Apparently H-Net might be going out of business. For most normal people
who have not been initiated into this academic inner sanctum, suffice it
to say that you have not been missing much. H-Net is a collection of
mailing lists moderated by tenured professors that share these features
in common:
1. All messages must be approved by the moderator before they appear on
the list. This creates a sluggish environment, no matter the intention
of the list owner.
2. The non-academic is made to feel like an outsider. Many of the lists
actually require you to fill out a form before you are allowed to become
a subscriber. They ask you which university you attend or teach at, what
your research interests are, etc. It is a little bit like applying for a
job.
3. The lists tend to be focused on academic business, such as job
openings, journal announcements, etc. And when they do address the
research agenda of the list, they often tend to be scholastic inquiries
rather than attempts to engage other academics in a debate over ideas.
The simple truth is that many of the tenured professors who even deign
to subscribe to H-Net lists prefer a one-way conversation in print
journals rather than the rough-and-tumble world of the Internet.
On H-Net’s home page, they describe themselves this way:
"Subscriptions are screened by the list’s editors to promote a diverse
readership dedicated to friendly, productive, scholarly communications.
Each list publishes between 15 and 60 messages a week. Subscription
applications are solicited from scholars, teachers, professors,
researchers, graduate students, journalists, librarians and archivists."
In other words, if you don’t fall into one of the categories listed
above, you’d better mind your p’s and q’s. Nine years ago I became a
subscriber to H-Amindian (American Indian History and Culture) at a time
when I was writing a series of articles about Marxism and the American
Indian. After somebody posted a query about Cherokee’s owning slaves, I
replied with a brief excerpt from George Lipsitz’s “Rainbow at Midnight”
that called attention to how “some Native Americans held black slaves
(in part to prove to whites that they could adopt civilized European
American ways), and some of the first chartered African American units
in the U.S. army went to war against Comanches in Texas or served as
security forces for wagon trains of white settlers on the trails to
California.”
Apparently, this didn’t sit well with one of the real subscribers who
resented hearing what an outsider like Lipsitz had to say about their
“research area,” as well as me for having the temerity to post it.
Melissa Meyers, a history professor from UCLA, sniffed and harrumphed,
“Scholars, even those as esteemed as George Lipsitz, should refrain from
facile explanations of native behavior until they have done adequate
homework in the field.” Well, I never…
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/is-h-net-going-under/
