History Blogging

Obviously, I am a blogger.  I blog about professional topics here, and I have a personal-anything-goes blog elsewhere (don't you wish you knew where?). Blogging is more important than it gets credit for. I think blogging is becoming increasingly important for everything from marketing to academic research.  Blogging offers historians a chance to discuss history in a low-key, congenial way. It also offers us a chance to reach a wider audience than simply students forced to take our classes by university requirements or our fellow historians (because we all know we like to talk....A LOT...and not just about history).

Anthony Grafton, President of the American Historical Association, points out the sheer number of history-related blogs in his 2007 article "Clio and the Bloggers." Grafton notes the richness of both cultural and academic diversity available via history blogs.  You can find blogs on everything from advice for grad students to serious academic research on the Civil War to mocking history (yes, really). 

The variety of history blogs available is amazing, if not somewhat miraculous.  As with anything, some of these blogs are excellent resources for historians and others are....well, just plain awful.  I sometimes find I enjoy the amazingly bad blogs better than the good ones. 

David Voelker, also of the AHA, recommends blogging for your students. Voelker argues that blogs open up communication and allow students the opportunity to think critically outside of class. He says because blog comments are essentially visible to the public and students are well aware their comments are public "their comments are more thoughtful and substantial than they usually are in walled-off online discussions."   Essentially, blogs open the floor for discussion.

Grafton notes, "Historians often complain about their loss of intellectual and personal community: the disappearance of books that interest historians in all fields, the pervasive hyperactivity that makes it hard to find time to have coffee with colleagues. It's all true—and yet, a visit to the historical blogosphere shows that historians are crafting a new and vital public space."

A space, I would argue, in which we actually become better historians.  You learn more by teaching a subject to someone else than you learn doing anything else, and I think in many ways blogging is really just another form of teaching.  Writing a blog is also, as Voelker notes, a learning activity.  It exercises your brain, and whose brain couldn't use a little workout every now and then?

I truly believe if you take time to blog you won't regret it.  I think you'll find there are numerous benefits to blogging, not the least of which is it's fun.