Carnivals and History Blogging

At Early Modern Notes, Sharon Howard hosts the 18th edition of ! Go over and join in the Early Modern Festivities. Jonathan Dresner will host History Carnival XXXVIII on Friday 1 September at Frog in a Well/Japan. Send nominations of exemplary history posts since 15 August to him at dresner*at*hawaii*dot*edu or use the form.

Thanks to all who commented about"Women and History Blogging" at Cliopatria, BlogHer, The ClutterMuseum, Frog in a Well/Japan, Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee, The Sheila Variations and Siris. The history blogosphere remains predominantly male, though as Sharon Howard points out, probably less so than the political blogosphere. Given the nature of the internet, as Scott McLemee and Gillian Polack suggest, the lists of blogging female historians are probably not exhaustive. But the discussions helped us to find each other and added two more blogs, both to the lists in the post and, eventually, to Cliopatria's History Blogroll: Polack's Even in a Little Thing, which combines interest in history and sci-fi, and elle, abd, which is the only blog by an African-American historian that we've yet found.

Even with the additions, it's useful to remember that about 40% of female historians who are blogging do it anonymously or pseudonymously. As New Kid on the Hallway points out, that does tend to inhibit their discussions of history on the net, because to discuss their research interests might tend to compromise their anonymity. A far smaller percentage of male historians blog anonymously, but to my knowledge the single most spectacularly sad outing of a pseudonymous history blogger was of a male graduate student. His online moniker was PhDFraud. Don't bother looking because no one's there anymore. One of my issues with Bitch PhD is that she encouraged his dysfunctional behavior, under cover of pseudonymity, that ultimately led to his outing.