Archive for the ‘making history’ Category
“Students in history [must] learn techniques of project management” because of the growing need for collaboration on “Big History” projects, says James Herbert in the most recent issue of Perspectives (the magazine of the American Historical Society), in an article titled “Professions and Publics.“ Herbert is paraphrasing the words of author James Cortada, who writes [...]
Back when I was teaching in front of a traditional classroom, in those days when we used chalk to outline the main points of our lecture, I’d often have my students draw timelines on big rolls of butcher paper that I would then hang on a wall of the classroom for reference. The power of the [...]
It was hard for me to tweet this weekend for a variety of reasons, one of those being that I misplaced my phone charger cord (ack!), and another being that I was participating in an “unconference” called THATCamp Bay Area that required a great deal of attentiveness. But probably the most significant reason that I [...]
Many of you might remember my blogpost from two years ago, “What Has to Be Done.” That post, and the talk I gave alongside famous blogger Heather Armstrong (of dooce.com) brought over 30,000 new readers to my blog. What a hard time that was. As I suffered through the pain of my surgery and the [...]
Recently I heard someone make a funny comment about blogs. They said that every time they’d ever seen a blogger write a post saying that there were going to start posting more often, it never happened. I suspect that I am guilty of that myself. Not so much in this space, where I seem to [...]
I’m working on gathering the statistical information for the maps that I’m making this week, and I just encountered the image above in a scanned googlebook from the 1870s. It actually gave me the creeps–like those goosebumps that I get on the back of my neck when there’s an odd breeze blowing through an empty [...]
I am drawn to people with passion and vision. That’s much of the reason that I started my podcast–because I wanted to have conversation with people who share my history-lust. Talking to such people causes me to fall in love with my chosen profession (and the whole entire world, for that matter) all over again. [...]
This evening a friend dropped by and we shared some tea & scones after dinner. It wasn’t until about after an hour of chatting that I realized that I’ve been so crazy-intensely busy lately that the luxury of having a friend over for a cup of tea simply hasn’t been on my agenda. It’s no [...]
Cross posted at History Compass Since I started paddling an outrigger canoe through the Newport harbor, I’ve gone under a lot of bridges. I learned, very quickly, that the current around bridges can be unpredictable–even dangerously so. In my small boat if I hit a bridge it means that I’ll likely end up going for [...]
Cross-posted at History Compass Three years ago I outed myself as a blogger–to both the folks in my department and beyond, as I started using my real name online in places that could link back to my identity as a graduate student. Prior to that, my blogging was something that I did on the side, [...]
Came across this quotation on a humanist listserv this morning and just had to share: From Kenneth Burke’s,”The Conversation of History”: Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and [...]
For those of my readers who are interested in my history writing, here’s an excerpt from a recent History Compass post: I’m a historian because I’m haunted. The words and names from the archives surface in my thoughts and dreams…as I immerse myself in their world, their stories become mine. Am I like a clan [...]
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