The Cliopatria Awards 2006

At yesterday's 4th Annual Banquet of the Cliopatricians at the American Historical Association convention here 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 __ 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.