[This coming weekend, Vaughn and I will lead a workshop entitled “Improvisation & Innovation: New Possibilities for Public Scholarship” at the American Studies Association conference in Chicago. So this week I wanted to engage with a few questions about and examples of this vital work, leading up to a weekend post with some further details about that workshop!]
I’ve written a lot in this space over the last few years about the one and only Heather Cox Richardson, in a couple different veins:
Posts that have traced the key role that she played in my early years as an evolving public scholar;
And posts that have highlighted layers of her own excellent public scholarly work, from podcasts to books and more books. (In recent years she’s moved more and more into the video/multimedia space as well.)
But one thing I haven’t written about much is the work that has made Heather the leading public scholar of our time, her daily Letters from an American newsletter. So as part of this week’s series I wanted to highlight a few exemplary aspects of that newsletter:
- Timing: When I make the case for blogging/online writing as the single most important part of my career for these last 16 years (anniversary series coming soon!), writing on a schedule is always prominently featured. I’m not saying folks have to publish daily, as Heather and I do; although if you’re able, that sure does make sure that your voice and ideas are a consistent part of our conversations. But whatever the schedule, I think it’s crucial for folks to know that they can expect and look forward to your public scholarly work on a regular basis, can make it a part of their own ongoing conversations in consistent ways. Since I now write and schedule blog series well in advance, and only publish my Saturday Evening Post Considering History columns every two weeks or so, I’ll happily admit that nobody does daily public scholarly work more impressively than Heather.
- Brevity: is the soul of public scholarship? No, that’s much more the third item on this list; but brevity is absolutely crucial to the goals of clarity, communication, audience, argumentation, and more that I discussed in yesterday’s post. Doesn’t mean one exact word count goal, nor that every post has to be identical in this regard (Heather definitely has longer ones when she needs to). And I will always love a great long-form essay, a complex and crucial medium to be sure. But most of the best public scholarship is brief enough to hit its audiences hard, and I’ll leave it there.
- Passion: If a schedule and brevity both help get our work to our audiences in consistent and clear ways, though, they’re not enough if those audiences don’t feel connected to us, to our voice and perspective, to our stakes in these conversations. That starts with first-person pronouns, which is why I make the case for them at every level of writing (including, yes, with my first-year college students, although I help them practice third-person/formal style for those colleagues who demand it). But it also and especially means communicating the passions that drive our research, our analyses, our ideas and arguments, our work and career. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, and it’s no coincidence that the work of our single most prominent public scholar expresses that passionate perspective with every word and post.
Next reflections tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Examples of great public scholars or scholarship you’d share?
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