Submit a Cliopatria Award Nomination

The History News Network seeks nominations for its 2010 Cliopatria awards for best history blogs. Each year the award is given in the categories of Best Group Blog, Best Individual Blog, Best New Blog, Best Post, Best Series of Posts, and Best Writer. If you are a supporter of history blogging, please take a minute and nominate a few of your favorites. Northwest History won Best Individual blog in 2008, it was very gratifying and made a real positive difference in my career.

I am still thinking about some of the categories but my nominations so far are as follows:

Best Individual Blog: Boston 1775. Billed as "History, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts," the blog is really much more than that. Blogger J.L. Bell does primary source blogging, reporting his latest historical discovery as is it were today's news. Along the way he provides a master class in the use on online primary databases. And he frequently promotes local history gatherings (I should do more of that) and offers a scholarly perspective on current events such as the Tea Party movement. When I won the Cliopatria two years ago my first thought was "Dang, J.L. Bell has been robbed!"

Best Group Blog: Preservation Nation, the blog of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It shows how an "official" blog of a major organization can be relevant and compelling. Of course if someone wanted to nominate Off the Wall, the National Council on Public History blog to which I contribute, I would not object.

And by the way if you are looking for quality history blogs to add to your RSS feed you might take a look at past winners of the Cliopatria award.

2009 Cliopatria Awards in History Blogging

The History News Network has announced the 2009 Cliopatria Awards for excellence in history blogging. Actually they announced the awards some weeks ago at the AHA, and your lazy Northwest History blogger is just getting around to letting you know. If you are looking for some smart history blogging you could hardly do better than to explore these Cliopatria winners:


Best Group Blog: Curious Expeditions

Best Individual and Best New Blog: Georgian London

Best Post: Rachel Leow's "Curating the Oceans: The Future of Singapore's Past," A Historian's Craft, 14 July 2009.

Best Series of Posts: Heather Cox Richardson's "Richardson's Rules of Order," The Historical Society Blog, 20 March 2009.

Best Writer: The Headsman, at Executed Today.

If this whets your appetite, go to the list of previous Cliopatria awards form more fine history blogging.

Woo-Hoo! Northwest History Wins a Clio!

Check this Out!

In conjunction with the AHA annual meeting in New York, here are the fourth annual Cliopatria Awards for History Blogging. Thanks to the judges this year, who made the difficult decisions necessary to pick the best work from strong fields: Manan Ahmed, Another Damned Medievalist, Rebecca Goetz, William Turkel, Jeremy Boggs, Lisa Spiro, Jonathan Dresner, Elle, Ph.D., Jeremy Young. They have done a fine job. Thanks also to Jonathan Dresner for creating the 2008 logos. Here, then, are the winners and brief explanations of the judges' rationale for their decisions:

Best Individual Blog: Northwest History

In addition to a strong focus on the historical materials and historiography of the American Northwest, Prof. Cebula introduces and explains digital resources and techniques with great range and depth. The writing is engaging and incisive and the result both entertaining and very useful.


This is a wonderful and unexpected honor. I feel like Rudolf when Clarisse bats her eyelashes at him: