Early Modern Notes

The next History Carnival will be hosted on 1 June by Amy Stevens at Aqueduct.

Email nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) to amy[AT]amystevensonline[DOT]com, or use the submission form provided by Blog Carnival.

The History Carnival is not just for academics and entries don’t have to be heavyweight scholarship, but they must uphold basic standards of factual accuracy. If you have any further questions about the criteria for inclusion, check out the Carnival homepage (link above).

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SITUATIONS VACANT: TEMPORARY CARNIVAL BOSS WANTED

Update: I have a couple of good offers in so far. Anyone else who’s still interested will need to email me by the end of today (28 May)…

OK, everyone, listen up. I’m giving very serious thought to taking a blog sabbatical. Not only do I have a ton of work to do in the last few months of my fellowship, I’ve not been too inspired around here lately, and I think I need a real extended break. And to do it properly, I also need someone to take care of the History Carnival for a couple of months.

It doesn’t take that much work, but there is a regular routine that has to be maintained: post announcements a few days before each Carnival, update the webpage and the Blog Carnival page on the 1st and 15th (both of these are quite straightforward procedures), and communicate with hosts as needed. You won’t need to find hosts, hopefully: I’ll aim to have enough lined up to cover the period, and some backups in case of emergencies.

You must know your way around the history blogosphere and be familiar with what the Carnival does; you should be a fairly experienced blogger and and knowledgeable about good history (though not necessarily an academic historian); and you MUST be able to guarantee that you can spare the few regularly scheduled hours a month that it takes to keep things going. As it’ll be over the summer, that might make it a better proposition for academic readers…

(Remuneration: my undying gratitude and maybe a few beers. What did you expect?)

Email me if you’re interested: sharon {at} earlymodernweb.org(.)uk

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… And if you’d like to host an issue of the History Carnival, get in touch with me now! You don’t need to be a professional historian, you just need to be interested in history and have some familiarity with the history blogosphere; you could be either an established or a newer blogger (it’s a great way to bring in new visitors!), named or pseudonymous. New faces are always especially welcome but any previous hosts who’d like another go will be much appreciated too. If you want more info, check out the carnival homepage, and send me an email.

Desmond Dekker has died of a heart attack at the age of 64.

Israelites (YouTube)

Tributes
BBC
Guardian
The Times
LA Times
Rolling Stone
Mark Lamarr

Wikipedia page
Lyrics archive

Brandon brings us an omnivorous ancient and medieval Carnivalesque to get the week off to a flying start.

Highlights include a section devoted to reports on Kalamazoo, and a debate on the use of unprovenanced antiquities in writing ancient history. And much more I haven’t had a chance to read yet…

The next Carnivalesque will be early modern and will be mid-June, at The Virtual Stoa. You can use the submission form to send nominations of posts on all things early modern (c.1500-1800CE) since the last edition in April. There’ll be more reminders nearer the time.

Then we’ll need a host in July for the next ancient & medieval edition, and in August for the following early modern edition. Interested in volunteering? You can find out more about what’s involved at the Carnivalesque home page – it’s not that hard, it’ll give you the opportunity to read lots of good writing, and it’ll bring in new visitors! Get in touch: carnivalesque {at} hotmail.co(.)uk (or you can also email me about early modern editions: sharon {at} earlymodernweb.org(.)uk).

I’ve just noticed the BBC’s UK Local History Legacies website. Lots of yummy goodness.

I don’t tend to pore over the Guardian’s Face to Faith column, but yesterday it profiled Thomas Helwys, a founder of Baptism and early 17th-century champion of religious liberty. (And no, there isn’t a happy ending.) His writings are available from the Baptist Library Online.

Which leads on quite neatly to notices of the 200th birthday of John Stuart Mill: plenty to read here. Although it’s not quite what you’d call light reading for a Sunday afternoon.

Some Scandinavian coolness: Finland won Eurovision (watch it…). Norway is the richest nation in the world. Denmark is holding a Renaissance Year. And Sweden’s just finishing up an International Science Festival. (Iceland + medieval bonus: Njal’s saga.)

And if only Geoffrey Chaucer had written the Da Vinci Code…

MONDAY UPDATE: today it’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday!

The next Carnivalesque is to be hosted by Brandon Watson at Siris on 21 May (THIS SUNDAY) (NB: I wrote the wrong date previously – you have a DAY, not a month, to get your nominations in!). It will be an ancient/medieval edition.

As usual, there are two ways of making nominations: you can either use the Blog Carnival submission form, or email Brandon direct: branemrys[at]yahoo[dot]com

The posts should have something to do with ancient or medieval history, and should have been posted since the last Ancient/Medieval Carnivalesque (on March 13). They do not have to be academic posts, nor do they have to be heavyweight scholarship; in fact, this carnival is for anyone who has a genuine interest in ancient or medieval history, whether acadamic or not. …

Read the rest of Brandon’s post for further details.

PLUS!

The Carnival of Bad History has new personnel, and will be increasing its frequency to monthly as of next month – so it’s on the lookout for hosts.

This evening event in London on 27 June may be of interest to some readers: Who’s Creating Knowledge? The challenge of non-university researchers

Is the university the primary site for the creation and authorising of knowledge? That is commonly the conventional view. But in practice large numbers of independent and non-academic researchers are enthusiastically engaged in the production and establishment of knowledge outside university walls. The panel will discuss the issues raised by the work of these often ‘invisible’ creators of knowledge, operating as they do across a wide diversity of fields of research, from family history to ornithology, astronomy to biography, philosophy to archaeology – and much else. Do such researchers present a challenge to the still often-assumed monopoly of the university over the production and validation of knowledge? Despite the obstacles they face are they perhaps following a more open route to knowledge production than in the increasingly constrained setting of university research today? Do we need to rethink the central role of the university in the establishment of knowledge? And may important new processes of knowledge-creation be emerging through the interactive potential of the internet for bypassing established university controls and evading the traditional gatekeepers to the publication and dissemination of knowledge?

Attendance is free but space is limited and you need to book a place. (And apparently there are free drinks afterwards…)

I don’t think I’ll be able to travel down and attend, but it’d be great if it could be blogged, so if anyone who doesn’t have a blog would like to go along and report on it, I’d be willing to post their reports and/or provide an open comment thread for people’s thoughts (and for links to any discussions on other blogs).

Because time passes too damn quickly: History Carnival 31 (which is, I think, the first edition from the southern hemisphere!) is here already.

And a bit of a romp it is too.

The next one is to be hosted by Amy Stevens on 1 June at Aqueduct – I think she plans to have a special theme on American Dissent, so get writing! Email: amy AT amystevensonline DOT com

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Would you like to host a History Carnival? Volunteers are needed from mid-July onwards… You don’t need to be a professional historian, you just need to be interested in history and have some familiarity with the history blogosphere; you could be either an established or a newer blogger (it’s a great way to bring in new visitors!). New faces are always especially welcome but any previous hosts who’d like another go will be much appreciated too. If you want more info, check out the carnival homepage, and get in touch with me: sharon {at} earlymodernweb.org(.)uk

The next History Carnival will be hosted on 15 May by Brett at Airminded.

Email nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) using Brett’s contact form, or use the submission form provided by Blog Carnival.

The History Carnival is not just for academics and entries don’t have to be heavyweight scholarship, but they must uphold basic standards of factual accuracy. (If you have any further questions about the criteria for inclusion, check out the Carnival homepage at the link above).

You should include in your email: the title and permalink URL of the blog post you wish to nominate and the author’s name (or pseudonym) and the title of the blog. (I also recommend that you put “History Carnival” somewhere in the title of the email.) You can submit multiple suggestions, both your own writing and that of others, but please try not to submit more than one post by any individual author for each Carnival (with the exception of multi-part posts on the same topic).

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STOP PRESS: URGENTLY WANTED… HOST FOR ANCIENT/MEDIEVAL CARNIVALESQUE (to be held any time that’s convenient for you before the end of May)… Pseudonymous or named bloggers welcome: all you need is some interest in ancient and/or medieval history and blogs of that ilk. We’d particularly welcome someone who hasn’t done it before. Leave a comment or email me (sharon {at} earlymodernweb.org(.)uk) ASAP. (Looks like we have a volunteer – more news later!)

UPDATE: Brandon will be hosting the ancient/medieval Carnivalesque at Siris in about a week. More details later, but you can use the Blog Carnival submission form to nominate good posts on ancient and medieval topics posted since the last edition (13 March)…

But: just how funny could you imagine a joke based on a confusion between the words ‘freesia’ and ‘Friesian’ can be? When it involves a tattoo? (On a scale of 1 to 10?)

If you’ve been watching Green Wing, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Otherwise, oh well, nevermind. But I am not kidding when I say: My. Face. Hurts.

(Yeah, proper blogging will resume shortly…)

Early Modern E-prints is now up and running. At the moment it’s very small, but I have plenty more entries to add over the coming months.

You can help out if you know of examples of the following, on any early modern (ie, c.1500-1800) topic:

1. Research papers and publications archived at academics’ personal webpages, which can be particularly hard to track down.

2. Articles, chapters, papers and so on from sources (journals, books, e-seminars, etc) that aren’t specifically devoted to early modern history (this may include graduate student journals, as long as they’re peer-reviewed).

3. Free samples (eg, book chapters) from publishers’ websites.

4. Postgraduate theses and dissertations.

Just leave a comment, or send an email, with the links (or at least enough information that I could find them through Google).

Apart from the basic requirement of being free to access, they must be ‘proper’ academic research publications or papers (peer-reviewed, heavy on text and argument and referencing, etc – the kind of thing you’d tend to print out to read rather than browse on a screen). This can include historiographical discussions, but I’m not looking for book reviews unless they’re substantial review essays (I already have a book reviews resource page, and there are millions of the things out there). Also, I’m not going to include anything from Google Book Search or Amazon’s text search facility.

I hope that eventually there will be full-scale open access repositories for history and this resource will no longer be needed. But in the meantime it should help to facilitate access to good quality academic research for people who are studying early modern history but don’t have access to well-stocked university libraries, and it may also encourage the development of open access publishing/archiving by historians.

Has been posted at ClioWeb.

It looks scrumptious (as does Jeremy’s new design).

I was particularly struck by Don’t know much about history…, which points out that academic historians are not doing enough to communicate to nonacademics, and Dr Virago’s post on calling Margery Kempe crazy and why it matters.

Nearly forgot: the next one is on 15 May at Airminded!

PS:
The next Asian History Carnival is coming on 5 May at Miscellany

Send in your nominations now!