Reader: this H-Diplo series is full of great examples. Outstanding scholars with inspiring and even heartwarming stories that might inform your own journey. This one is the counter-example. I must confess: I did everything wrong.
Category: Essays
H-Diplo Essay 304- Alice L. Conklin on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Becoming an intellectual historian of France’s modern overseas empire, and its legitimating discourses, was perhaps overdetermined in my case. I was born in a small Midwestern town near Peoria in the late 1950s, and my family of seven (the fifth sibling was still in utero) moved to the Netherlands for five years when I was…
H-Diplo Essay 299- Jessica Chapman on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
When I was about eight years old, I asked my ten-year-old brother what he was doing. “Writing a book,” he replied. So, I sat down and started to write my own. I have no idea what it was about, and I’m sure I abandoned it quickly, but at that moment I began to think of…
H-Diplo Essay 297- David A. Bell on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Becoming a historian of Europe was not a surprising career choice for me. I was born into an academic family, and grew up in a world of books, foreign travel, and schools that treated European culture as the cornerstone of a proper education. I spent a year in a British school founded under Queen Elizabeth…
H-Diplo Essay 296- Kathryn C. Statler on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
I fell in love with history in sixth grade. As I snuck barbecue corn nuts (the least inconspicuous snack in the world) from my desk, listening to Mr. Sorum’s guest speaker weave tales of Aztec resistance to Hernando Cortés, the Mayan ball game’s ritual sacrifices, and Inca architectural prowess, I was hooked. Later that year…
H-Diplo Essay 295- Alessandro Brogi on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
Growing up in a fast-developing peripheral section of Florence, Italy, I first learned to associate the word ‘craft’ to the construction sites surrounding our apartment building, with some architectural marvels and many genuine eyesores. As a kid, I was generally entranced by how new shapes—some expected, some surprising—emerged from the painstaking labor of bricklayers and…
H-Diplo Essay 295- Alessandro Brogi on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
Growing up in a fast-developing peripheral section of Florence, Italy, I first learned to associate the word ‘craft’ to the construction sites surrounding our apartment building, with some architectural marvels and many genuine eyesores. As a kid, I was generally entranced by how new shapes—some expected, some surprising—emerged from the painstaking labor of bricklayers and…
H-Diplo Essay 289- Jessica Elkind on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
When I began my first year as an undergraduate at Brown University in the mid-1990s, I never imagined that I would pursue a career as a historian. Although I had always enjoyed my history classes, I entered college planning to study chemistry and math, subjects that I had loved and excelled in during high school. …
H-Diplo Essay 284- Norman M. Naimark on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
The story of the development of my professional life as a historian is like history itself: serendipitous, hard to predict, yet wedded to the times. It has depended on multiple influences and a series of fortuitous accidents. Special mentors, good friends, and generous colleagues have made a huge difference. Travel, too, has played an important…
H-Diplo Essay 282- Kristin Hoganson on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
Although history was one of my favorite classes in high school, I chalked that up to an outstanding teacher, John Smith, who first taught me in an elective world history class (which today would be considered more of a comparative cultures class, since the textbook did not pay much attention to crossings or interconnections). I…