2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

History blogs and podcasts like Nursing Clio, Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, and Past Present, can bring greater attention to historians’ work than traditional publications. Our impact reflects a widespread hunger for accessible and intelligent histories of sexuality and gender that shed light on the present through careful and relevant analyses of the past.

Our roundtable will be devoted to the “how-to’s” of blogging and podcasting the histories of gender and sexuality. We will organize our panel around seven core questions that our panelists will address to explore how public histories of sexuality and gender are crafted in the digital age.

1: What are the challenges and opportunities of blogging and podcasting about the histories of sexuality and gender?

2: What kind of labor goes into producing and publishing a blog post or a podcast?

3: How do you measure success in digital / public history?

4: How is podcasting and blogging similar to or different from traditional publishing in terms of production, consumption, and valuation inside and outside of the academy?

5: How do you define accessibility? And, how do you balance accessibility with intellectual rigor?

Through these questions we will discuss the possibilities and perils of online publishing; the nature of collaboration in the digital age; and the meaning of accessibility and outreach beyond the academy walls.