[This coming
weekend will mark this
blog’s 7-year anniversary (my November 5th debut post on Du Bois
has unfortunately vanished). In honor of that milestone, I wanted to spend the
week highlighting some of the many wonderful academic
and scholarly bloggers to whom this work has happily connected me. Leading
up to a few reflections on my work, past and future, in this space!]
Three ways one
of my more
recent Guest Posters and one of the most talented and prolific digital
AmericanStudiers exemplifies scholarly bloggers and public scholarly
voices.
1)
Through Something We Share: Over the last few
months, I have had the chance to work directly with Matthew on #NoConfederateSyllabus,
a crowd-sourced document
providing texts and contexts for the evolving controversy over HBO’s planned
show Confederate. The document was
entirely Matthew’s idea, and while I’m proud of the work I’ve done to help
create and develop it (and excited about all that others have contributed to it
as well—add your ideas, please!), I see it as first and foremost a reflection
of his own commitment to African American, Southern, ethnic American, and
shared American histories, literatures, popular cultures, and conversations. As
his blog consistently
reflects, he’s also committed to finding ways to share and teach all those
topics, both in classrooms and in digital and civic conversations, and #NoConfederateSyllabus
reflects those commitments as well. I’m honored to be connected to it and
Matthew’s work through it.
2)
Through What He Does: This second item could include
many different impressive sub-topics, from Matthew’s teaching and invited lectures to his work
with the Ernest
J. Gaines Center and his publications (such as a great forthcoming
collection on Frank Yerby). But Matthew complements and extends all of
those through his exemplary public scholarly blogging, as illustrated most
impressively through his work as a
contributor to the African
American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) blog Black Perspectives. This sample, April
2017 post on race and racism in comics embodies Matthew’s ability to
combine specific pop culture analysis, historical and cultural frames,
multi-layered literary and cultural contexts for those topics, and an engaging
voice that clearly parallels his work teaching such subjects as well. All those
factors make him one of the best public scholarly bloggers and voices I’ve
encountered, and to my mind in 2017 America there are few roles that are more
important, inside and outside the academy, than that one.
3)
Through What He Will Do: That public scholarly
success certainly illustrates one striking facet of the promising career of
which Matthew’s just at the start, as do many of these other specific achievements
and roles. But I’m thinking here in particular about the combination of all of
them, and what that combination reflects about Matthew’s potential as a
colleague and member of any department, program, and institution. I’ve been on
lots of search committees over the years, and more than anything else that’s
what I look for, that combination of factors which can indicate someone’s
potential as a colleague, a contributor to all that we do, not only immediately
but for many years to come. Working with Matthew on the syllabus has only
reinforced that sense of him as an ideal colleague, and I’m very excited to see
what’s next in this exemplarly public scholarly, AmericanStudying career.
Next scholarly
blogger tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Bloggers,
scholarly or otherwise, you’d highlight?
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