It's been a while, brothers and sisters of /r/askhistory, but I'm back with another update on my dissertation (as well as some pics of the food I've been eating recently):

https://gunlord500.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/gunlords-dissertation-saga-episode-17-season-2/

I'm having a bit of a tough time...editing is a lot harder than it looks; I say this every week, but it hit home pretty hard this week! I still haven't finished the revisions to chapter 1 yet. However, as I also say, I tend to work much more efficiently the closer deadlines are looming...so since I have about 2 weeks before I have to hand in my second draft (on the 29th), I think if I push myself to the limit, as I've done before, I should be able to squeak by ;D

This is a suggestion for historians that answer questions here. I would love to also read a description of the process you went through in answering a specific question, a sort of case study. I mean, how you looked at the question and determined the essential part of it, how you decided what sources to start with given the question, how you used that source to lead on to other sources and such.

As a more concrete example of what I am asking for, I'm thinking an answer might be like "the definitive source of information on the era in question is X so I looked in there, and the bibliography suggested Y and Z as detailed sources for this topic, so I looked at those. Also, the topic is associated with this other topic (and then would go in to reasons why they are associated', and then a similar set of sourcing would be cited for this related topic.

Hey guys, I recently finished a short narrative history of the 1918-1921 debate surrounding the form and function of a potential memorial that eventually became Tennessee's War Memorial Building (a WWI memorial office building), and I just wanted to share a couple of minor gems I found in the archives.

http://imgur.com/CXsZbdX

http://imgur.com/a/4Pxvj

EDIT: different words.

Anyone have any suggestion on where to get my questions about 20th century South America answered? I'm particularly interested in learning about the military dictatorship in Brazil, and possible US involvement.

This sub doesn't seem to have a lot of interest/experts on any of that.

It looks like I'll be in DC at the end of June, provided my abstract is accepted for the International Cartographic Association's conference. I've wanted to give this paper (on a cartographer who's been persistently misread by historians) for about four years now, but there hasn't been a chance before. The result will be a new book in the ICA studies series, which will be great, and they definitely want the essay.

In addition, we're doing a spate of hiring in US history this year, and it has the promise to be transformative for our department. I know most of the candidates personally or by one degree of separation, and it's been great catching up and having really excellent dinner chats about subjects of common interest. I don't get that often enough here, even though it's really a lovely, drama-free (!!!) department.

Sort of a pointless little comment here, more an observation than anything intelligent, I've started trying to read (trying being the very operative word) to read the Mac Talla, a Gaelic-language newspaper from Cape Breton published in the 1890s.

Anyway, at the opening of one article (which appears to be parable rather than news), it says:

Nuair a bha Seumas I na righ air Sassuinn 's air alba [...]

Or "When James I was king of England and Scotland"

I'm intrigued by the fact they chose not to use his full title of James I and VI, and that, of the two, they chose to drop the Scottish regnal number over the English.

Have y'all seen Lego Grad Student? discovered it this week and have been laughing my ass off.

Minor question here. What are some "hot" or popular areas of history in academia at the moment? I'm planning on entering a Ph.D program this fall, and I'm just trying to get a feel for the atmosphere. So what's the new hot topic? The next big thing? Any particular periods, movements, geographical areas that are particularly vogue?

Been reading some pop history about various sundry natural disasters, and a thread a week or two ago about the Minoan Eruption piqued my interest. Anyone have any recommended academic history books about natural disasters, whether the general concept or specific events, short term or long term, physical or cultural effects on society? Not sure if this has a name...catastrophic environmental history?

I’ve seen so many of my hopes, plans and ambitions go up in smoke that I’m beginning to get fatalistic. To mention a small thing, there’s a trip to El Paso I’ve been planning on for some five years, and each year something happens to cause me to postpone it. One of the main reasons I’ve always hoped success would come my way, was so I could travel. There are hundreds of places in my own state I’ve never seen, though I’ve roamed over a goodly portion of it. I suppose I’ve done less travelling than any of my family, for hundreds of years back. They were always a race of wanderers, all branches of my various lines, and seldom stayed long in the locality in which they were born. My father was born in southern Arkansas, my mother in eastern Texas; my maternal grandfather in North Carolina, my maternal grandmother in middle Tennessee; my paternal grandfather in Georgia, my paternal grandmother in Alabama, (and they married in Mississippi); my paternal grandmother’s father was born in South Carolina, and his father was born on the Atlantic ocean in an emigrant ship, and his father was born in county Galway, Ireland. My great-greatgrandfather, the one born on the ocean, was carried ashore at New York, thence southward by his family, and his wife was from the west coast of Ireland, and their son, my greatgrandfather, born in South Carolina, married a Georgia woman whose father was born in Denmark. I’ve had aunts, uncles and cousins born in every southern state there is except Kentucky and Florida, and a few in the mid-west. Most of them I’ve never seen. I have relatives all over east Texas, northern Louisiana, southern and western Arkansas, southern and northern Missouri, and eastern and middle Oklahoma, and very few of them have I ever seen. What I started to show, though, was the rambling tendency of the breed. I wish I’d been born in 1806 instead of 1906. A man didn’t have to have much money to roam then, at least.

• Robert E. Howard to August Derleth, January 1934, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 3.158

Robert E. Howard did make it to El Paso, in June of that year.

looking for good (non US) enjoyable historical films. any suggestions?

edit: "bonus points" for films that are available on the major streaming sites or (potentially) are in basic cable rotations.

I'm interested in reading through the historiography on Rome. I'm familiar with the classics--mommsen, duruy, and gibbon. I'm also familiar with Heather, Brown, and Beard. Is there anyone else I should read, and in any particular order?