Not a Pretty Picture: Scholarly Blogging in the Humanities

While a number of scientists produce informative, regularly-updated blogs that conform to the expected format without sacrificing content, blogging in the humanities—an area in which the form should logically have flourished—hasn't been quite as successful. Few scholars in the humanities seem to have embraced the form with any notable level of success.

There are of course good blogs relating to literature, history, philosophy and religion but they are for the most part either too general in nature to be of serious interest to the scholarly community or updated infrequently, which (as this very blog has repeatedly demonstrated) renders the form relatively invaluable.

On her recent trip to the U.S., I was pleased to meet a French scholar whose web site epitomizes what a scholarly blog in the humanities should resemble. Catherine Kintzler is a philosopher and literature scholar whose work has had a significant impact on several areas of research relating to French literature and history. In particular, she has written important books and articles on French opera and its relation to classical theater and philosophy, and, more recently, she has tackled the question of laïcité. Her blog, Mezetulle, is not only frequently updated with new content written by Kintzler and her guests but also provides articles suitable to many types of readers, from high school students and those with a general interest in the subjects covered, to the most advanced scholars.

While perhaps not the most beautiful site on the Net, Mezetulle is functional and provides ready access to a treasure-trove of articles, bibliographies and related links. The site does require a learning curve but once one realizes the content is neatly divided into categories, hundreds of original essays are just a few clicks away. Access to the author is readily available, as should be the case with any blog, and Kintzler's generosity in posting both finished articles and works in progress is commendable. After all, one of the driving forces behind blogging lies in the creation of a work in progress, always evolving and never complete. Kintzler's collection of past articles, conference abstracts and course lecture notes, along with drafts and yet-to-be-published works, forms a living, animated organism that allows for a reflection on past perspectives as well as a forward-looking questioning of contemporary scholarship.

While many scholars are understandably reticent to share such a vast amount of their work with the general public, they should take a tip from Mezetulle. What better way to further one's disciplines of interest than through open access to thought-provoking, current resources that provide journal-quality work without the restrictions imposed by traditional media? In this sense, Mezetulle is an model of how a scholarly blog should function in practice, not just theory. If you are a francophone, take a look at the site and let me know what you think.