[15 years ago this week, I started this here public scholarly blog. There have been lots of twists and turns since, and the best ones have been aided & abetted by wonderful folks. So for my 15th (!) anniversary series, I wanted to pay tribute to a handful of those moments and people, leading up to a special weekend tribute to my first and best reader!]
I said much of what I’d want to say about the role Heather Cox Richardson and her The Historical Society website played in the evolution of my own blogging and public scholarship in this November 2023 anniversary post. But I didn’t say clearly enough there a crucial reason why Heather and her site’s reaching out and sharing my work and voice were so meaningful—because her book The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (2001) was a model for me of accessible yet thoroughly analytical academic writing, skills she had only enhanced with a then-recent project like Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (2010). For such an impressive and well-established academic scholar to be both thinking about public scholarly and online work and supporting and championing mine was without question a push I needed to take my career to the next stage.
Next anniversary tribute tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Please feel free to say hi and share any blog responses or ideas in comments!
Leave a Reply