The Cliopatria Awards
The Cliopatria Awards
Here is the complete list of past winners of the Cliopatria Awards:
Best Group Blog: The Edge of the American West
Witty and insightful, the Edge of the American West puts the group in group blog, with frequent contributions from an irreverent band that includes several historians, a grad student in philosophy, a grad student in literature, and a software developer. Always entertaining, often enlightening, the blog features snazzy visuals—graphs, photos, videos—and zippy writing on everything from meditations on Obama, to a reflection on the 1967 Detroit riots, to tips for preparing for an academic job interview.
Ari Kelman and Eric Rauchway of the history department at UC, Davis, founded The Edge and are now joined in it by others.
Best Individual Blog: Northwest History
In addition to a strong focus on the historical materials and historiography of the American Northwest, Prof. Cebula introduces and explains digital resources and techniques with great range and depth. The writing is engaging and incisive and the result both entertaining and very useful.
Larry Cebula is a Public Historian at Eastern Washington University and Assistant Digital Archivist at the Washington State Digital Archives.
Best New Blog: Wynken de Worde
Wynken de Worde is a blog about books: not only their history, but also their cultural significance and myriad uses. It's richly illustrated and always immensely thoughtful. Though the focus is on Renaissance and Elizabethan materials, Sarah Werner brings the history to life, and also addresses the present state of books, reading and intellectual property as well.
Dr. Sarah Werner is Director of the Undergraduate Program at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a scholar of Shakesperean and Renaissance drama.
Best Post: Claire Potter, Tenured Radical, "What Would Natalie Zemon Davis Do?" 19 June 2008.
In this eloquent, well-argued response to the blogger Rusticus' attack on women's history and women historians, Potter uses a 1988 exchange between Natalie Zemon Davis and Robert Finlay to illustrate how women's history can "illuminate what it meant to be human" while showing "how to argue in a civilized way." She argues that historians succeed because they persuade their colleagues, male and female; this blog post is a good example of one such success.
Claire Potter is a professor of History and American Studies at Connecticut's Wesleyan University.
Best Series of Posts: Tim Abbott on Trumbull's The Death of General Montgomery, Jan. 12, Jan. 13, Jan. 14, Jan. 17, Jan. 18.
The examination of Jonathan Trumbull's famous painting The Death of General Montgomery in Attack on Quebec, December 31 1775 over five posts at Tim Abbott's Walking the Berkshires is good scholarly writing and engaging analysis. Abbott raises intriguing questions about historical memory, as he guides his readers through the examination of historical records.
Tim Abbott is a conservation professional.
Best Writer: Zunguzungu
Whether in his examination of Henry Morton Stanley's encounter with Dr. Livingstone, or tracing the African imaginary in Charlton Heston's Naked Jungle or his expositions of John Ford's American West, Zunguzungu is always thought- provoking and illuminating. His writing consistently demonstrates a gift of narrative and the willingness to eschew easy questions. He draws heavily on visuals to augment his readings, but never at the expense of readability.
Zunguzungu is a graduate student in English. His project is broadly concerned with tracking the extent to which "America's Africa" and "Africa's America" have been mutually constitutive -- even, occasionally, dialogic -- narratives of identity.
At the 5th Annual Banquet of the Cliopatricians at the American Historical Association convention in Washington, DC, the winners of The Cliopatria Awards for 2007 were announced. Many thanks to Jeremy Boggs of ClioWeb and George Mason University who designed the logo for The Cliopatria Awards. Thanks also to the judges who made the difficult decisions in selecting winners of the awards from among the many excellent nominations: Ancarett, Timothy Burke, Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Rebecca Goetz, Paul Harvey, Sharon Howard, Elizabeth Klaczynski, Adam Roberts, and John Carter Wood. They have done a fine job. Here, then, are the winners and brief explanations of the judge's rationale for their decisions:
2007
Best Group Blog: In the Middle
In the Middle is a medievalist blog, written by J. J. Cohen, Mary Kate Hurley, Eileen Joy, and Karl Steel. We were impressed by the blog's interdisciplinary approach, its consistently intelligent prose, its effective blend of wit and genuine scholarship, and its ability to follow the medieval wherever it might lead-from popular culture to high theory. In recent months, posts have ranged from Beowulf at the movies to the significance of animals in the middle ages. As one committee member remarked, this is, in many ways, a "model group blog."
