[This week marks
this blog’s
9th anniversary! Nearly 2800 posts later, AmericanStudier has
become my most extended & enduring life’s work, and so this week I wanted
to share a handful of the reasons why I’ve kept it going for so long. Leading
up a special weekend list of other scholarly blogs that we should all be
reading—add your suggestions (including your own blog of course), please!]
On three stages
in my evolving, increasingly central goal of making my individual blog also a
communal, multi-vocal space.
1)
Guest Posts: I knew from the outset that I
wanted to include voices other than my own in this space, and so I featured my
first Guest Post (from a very special
Guest Poster!) after just over two months, in early January 2011. Since
then I’ve been delighted to feature more than 50 such posts (you can find them
all by clicking on the Guest
Posts label in this blog’s right-hand column), up through Ariella
Baker-Archer’s Halloween-tastic Guest Post a couple weeks ago. They’ve all been
radically different in style and structure from my relatively consistent form,
which is a significant part of the point—that is, Guest Posts aren’t just about
sharing other voices, content, topics, or analyses (although of course that’s all
part of it); they also offer other scholars and writers a chance to use this
form and this blog in whatever ways will (I hope) most benefit their own
thinking and work. I’ve loved every chance to share a Guest Post (well, other
than that one, but you know who you are…I kid, I kid), and can’t wait for the
next 50!
2)
Crowd-sourced Posts: About a year after that
first Guest Post, in early 2012, I knew that the blog would have to evolve substantially
if I was going to be both able to continue (time-wise) and interested in doing
so. One of the most significant changes was the move to weekly series, which
allows me to write and schedule blocks of posts much more easily (quite simply
the only way I’ve been able to keep writing a daily blog for all these years). And
as an unexpected side effect to that shift, I realized that for topics which
seemed to speak to many fellow AmericanStudiers, I could use the weekend post
to elicit and share collective responses and ideas on that week’s subject. This
June
16-17 follow-up to a series on material culture was the first such
crowd-sourced post, of which I’ve now had the chance to feature more
than 110. They are often some of my very favorite posts (ironically, the annual
Non-Favorites post is a particular fav), as they draw out many more voices
and perspectives, responses and suggestions, than would ever be possible from
Guest Posts alone.
3)
Social media: Many of the contributions to those
crowd-sourced posts have come from Facebook comment threads, but I’m thinking
here especially about Twitter. When I started AmericanStudier I didn’t even
have a Twitter account; I opened my account in early 2011 largely as a vehicle
through which to share blog posts. I’m ashamed to admit that for the first
couple years I mostly used Twitter to that end, to share my own work. But I’ve
gradually become (I hope and believe) much better at being a member of the
Twitter scholarly community, and while that especially means sharing and
engaging with the work and voices of others, it has also fundamentally changed
how I share my blog. Now I’m much more likely to create a mini-thread, both to highlight
a few sides of that day’s and week’s topics and to encourage responses and
conversation from my thousands of fellow scholarly Tweeters. Sometimes those
end up being part of crowd-sourced posts (in weeks when I feature them), but
they always affect and change and strengthen my own thoughts and the blog. One
more way your voices have become increasingly central to this space!
Next anniversary
reflection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Other
scholarly blogs you’d suggest for the weekend list? Or ideas for Guest Posts
you’d like to contribute (email me
if so!)?
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