Land of Lime

In the spirit of the panel on Academic blogging that I attended at the American Historical Association Annual meeting, I must do this posting immediately. How can a historian not take his responsibility to create new myths seriously?

The Round Table entitled Were All the World a Blog: History Bloggers and History Blogging featured a diverse group of young and old academic bloggers: Manan Ahmed (Chapati Mystery), David Beito (Liberty and Power), Juan Cole (Informed Comment), Sharon Howard (Early Modern Notes) and Ralph E Luker (Cliopatria) and Richard B Shenkman (HNN).

The panel itself was fun to sit through, since the presentations were informal and discussion freeflowing. The panelists shared their experiences and speculated on new possibilities; as pioneers among historians, they emphasized on the responsibilities of scholars to use this new medium to engage with issues of public interest, share their scholarship with a larger audience and foster new conversations.

Juan Cole, who has been a very influential voice in the debate on Iraq, stressed on the need for collapsing the wall between academia and public. As a historian, he said, his goal is to bring his analytical skills and scholarship to comment on everyday news from the Middle East. In an era when historians have been virtually absent from any public / foreign policy discussion, his blogging is a refusal to hide in the ivory tower and an act of affirming democracy and liberty.

Manan Ahmed similarly strongly commented on the role of a public intellectual and blogging as a means to engage the public, while bringing to bear one’s scholarship to the analysis of contemporary world.

A major theme of the deliberations was using blogging as a tool to further one’s own research agenda, building conversations with and learning from colleages in the field. Ahmed, Cole and Howard shared their experiences, projects and strategies. Manan, in particular, talked about the promise of wiki and blogformat for pedagogical purposes.

The discussion during the Q&A focused on blogging and tenure and the future of blogging. As Manan (and others) were assuring us that technology wouldn’t be a problem any longer to create blogs and collaborative wikis, I couldn’t help but notice that AHA still doesn’t ensure wireless connectivity at the conference center and the presenters still were at the mercy of Marriott for access to Internet. As we walked into the hotel earlier in the morning, we saw a long line of historians patiently waiting for their turn to check email in a public facility set up by AHA. Some things don’t change.

Later tonight, I will add some more notes and observations on historians who have taken over Philadelphia.