History Carnival!

The next History Carnival will be at History is Elementary on 1 March.

Email nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) to historyiselementaryATyahooDOTcom, 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).

Carnivalesque #24

It’s a bumper edition of early modern Carnivalesque!

Random musings

* This is a damn fine way to cook spare ribs. You can of course substitute your own sweet/sour barbecue style sauce.

* I’ve been addicted to this Rwandan coffee for some time (possibly since it first arrived in the UK in 2003).

* Fave stroppy birds in bands of the moment: The Gossip and The Long Blondes. From Arkansas to Sheffield without a break: iTunes playlists rock.

* It’s spelt schadenfreude, folks. Hee hee hee.

Carnivalesque – call for nominations

There will be an early modern edition of Carnivalesque this coming weekend (24/25 February) at The Long Eighteenth, hosted by Carrie Shanafelt.

Send nominations of posts about all things (historical, literary, philosophical, artistic, etc) to do with the early modern period (c.1500-1800CE) to carrieshanafelt[at]gmail[dot]com or via the usual convenient submission form.

History Carnival 48

It’s up at Aardvarchaeology!

The next one will be on 1 March at History is Elementary.

And an announcement:

At present there is one host definitely booked for 1 April, and I’ll probably do the 50th edition on 15 March.

It’s becoming increasingly rare for people to volunteer off their own bat to host the carnival despite regular requests. Most recent hosts are people who I’ve asked to do it. And when carnivals are posted, it’s nearly all the same small group of people linking to them (I keep track of these things).

History blogging is growing rapidly, and there are always great things in the History Carnival editions. There are new specialist history carnivals springing up all the time. But – or perhaps because of all that – the History Carnival doesn’t seem to be arousing as much interest as it used to. I’m suffering a touch of carnival fatigue lately, and I don’t think I’m alone.

So, as of 1 April, the History Carnival will be published only once a month. This will make it easier to get enough hosts and, equally important, will perhaps help to make each edition more of an event rather than a routine.

And if you would like to volunteer to host from 1 May onwards, I’d love to hear from you.

More History Carnival news

1. Right, you know the drill! The next History Carnival will be hosted on 15 February by Martin at Aardvarchaeology. (I’d like to call this a coup – a history carnival sneaks into the Science Blogs empire! – but this was set up when Martin was still at his old Blogspot site.)

Email nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) to arador[at]algonet[dot]se, or use the submission form provided by Blog Carnival.

* * *

2. Gavin Robinson is planning to set up a Military History Carnival and looking for feedback and suggestions:

Military will be defined as broadly as possible. It includes all levels of armed conflict — there will be no rigid definition of what is and isn’t a war. At the risk of offending latin purists, military will include navies and air forces as well as armies.

Within these limits anything goes. I don’t want any artificial division between academic and non-academic, amateur and professional, or traditional and new. Weapons, tactics, strategy, uniforms, insignia, equipment etc are all interesting and important, and so are relationships between war and society, culture, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and the non-human. Preparations for and aftermaths of wars are as significant as the wars themselves. Representations of war in literature, films, TV, games etc are just as valid objects of study as empirical evidence of reality.

The object is neither to glorify nor condemn war, but to see it as in integral part of history which needs to be better understood.

RIP Ian Richardson

Guardian obituary of Ian Richardson. Of course, his portrayal of Francis Urquhart was awesome. But let’s not forget Bill Haydon, eh?

Black History Carnival

The very first Ourstory Carnival is to be posted on Saturday 24 February (deadline for submissions 22 Feb), at Taking Place, for black, Asian, Latino, indigenous American, etc, histories.

We want you to write the stories that are rarely or never told; stories that have been forgotten; stories that helped define you and us. They can be stories of lesser known figures or actions of the past. They can be stories from your family. The idea is to breakdown the hierarchical approach to history that only shares stories to promote patriotism and pacifism. We want to create an ever-evolving ourstory of what makes us who we are. A collective ourstory that informs the present and reminds us that each and every one of us are responsible for how ourstory will be told in the future.

There is a Blog Carnival submission form.