Best Individual Blog: Civil War Memory
Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory is an impressive individual blog, with a track record of several years. It commonly offers the best of both military history blogging and history blogging about the broader political, intellectual, and social context of regional conflict. This past year, for example, Civil War Memory has devoted considerable attention to the Lost Cause myth and the quest for Black Confederates.
Best New Blog: Religion in American History
Religion in American History is a well-written blog with a clear focus, a great example of how blogging can be used to present scholarship in a specialist academic field to a much wider audience and to create solid practical resources for teachers and researchers. With a varied mix of commentaries, news, useful announcements and book reviews, the writers engage with both scholarly and popular history issues and show the relevance of religion in history to religious issues today.
Best Post: Timothy Burke, "Knowledge is Inconvenient," Cliopatria, 27 September
In tackling Michael Medved's Six Inconvenient Truths about the Atlantic Slave Trade, Tim Burke performed one of the primary functions of excellent history blogging. He identified bad history and patiently explained what was so bad about it. In light of Burke's argument, Medved's caricature of current scholarship and teaching about the Atlantic slave trade was exposed as a fraud.
Best Series of Posts: Errol Morris, "Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?" Zoom, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three, 25 September, 4 October, and 23 October.
Morris became fascinated by the cannonballs pictured in Roger Fenton's Crimean war photographs, "Valley of the Shadow of Death": was the second photograph, in which cannonballs can be seen scattered on the road, "staged"? Morris' quest for the answer not only demonstrated the process of historical research in action, but also raised a number of pertinent questions about photographs as historical documents. For depth, attention to detail (including a trip to the Crimea!) and narrative flair, this series was unmatched.
Best Writer: Caleb Crain, Steamboats are Ruining Everything
The judges' aim was to reward writing that is well tailored to the history blogosphere, accessible, memorable and consistently history-oriented. Caleb Crain is always readable and thought-provoking; an engaging writer who pays attention to the constraints of the blog format but breaks them with style on occasion.
At the 4th Annual Banquet of the Cliopatricians at the American Historical Association convention in Atlanta, the winners of The Cliopatria Awards for 2006 were announced. Many thanks to Jeremy Boggs of ClioWeb and George Mason University who designed the logo for The Cliopatria Awards. Thanks also to the judges who made the difficult decisions in selecting winners of the awards from among the many excellent nominations: Alan Allport, Martha Bridgam, Ben Brumfield, Miriam Burstein, Rebecca Goetz, Rob MacDougall, Caleb McDaniel, Nathanael Robinson, and Brandon Watson. They have done a fine job. Here, then, are the winners, short identifications of them, and brief explanations of the judge's rationale for their decisions:
Best Individual Blog: David Noon's Axis of Evel Knievel
Recently using an "on this awful day in history" format to highlight eclectic examples of the unforgivable, Axis of Evel Knieval employs its acidic wit with forensic precision.
David H. Noon is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alaska, Southeast, at Juneau.
Best Group Blog: Mark Grimsley, Brooks Simpson, and others at Civil Warriors
Lively, smart, and welcoming, with members from both inside and outside the academy plus an active community of readers and commenters, Civil Warriors has become a central hub around which an entire portion of the history blogosphere revolves. The war itself is the jumping-off point, but conversations at Civil Warriors engage the craft of history, the heritage industry around the war, and the very nature of historical memory. Civil Warriors offers an admirable model of interaction between professional historians, lay enthusiasts, and the broader public that is not only civil but productive, inspiring, and fun.
Brooks D. Simpson, a Professor of History at Arizona State University, and Mark Grimsley, an Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University, are joined by others at Civil Warriors.
Best New Blog: William J. Turkel's Digital History Hacks
William J. Turkel's Digital History Hacks goes beyond new media platitudes and internet hype to demonstrate in word and deed what history in the twenty-first century will be all about. From the nuts and bolts of spidering and scraping to the loftiest questions about what historians do and why, Digital History Hacks points the way to a brave new world with infectious enthusiasm and blazing imagination.
William J. Turkel is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario.
Best Post: John Jordan, "For a Canadian Wikipedia," Participant Historian, 7 November 2006
An opening bid in an intriguing historiographical conversation, much larger on speculations than overconfident assertions - in other words, everything that a mature, exemplary blog post ought to be.John Jordan is a Canadian student.
