(Hat-tip to strandsofpearl at Whimsy Designs for the fantastic image.)
Come one! Come all! Join me, Nonpartisan, and lots of other awesome people (Lorraine, Unitary Moonbat, Raybin, eugene, weeping for brunnhilde, musing85, Linnaeus, Tony Seybert, and idiosynchronic) at our new online home: Progressive Historians, History and Politics Of, By, and For the People.
It’s an online forum for history enthusiasts — with or without academic training — to discuss history and politics from a liberal perspective. Built with SoapBlox technology, we are an official spinoff site of My Left Wing, another fantastic blog community run by the inimitable Maryscott O’Connor.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. (I am clairvoyant, after all.) You’re intrigued, but you just don’t have time to participate. “Why another blog?” you muse. “I’m already part of so many. Why do I need another?” In answer, I’m going to quote from our Mission Statement, the entirety of which is available here:
To many Americans today, history has become the study of obscurity, the prerogative of trained scholars, the prisoner of an enforced neutrality. History has been pigeonholed, overprofessionalized, and defanged as an agent of social change. Historians have never commanded so little respect as they do now; likewise, history as a discipline has never seemed so remote, so otherworldly.
All of us who are involved in online political activism are here to speak truth to power; many of us came to the blogosphere through the Dean campaign, an organic popular movement that encouraged us to “take our country back.” While we at ProgressiveHistorians view our country through the specific lens of history, our goal remains the same: to take back our discipline, and by extension our country, by expanding it — by opening it to those not formally trained in historical scholarship, and by encouraging its practitioners to view engagement with today’s political climate as a necessary and welcome addition to historical analysis. …
America needs a new kind of history – one bold, open, and critically engaged with the present day. A history that is open to all who seek to learn about themselves and to dialogue about their insights with others. A history that never forgets that the purpose of the past is to inform the present so the future can be brighter. The mission of ProgressiveHistorians is to aid in fostering that history. With any luck, what we say and do here will have an impact on the American historical profession as well as on our collective understanding of our past, and will pave the way for a better, more enlightened tomorrow.
Someday, I hope, all the disciplines will have their own online homes where issues and ideas can be freely discussed by people from all walks of life. But for now, there’s only one: ProgressiveHistorians.
See you there!
