Passing the Editorial Torch

The U.S. Intellectual History Blog began way back in 2007, when blogging still felt fairly new and academic blogging was unusual, audacious, and frequently treated with suspicion. Shortly afterward, the founding bloggers – the last of whom who is still around is Tim Lacy – decided to put together a U.S. Intellectual History Conference, to take place as part of the Great Lakes History Conference at Grand Valley State University the following year.  I think it was Tim who asked me to take part at that first conference in 2008.  Shortly afterwards, I began to blog here.[1]  Soon the Conference became an annual event. In 2010, at the third conference, which took place at CUNY Grad Center, we began to talk about forming a new professional society. And in June 2011, S-USIH came into being.

Somewhere along the way, we had decided to improve the blog by making posts appear more regularly. I asked my fellow bloggers whether I could find a few people to commit to blogging once a week on a particular day.  And pretty soon, we had five bloggers who had made that commitment.  In 2010, we won the Cliopatria Award for the best group history blog.  Shortly after we became a society in 2011, we created the role of Blog Editor and I’ve occupied it ever since.

Unlike the elected officers who sit on S-USIH’s Executive Committee, the Blog Editor hasn’t served a set term. I’m not sure what we were thinking when we created the position, but the Editor reported to – and served at the pleasure of – the Publications Committee Chair. And somehow, over the years, I have apparently continued to satisfy the people who have sat in that position (this task was made easy initially as I was the first PubComm Chair, as well).

But over the last year or so, I have begun to feel that it was time for me to step down. This has always been truly a group blog. My task as Editor has been a fairly light one. The day-to-day duties of the position, such as they are, involve coordinating a group of brilliant bloggers who’ve needed very little coordinating.

But ideally the Blog Editor also provides other kinds of leadership, such as recruiting new bloggers, coming up with new collective projects for the blog to pursue, and constantly looking for ways to improve the ways we do things around here.  (Thanks to their incredible energy, the other bloggers also do a lot of this stuff on their own, too.) Like all of us, I see things from a particular perspective and that effects the way I approach these broader editorial tasks. I’d begun to feel that the blog would benefit from someone else taking responsibility for these efforts, someone who might see things I don’t and might take the blog in exciting directions I wouldn’t think of. And I knew that among our bloggers were a number of folks who could do just that. I also felt that I’d benefit from seeking some new challenges for myself.

I had never seen myself as Editor for Life and, earlier this year, I came to the decision to step aside in favor of a new Editor. In consultation with Richard Candida-Smith, the current PubComm Chair, and other members of the Executive Committee, we came up a transition plan and a new system under which the Editor will serve three-year, renewable terms.  It was very important to me that we continue the tradition of having the Editor come from among the current bloggers and that the bloggers be given the responsibility for nominating one of our number to the PubComm Chair and Executive Committee.

The bloggers reached consensus around a nominee, her name was sent to the Executive Committee, and this week the Exec Comm approved our choice. So I’m delighted to be able announce that the next editor of the U.S. Intellectual History Blog will be L.D. Burnett.  We’re currently beginning a transition period that will end in October, when L.D. will formally take over as Editor.  She’ll be telling you about her plans in the following post.

I cannot express how grateful I am to have been given the opportunity to lead this blog during much of its first decade or so of existence. Thanks to all the current and former bloggers who have made this task easy. Having worked with L.D. on many other projects over the years, most recently our last Conference, on which I served on the organizing committee that she chaired, I am truly looking forward to working with her on the transition. The blog will be in excellent hands!