Here at Bethel we’re going through the early stages of a master campus plan, and one of the first things our lead consultant told us Wednesday was that we need to get past the self-effacing reserve that comes with our Swedish, Midwestern, “pietistic” (he thought to add, to my joy and irritation) heritage and engage in some healthy self-promotion. By which he meant that stellar departments like Physics (which produces an astonishing number of doctoral students given its tiny size and resources) and our increasingly popular Off-Campus/International Studies office can be hard to find at Bethel when they ought to be prominently placed.
In that spirit (and encouraged by the fact that the estimable John Fea — puffed here yesterday — just did what I’m about to do), let me encourage any of you who would consider yourselves to be fans of The Pietist Schoolman to nominate this blog for the 2011 Cliopatria Awards. Possible categories:
- Best Individual Blog
- Best New Blog
- Best Writer
- Best Blog Post (for this and the following category, please confine nominations to posts marked as belonging to the History category)
- Best Series of Blog Posts (I’m not going to be the guy to nominate himself, but I was pretty happy with the “Over There” series thinking through a World War I trip to western Europe…)
While you’re at it, feel free to nominate either CWC: The Radio Show or our department’s Historia! for the Best Podcast award. 🙂
Some background for those (like me, until the other day) not especially familiar with these awards:
Cliopatria is a group blog affiliated with George Mason University’s History News Network (HNN). It has been offering awards in recognition of excellence in history-related blogging since 2005. Here are the rest of the relevant details and rules:
Bloggers, blogs and posts may be nominated in multiple categories. Individuals may nominate any number of specific blogs, bloggers or posts, even in a single category, as long as the nominations include all the necessary information (names, titles, URLs, etc).
Nominations will be open through November; judges will make the final determinations in December. The winners will be announced at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in early January 2011; winners will be listed on HNN and earn the right to display the appropriate Cliopatria Award Logo on their blog.
The Pietist Schoolman 