Best Series of Posts, Chris Bray, "The Historian as Soldier: Shadows and Fog," Introduction and Parts One, Two, and Three, Cliopatria, 12, 13, 16, and 26 January 2006.
Chris Bray achieves rare insights into the events of the present by bringing his knowledge of the past to bear on his experiences as a soldier. He peers through the fog of war, revealing the problems caused by rhetoric and optimism in conducting war.Chris Bray is a doctoral candidate in history at UCLA.
Best Writer: Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well
Of all the nominations, the judges felt that Alan Baumler's writing for Frog in a Well is the finest example of how blogs can make history accessible. He stands in the middle ground between scholar and non-scholar, adeptly demystifying historical and academic issues, bringing clarity to debates with his own arguments, and enlightening the unfamiliar of Asian history and culture.
Alan Baumler is an Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
At Saturday's session, "Were All the World a Blog: History Bloggers and History Blogs," at the AHA convention in Philadelphia, the winners of The Cliopatria Awards were announced.
First, many thanks to Jeremy Boggs of ClioWeb and George Mason University who designed the logo for The Cliopatria Awards. Thanks also to the judges who made the difficult decisions in selecting winners of the awards from among the many excellent nominations: Manan Ahmed, Another Damned Medievalist, Natalie Bennett, Timothy Burke, Jonathan Dresner, Hiram Hover, Sharon Howard, Adam Kotsko, and Brian Ulrich. They have done a fine job. Here, then, are the winners, short identifications of them, and brief explanations of the judge's rationale for their decisions:
Best Individual Blog: Mark Grimsley's Blog Them Out of the Stone Age
"Blog Them Out of the Stone Age is the finest example of the application of a historian's passion and tradecraft in the new medium of blogging. It combines research, analysis and pedagogy issues with a keen desire to engage with the broader public."
Mark Grimsley is Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University
Best Group Blog: K. M. Lawson, Jonathan Dresner, and others, at Frog in a Well
"After much thought, the judges chose the Frog in a Well project as a whole, rather than singling out any one of its constituent parts: not only do they feature overlapping personnel and a considerable degree of shared identity and purpose, all have been characterized by diverse contributors, strong historical content and consistently high quality writing. Both individually and as a whole, they represent a great achievement and a model to inspire and challenge in the future."
K. M. Lawson is a graduate student in history at Harvard; Jonathan Dresner is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. They are joined in Frog in a Well/Japan, Frog in a Well/Korea, and Frog in a Well/China by a number of other professors and students of east Asian studies.
Best New Blog: "PK"'s BibliOdyssey
"BibliOdyssey has only been on-line since September of last year, but has already amassed a significant following for the dramatic and thought-provoking historical images and books featured there. This unusually visual blog by "PK" brings together a wide variety of on-line materials and original scans, and will provide teachers and researchers and hobbyists alike with rich graphic and bibliographic sources."
"PK" blogs pseudonymously.
Best Post: Rob MacDougall's "Turk 182" at Old is the New New (9 January 2005)
"Rob MacDougall's ‘Turk 182' brilliantly traversed time and genres to illuminate the abiding fascination with Automata. His use of varied sources, erudition and clear affection for the subject-matter highlights it as the best post of the year."
Rob MacDougall is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario.
Best Series of Posts: Nathanael Robinson's "The Geographical Turn," Parts One, Two, and Three, at Rhine River.
"The judges thought that, of the nominations, this was the best example of historical scholarship. It was a well-written, thoughtful and accessible essay about an important historiographical movement that may be unfamiliar to many non-specialist readers, while for academic historians it discussed a less familiar aspect of a well-known subject. As such, it represented an excellent example of the uses historians can make of blogs both to explore their ideas and to increase understanding of the past and of the discipline of history."
Nathanael Robinson is a graduate student in Comparative History at Brandeis.
Best Writer: Timothy Burke at Easily Distracted
"Timothy Burke writes strong, clear prose that advances interesting ideas and moves debates in new directions. His energetic and considered writing stands out even in such a competitive category as this one, and reaches out to historians, other academics and non-academics alike with great skill."
Timothy Burke is Associate Professor of History at Swarthmore.
