Happy April! Most April Fools Jokes will fall into the May carnival, of course, but I can’t help noting two:
- American Historical Association, which really has stepped up its blogging game, announces the relocation of its annual meeting to a luxury cruise ship, with attendant registration fee increases.
- The American History Museum announced its Smells of American History project, and as Bradley Proctor noted, “I love that most folks are all ‘lol April Fools!’ and #twitterstorians are all ‘finally, this is such a neat idea.’
Speaking of the AHA, Sadie Bergen has a nice look at “Collaborative History Blogs” or, as we used to call them, group blogs. I don’t mind that the defunct HNN group blogs (Cliopatria, Liberty and Power, etc.) aren’t mentioned, or early (if now quieter) special topics blogs (Frog in a Well, Chapati Mystery) aren’t mentioned… actually, I kinda do. NOTCHES, The Junto, S-USIH blog are all excellent projects (as are Active History Canada, Sport in American History, which aren’t mentioned) though they don’t submit stuff to the History Carnival, another phenomenon too old to attract the attention of the AHA bloggers… ok, enough ranting. It’s a decent discussion of the professionalization issue (“recreational” was how one department chair described my blogging), just a wee bit foreshortened. What do we actually have this month?
Manan Ahmed on Richard Eaton and Phillip Wagoner’s 2014 Memory, Power, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600: How To See
Brett Holman on The Melbourne balloon riot of 1858
Sharon Howard rounding up her Womens History Month posts and commenting on a few others.
Historian On The Edge with a survey of the immense amount we don’t know about King Arthur as an ahistorical figure
Karl Steel on oddities of Medieval manuscripts, including multicolored crochet repairs
David Bellos, on the publication of his book about the history of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables
Robert Smith on the purported anniversary of the first flight of K5054 the Supermarine Type 300 Spitfire prototype
Michael Meyer at TNI, on the great 19th century scientist Mary Somerville
Erik Loomis on “This Day In Labor History” looks at a 1959 Mexican railroad strike and the anniverary of Philippine independence
Hels of Melbourne on a failed 1939 attempt to get refugee visas for German and Austrian Jews
Jon Piccini on Human Rights, Women’s Rights and Third Worldism in Mexico City, 1975
VIDA: Blog of the Australian Women’s History Network is another great group blog project, and they had a predictably good Womens History Month!
- Susan Magarey, Catherine Helen Spence: ‘The most distinguished woman they had had in Australia’
- Michelle Arrow, Working inside the system: Elizabeth Reid, the Whitlam government, and the Women’s Movement
- Melanie Nolan, Title of post: Reshaping the Australian Dictionary of Biography: Feminist interventions
- Joanne McEwan and Stephanie Tarbin, Patricia Crawford: Celebrated scholar and mentor
- Anne Rees, Persia Campbell, our woman at the United Nations
- Heather Sheard, Australia’s women doctors in the First World War
- Alison Alexander, Jane Franklin: A life on her own terms
- Sharon Crozier-de Rosa, Uncomfortable feminist icon: Constance Markievicz
Jessica Cale at Dirty, Sexy History gets the award for the best blog name I hadn’t heard of, and has two posts: The “Poor-Whores Petition” and the Shrove Tuesday Riots on 1668 and Daniel Mendoza and the Modern Art of Boxing
Howard Dorre, The Skinny on John Quincy Adams’s Skinny Dipping Interview and debunking the myth of Anne Royall’s shame.
Speaking of debunking, I got some pushback on my Last Samurai review.
The next History Carnival will be at Yvonne Seale, author of Papal Bull? “The Young Pope” and Teaching the Middle Ages
and Hosts are needed from Jun 2017! Please contact the co-ordinator if interested.
Thanks very much for the kind mention! x