Today marks the debut of a new feature on our Tumblr site, called "Better Know a Historian."

This feature is designed as a mini-interview of a flaired user designed to help our readers get to know subject areas with which they may be less familiar and to allow them to get a sense of who our flaired users are when they're not busy answering questions around here.

Our first interview features /u/woofiegrrl, our resident expert in Deaf History. So check it out!

Help! I'm trapped in the alternate reality known as the Department of Motor Vehicles. I can't escape! I read through my sanity preserving history free reading already!

Dear friends, tell me tales of bureaucracy in your area of expertise. I need to know I'm not alone in this cold, paperwork world.

Also, I'm going on a 6-week backpacking trip through Europe. This is going to involve a lot of bus and train time. Any recommendations for well-written history books in various fields to load up on my kindle?

Finished my first semester of my MA, and to quote a fellow student in my program, "Grad school's hard."

I did find it funny how nearly all of us procrastinated writing our papers for class until the last days; some might have thought that at this level we'd be more prepared than that, but I guess we are just better at leaving stuff to the last minute.

I also had the joy of grading some essays from a second year course that I TA'd. In short that was an experience to behold, as I'm sure some of you know. Apparently they don't teach simple things like how to structure paragraphs (which should not run two and a half pages) and simple punctuation anymore. I also saw one essay, which was about the racial composure of ancient Egyptians, try to quote a book from the 1890s written by a white supremacist and pass it off as an acceptable scholarly work. Said student also conveniently left out the publication date, which I think was intentional to conceal this fact, but when the book is called "America's Greatest Problem: The Negro," I'm going to question its use.

Though credit to some students who wrote decent essays. One even properly used some historiography in the paper, something I did not do enough in during my undergrad. Another had perhaps the best phrase of all the essays: the term "sex burglar." But glad to have a few days away from all that, until I get back and have a few come and complain about the grade I gave them.

I'm asking for feedback on my research blog-- http://annalspornographie.com/ . Looking for recommendations, advise on article length, and so on. More posts are being written for the new year :)

I started to think recently what sort of drugs were used by the Vikings, How that affected them in their society & what public opinion of drug use was. Could anyone possibly shed some light on this?

I'm interested in learning more about glass milk bottles and their use in the early-to-mid 1900s in America. Any resources (texts, collector guides, online resources) to recommend?

I was thinking of getting myself a book about Feudal Japan, specifically covering the period of the rise of the Samurai, perhaps even as far back as the rise of the imperial family. Something with good historical accuracy, but bonus points for layman readability.

quick question. i was just told by someone that the reason women arent able to become priests is because they cant perform the eucharist. jesus was male so the leader of that ceremony must be male. when the reformation was going on and beliefs on the eucharist differed from sect to sect, was there any fear of female priests emerging from the changes reformers wanted to make?

I would just like to share that I submitted my last essay for class work, and I am officially halfway through my bachelor's programme.