The glamorous and mysterious Squadratomagico and Dr. Crazy at Reassigned Time have both graced this humble blog with an Inspiration Award, which comes with this nice painting of Marie Antoinette, and the command to go forth and share the love. Herewith are five of the most inspiring blogs I’m reading these days:
- Reassigned Time, by Dr. Crazy. (I swear, I was going to give her the award but she beat me to it!) I like Dr. Crazy because of her total honesty and her fearlessness in sorting through tough issues, like for example the question of what faculty owe their employers, how (and why) to teach theory classes, and whether or not to ditch her class plans on Inauguration Day in favor of watching it on TV in class. (What did you decide to do, Dr. C.?)
- Clio Bluestocking Tales, by Clio Bluestocking: This woman is totally fearless in all aspects of her life, which makes for very interesting reading. But there’s more: although she has a crushing teaching load and little institutional support, she has managed to publish one book, she continues to appear at conferences, and she’s writing a biography of Frederick Douglass’s sister. She also offers fabulously thoughtful posts about teaching African American history. (And, just recently she found Charles Ingalls’s application for a homestead in DeSmet, South Dakota in the National Archives!)
- the good old days, by Cleanser. Cleanser has a strong interest in curious recipes from the 1950s and 1960s, and a knack for finding hillarious gadgets, advertising, and other ephemera that speak to the ideals of mid-20th century domesticity. Don’t miss her retro recipe reports–she actually makes them for her family and then rates them. (Yes, even the Jellied Frankfurters!)
- The Way of Improvement Leads Home, by John Fea (who also blogs at Religion in American History) is an interesting new early American and religious history blog. John also has a series of posts about history pedagogy inspired by Sam Wineburg’s Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, and he’s much less cranky about teaching that I am, so it’s good to read his optimistic posts.
- The Clutter Museum, by Leslie M-B, is a Center for Teaching and Learning professional, a kind of work I have maligned in the past (sorry! It wasn’t personal!) She offers interesting thoughts on pedagogy across the curriculum as well as museum studies.
Now, here are the responsibilities of those who accept the Inspiration Award:
- Please put the logo of the award (right) on your blog if you can make it work with your format.
- Link to the person from whom you received the award.
- Nominate 5-7 other blogs.
- Put the links of those blogs on your blog.
- Leave a message on their blogs to tell them.
Historiann 
Well, it’s funny you should ask. I had ultimately decided to show the speech because it linked nicely with some awful comments made by the author that we were studying about what would happen if Obama became president and also with the consideration of race and miscegenation in colonial Africa in the novel we were reading, and how the author’s views about contemporary politics were influenced by her experiences growing up in Africa. Anyway. I’d decided to show the speech. Except the technology in my classroom was not up to the task! First, the computer in the smart room couldn’t get any streaming video or sound because it hasn’t been upgraded since approximately 1995. Obviously, Faculty don’t have privileges to run updates, so that option was out. Then I thought – I know! I can bring my laptop to the classroom! All is not lost! And I *did* manage to get sound working. HOWEVER, the picture wouldn’t project. So they listened to most of the speech, though we did miss the beginning of it due to the technology stuff. And then it was over, and then we had regular class, and they did good work.
I bet that was a longer answer than you ever expected to get 🙂 Thanks for the award!
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Cool–nice links with what you were reading this week, too. I watched it of course, but I don’t teach T-Th this term so I didn’t have to make the choice about what to do in class.
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Thanks for the award. Right back at ya!
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Wow! Thank you…although are you sure that you are reading the same blog that I’m writing? I’m not sure anyone has ever called me “fearless”.
Such other great blogs, too!
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My goodness, what an honor 😀 I’ll have to make something from Brioche this weekend. Or maybe just make Brioche. Thank you so much!
Now to narrow my RSS reader (something like 50 feeds) to my favorite five… what a challenge!
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Mmmmmmnnnnn….briocheriffic!
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