bleak (as is my general want) about the consequences of posting intellectual work without referee. Now, isn't it a comic thing for me to post this in a comment on a blog as a some-time blogger? Irony abounds in the formats of new media.Kathryn Loftonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11581725585455784535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-20392605461722449422010-09-27T08:16:03.949-06:002010-09-27T08:16:03.949-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.Janine Giordano Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15743145462085629472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-35664408007623221712010-09-27T08:15:35.056-06:002010-09-27T08:15:35.056-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.Janine Giordano Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15743145462085629472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-58183672698082482792010-09-27T08:15:12.470-06:002010-09-27T08:15:12.470-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.Janine Giordano Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15743145462085629472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-2840061044461405352010-09-27T08:15:03.206-06:002010-09-27T08:15:03.206-06:00I agree this is a great post, and something I'...I agree this is a great post, and something I've also been thinking about a lot lately. For an advanced graduate student like myself, the blog (and non-peer reviewed magazine Religion Dispatches) has been a wonderful space to share ideas when so many other scholarly spaces maintain such such rigid hierarchies of knowledge. The peer-review process can be wonderful, but it depends on the gate keepers really understanding the proposing writer as a peer. Does this always happen?<br /><br />I don't know if it was always the case that advanced grad students were not permitted to review books for so many journals, or if rejection rates from conferences were always so high. I do feel like I'm treated more like a student, and an undergraduate, in the present university system than graduate students have in the past. A journal editor recently wrote me that graduate students are not permitted to review books for this journal because they "may have an axe to grind." I was fascinated by the word choice. Who gets to decide when my axe will turn a scholarly opinion? Strangely, everyone BUT the people who are training me as a scholar.<br /><br />In some ways of course I support "the guild" of historians and see the reason to draw the boundary in peer reviewed publications between student and faculty member, junior scholar and senior scholar, and to peer-review what is said by other peers of the field. However, so often these days the difference between an advanced student and a junior scholar is not just the completion of coursework, exams, dissertation and the faculty OK. It's the happenstance, totally beyond the control of the aspiring scholar, that a university made available a tenure track line. The blog, at least for the moment you are writing, tells you to forget about the very real hierarchies that design our profession, and tells you, I agree deceptively and entirely at your own risk, to pretend we are all scholars, junior and senior, and just share. <br /><br />The funny thing is that so many of us, myself included, are willing to take that risk knowing all the potential pitfalls. I wish I didn't feel this way, but it seems like we have so little to lose.Janine Giordano Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15743145462085629472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-88841531611038217152010-09-27T07:21:06.708-06:002010-09-27T07:21:06.708-06:00Ed: Thanks for this thoughtful post. Probably eve...Ed: Thanks for this thoughtful post. Probably even more relevant now, considering how competitive the market has become and how publication-driven things are. <br /><br />A new essay in the Chronicle picks up the theme of blogging as PR: "How to Use Blogging as a Marketing Tool" http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Use-Blogging-as-a/124530/Randallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16755286304057000048noreply@blogger.com