My thanks to my fellow bloggers and to our marvelous editor Ben Alpers, to Richard Cándida Smith, and to the Executive Committee for trusting me with this responsibility. I’m very grateful for this opportunity, and I am especially glad that this service to our wonderful organization will not entail placing any catering orders or distributing any drink tickets.
As many of you know, I found my voice (and how!) as an intellectual historian here, and I found my people as well – indeed, these two things happened together. So a big thank you to this online community and the organization it represents for your hospitality and conviviality.
My editorial assistant, Clio
In January or February of 2011, I started commenting at the USIH blog, signing my comments with my first and middle initials, “LD.” I commented pseudonymously because I was new to intellectual history as a discipline, and I was a beginning PhD student, and I wasn’t sure I had the intellectual chops to contribute anything substantive to a conversation among intellectual historians – I didn’t want to embarrass myself…or my advisor, who recommended the blog to me to help me get over my nervousness about something as intimidating as “intellectual history.” (Partly out of recognition that other participants may be in a similar situation or have similar concerns, our comment policy indicates that we prefer, but do not require, that commenters use their own names when participating in conversation here. Call it the “anxious grad student” loophole. However, all authors must publish under their own names.)
After almost a year of substantive but pseudonymous engagement at the blog, I responded to one of Ben Alpers’s posts about looking for new bloggers by emailing him and asking to be considered. That meant disclosing to Ben and then to the rest of the USIH blog crew my actual identity – and, interestingly, my gender, since they had assumed “LD” was a he.
In any case, I joined the blog officially in January 2012 and, except for a few extended breaks for major surgery and finishing the dissertation, I have posted pretty much every week for the past six years. I have also sought out many guest posts for the blog and have done my best to help people who feel as I once felt – “not smart enough” or “not important enough” to participate in conversations about U.S. intellectual history – to have confidence in the value of their contributions to this community.
As I prepare to take on a new role at the blog, there are a few high-priority goals I’d like to share with you.
In terms of blog personnel and editorial content, my aim is to grow and diversify our roster of regular and guest contributors, broaden our chronological reach, and draw more connections between U.S. intellectual history and other subfields and disciplines, including Native history, women’s history, gender/queer history, Atlantic history, Black history, religious history, hemispheric history, and other interdisciplinary/transnational approaches. I welcome your suggestions on concrete steps we can take to accomplish these goals.
In terms of day-to-day management of this S-USIH publication, I will be consulting with our current Publications Committee Chair to create two “Assistant Editor” positions, to be filled by two of our current bloggers when I take on editorship later this fall.
The purpose of Assistant Editors would be to provide backup for the regular editorial duties of the blog – screening/publishing comments, handling queries for guest posts / roundtables – as well as more strategically and intentionally strengthening/expanding the editorial range and reach of this online publication. So, for example, one assistant editor might be responsible for soliciting/scheduling roundtables, and another assistant editor might be responsible for managing a blog twitter feed or scheduling scholar interviews or something like that.
Ideally, either of the Assistant Editors would be well positioned to serve as the editor-elect and take over as editor when my term ends.
In the meantime, I look forward to working with my fellow bloggers and our organizational leadership to maintain this site as a virtual space that offers not just “content,” but engaging conversation and an invitation to real community.
3 Thoughts on this Post
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Congrats on the new job here, blogmate! I look forward to seeing how these plans play out. I will contribute, as always—in any way I can, as time allows. – TL
I am so excited for this next chapter in the history of the blog!
L.D., you bring so much to this position–as a writer, as a historian, and as a person. I want to reinforce what you say about the continuing need–and our continuing desire–to reckon with and help dispel people’s anxieties about not being “good enough” to contribute to the blog, in whatever capacity.
As the Wisconsinites say, “Forward!”
Congratulations, L.D., and best of luck going forward. I feel sure the blog will continue to prosper!