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2010 Cliopatria Award Nominations: Best Individual Blog
by Cliopatria
NOMINATIONS FOR 2010 ARE NOW CLOSED Look for the announcement of the winners in January at Cliopatria
Please submit, in comments below, your nominations for the best individual history blog since 1 December 2009. [registration not required to post nominations, but the usual rules of civility and conduct still apply] Nominations will be accepted from November 1st through 30th.
Please include a URL for the blog you are nominating, as well as the name of the blog. You may nominate as many blogs as you wish in this category, and you may nominate individual blogs or bloggers or posts in other categories as well.
Bloggers do not need to be academic historians. If you're not sure whether a blog or blogger qualifies as"history," nominate them anyway and the judges will make a final determination. If you have questions, feel free to contact Ralph Luker or leave a comment here.
Judging Committee: Aaron Bady (Chair), Andrew Seal, and Edward Cavanagh. [Judges are ineligible to win awards they are judging, but feel free to nominate them for something else!]
Clare Spark's Yankee Doodle Society Blog at Clarespark.com is probably the richest, most unique contribution to history blogging today. Please consider her nomination.
Robert Nashak
BBC
Media Centre
London
http://clarespark.com/2010/05/23/some-dirty-little-secrets/. This examines the controversy over the publication of Claire Berlinski's City Journal article alleging that key archival materials had been suppressed, owing to an underestimation of the crimes of the Soviet Union.
I would like to nominate Mike Dash's new blog "A Blast From the Past" [http://allkindsofhistory.wordpress.com/]. It is extremely wide-ranging, well-written, and it often features high-quality new research on a very eclectic range of subjects.
It's part blog, part news service and part blog-design experiment targetted at the academic history community who study British history.
Thanks,
Adam
Finn Arne Jørgensen -
11/7/2010
I would like to nominate Colin Tyner's blog "Colin Tyner, the Labour of Nature, and Island Life," the most interesting and well-written environmental history blog out there. It is a perfect example of a great research blog, where he discusses thoughts and ideas for his research, mixed in with experiences of teaching history in Japan, yet it is written in a very approachable manner. Colin has some very sharp observations on place and history.
OK, I will try again to list why Boston 1775 deserves the award.
1. He does primary source blogging, often going through some fascinating document and blogging it almost as it it were today's news. It is a unique and refreshing approach.
2. At the same time, Bell does a terrific job of finding and using online primary sources. His blog is a master class in the subject.
3. Bell is a good citizen of his historical community, often posting notices for historical talks and meetings in the greater Boston area.
4. Bell sometimes enters into current events when his historical expertise is relevant. See his recent posts on the Tea Party movement, or his amazing series of posts on the John Adams miniseries a few years back.
5. Many of Bell's posts are just plain delightful--see his recent "George Washington buried alive?" post for example.
When I won this award two years ago my first thought was "Damn, J.L. Bell got robbed again!" Time to set it right.
I'd like to nominate TeachHistory.com in the Best Individual Blog category. Great in-depth articles with fantatisic primary sources and photography to supplement each topic.