My New Book!

My New Book!
My New Book!

Saturday, November 16, 2024

November 16-17, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Thankful Tributes

[14 years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversary series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept me blogging for nearly a decade and a half now, leading up to these special weekend tributes!]

Along with the obvious, AKA my favorite people in the world—my sons, my wife, and my folks—here are a handful of people who have helped make this blog a favorite of mine as well.

1)      Irene Martyniuk: One of my very first Guest Posters, my colleague and friend Irene has also become my most consistent reader, and one who frequently takes the time to share thoughtful responses as well (some of which I’ve gotten to feature in Crowd-Sourced Posts). We all want to know we’re being read and read well, and nobody has helped me feel that better than Irene!

2)      Rob Velella: I wrote in that hyperlinked post about what Rob’s blog and work have meant to me. But I’m not sure I said clearly enough how much it helped to have an existing public scholarly blogger, one whose blog was a model for what I was hoping to create, be so supportive and collaborative from the jump. I hope I’ve paid that forward!

3)      Heather Cox Richardson: I likewise wrote in that hyperlinked post about how much it meant to have Heather and her excellent Historical Society website support and share my blog at any early point (and I could say the same about her even more excellent We’re History website, for which I was able to write many times). Now that Heather has become one of the most prominent and successful public scholars in American history, I can add, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person!”

4)      Robin Field: That Guest Post of Robin’s was impressive and inspiring, as was the 2023 NeMLA paper of hers I highlighted in this post (and as is all of her work). But Robin has also connected me with a number of her students over the last few years, all of whom have contributed phenomenal Guest Posts in their own right (and who collectively have largely kept the Guest Post layer to the blog going). Am I suggesting that you all should connect me to awesome students who also might want to Guest Post on this blog? Yes, yes I am.

5)      You: Whether you connect me to students or not, I’m so damn thankful for y’all. And not just in the colloquial Southern 2nd-person sense—for each and every one of you all. I try not to dwell on blog stats, as they’re outside my control and can and do fluctuate and in any case are just numbers. But I get somewhere in the range of 30,000 discrete views each month, and I really am profoundly grateful for each and every one of those folks who finds their way to this blog. So thanks, and here’s to the next 14 years!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Give me a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

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