We conceived this blog while driving south in a white Ford pick-up on Interstate 65 somewhere between Indiana and Alabama. Having just attended the 2013 Religion and American Culture conference in Indianapolis, we had much on our minds as we traveled back home to Auburn. We talked about what we had learned in two days of thoughtful intellectual dialogue, discussed our own research interests, and, above all, reflected on the spirit that we, as historians and graduate students, wanted for our profession.
As the miles passed and the sun hung ever lower on the western horizon, our ideas became more specific. First of all, we wanted a place where we could use technology to simply talk about our experiences as graduate students. Whether to discuss readings for seminar, our progress studying for exams, or to write about our dissertations, we felt that a blog such as this could be a creative outlet (and maybe even a productive diversion) for those of us toiling away in graduate school. Second of all, we want to engage critically with historiography, theory, and method – three topics that all graduate students wrestle with on daily basis. There are not many resources like this for grad students like us as we wade into deep intellectual waters, usually without a life preserver. So, in part, we envision this corner of cyberspace for graduate students to engage with a friendly audience on big subjects in the field. Finally, and most importantly, we want the Graduate Historical Exchange to be a collaborative endeavor with like-minded graduate students. Graduate school can be a tough time for aspiring academics – as questions abound over the future of higher education and job opportunities become increasingly limited, it’s very easy to become discouraged. Moreover, the day-to-day life of a grad student often feels like taking a monastic oath – it can be a time of loneliness and soul-searching. With our onerous burdens, it’s often hard to think outside of our own institutions or even our own cohort within a department. We envision our list of contributors to be expansive and to bring all of us out of our relative isolation – this is to be an exchange of ideas, reflections, and experiences that we can all learn from. We want to use this blog to develop professionally, establish connections with other emerging scholars, and to cultivate good feelings amongst one another. We want to help each other to become better scholars, better friends, and better professionals. We want to share, to teach, and to reflect. And, above all, we want to listen.
This is a marketplace for ideas, and we encourage contributions. Email us at gradhistoricalexchange@gmail.com if interested in suggesting blog post themes, writing a blog post as a guest, or requesting permission to reprint entire posts.
