Welcome to the new “Publick Occurrences”
I have been writing a (very) sporadic political column on Common-Place since 2001, but I realized a while back that I would prefer to do “Publick Occurrences” as a blog instead of a column, since frankly not every single thought that passes through my head is worth developing into a whole essay. Probably more to the point, many observations I could have made over past few years would have long passed their sell-by date by the time they reached Common-Place through the usual editorial process. So now John McCoy and Ed Gray have been so kind as to set up this space where the world can once more have the horror of direct, largely unedited access to my thoughts on politics, history, and other (sometimes loosely) related matters. I hope to be posting at least once a week, especially on Sunday evening/Monday morning. Comments are enabled, but they will be moderated, at least for the time being.
While I can’t promise that this new “Publick Occurrences” blog will stick completely to the American history/current American politics intersection that was the focus of the columns, but since that perspective informs just about everything I do and say — ask my poor family who get world events and whatever we happen to be watching on television tiresomely contextualized every night — I doubt this space will stray too far. I will try to keep my teaching separate. Students who get this site accidentally through a search engine should check the links on my main home page for the course they are taking.
Finally, I certainly hope it would go without saying that the opinions expressed here are mine alone and not those of Common-Place, the American Antiquarian Society, or the University of Missouri, my actual employer.
Some might say it’s about time Common-place entered the blogosphere. The truth is, we’ve had this in mind for some time. But, like so many journals and organizations, we’ve found ourselves unable to answer important questions. How, for example, will we archive blogs? Common-place is a member of the History Co-operative, a consortium of history journals that maintains a database accessible to subscribers. How can such a repository accommodate blogs? To be honest, we haven’t answered this and many other questions. But thanks to Jeff Pasley, John McCoy, and our supporting institutions we have decided to go ahead and take the plunge. Jeff’s blog will be, we hope, one of several that will be part of Common-place. We have no intention of entirely giving over our standard, formal quarterly articles and columns to the blogosphere. Common-place will remain a quarterly magazine of American history. But now, with Jeff’s blog and others to come, it will also, we hope, be a place for on-going, active, and vibrant discussion about things historical and things that matter to our readers and our contributors.
Comment by Ed Gray — January 27, 2008 @ 4:53 pm
I have been browsing the Summer Youth Writing Institutes, and you guessed it, the closest anyone gets to nonfiction (academic expository) writing is something called “Creative Nonfiction”—which, I gather, means really absorbing personal memoirs, with some creativity thrown in?
My perennial question is, why aren’t more people upset about this? Is
everyone asleep or unwilling to think about the academic writing tasks
set in college? Will Fitzhugh, fitzhugh@tcr.org
Comment by Will Fitzhugh — February 1, 2008 @ 11:23 am
[...] is a reader question that I do not know much about, promoted from the comments: I have been browsing the Summer Youth Writing Institutes, and you guessed it, the closest anyone [...]
Pingback by Publick Occurrences » Readers’ Concerns: Expository writing classes M.I.A. — February 4, 2008 @ 6:47 am
Glad to see this! I will link to it on my blog. Common-place is where I go whenever I need a good dose of colonial history/Early Republic.
Comment by The History Enthusiast — February 8, 2008 @ 1:26 am