This is a long shot, but does anyone know about how heterosexual sex acts (not marriage practices, dating practices, being/not being a virgin, etc) were differentiated by class? I mean things like low status people kiss their partners on the mouths, but high status people think that's unclean (and less PG-rated practices). I am doing a small study on how they're (rather surprisingly) not differentiated right now. Can anyone think of historical examples where this sort of differentiation was the case? I don't think this will show up in the historical record because most of these acts are very private (except for kissing, as above), so unlikely to be written down, especially in a way that would let us make generalizations for groups of people rather than saying simply "well, this dude was really into this". Even something on how missionaries introduced "missionary position" might be useful, but I'm primarily interested in indigenous class differences in what constitutes acceptable/normal/etc sexual acts.

I'd like to increase my social media and internet presence as a professional historian. Does anyone know of good resources to learn more about this process?

Specifically, I've been thinking about creating a blog as a means of promoting interest in my field of research, connecting with academic and public audiences alike, and networking with scholars in similar fields.

I've never done anything like this before and want to develop a plan of action.

Planning a PhD. What is the current trend in employability as a professor- "World History" or an area study (e.g. "African History")? In short, is it better to be specialised or have a more broad base of research experience?

Yesterday saw me submit a proposal for a panel at the biggest conference in my field. I presented a paper at it last year, when it was in Vancouver, and that was relatively easy to propose (even if it was a total surprise to me that THAT proposal got accepted); this time around, though, I've had to curate the proposals of several other people, and write what amounts to a 2500-word document to justify the whole thing.

I am hopeful that it gets accepted, but I and the rest of the panelists won't know until June, probably. In the meantime, all thumbs are a-twiddle.

A while back I did a study on the historiography of the Russian Revolution. Unsurprisingly, during the Cold War, you had the pro-Soviet camp and the pro-Western camp. More recently, there've been the revisionist historiographers who try to view the revolution through different analytical approaches. Since I've been away from it for a while, I was wondering if anybody could explain or list some newer approaches or authors?

Good sources for the histography of the u.s civil war? For example histroical work on confedrate diplomacy?

I just read some arguments about the direction of history and post-structuralism by David Harlan this week, and bloody hell, does it make you miss regular history reading where there's no theory involved.

Just thought I'd vent that off. Business as usual.