Looking for faster and easier ways to publish? Want to interact with people in your field from all over the world? H-Net Commons is such a source for historians everywhere.
H-Net Commons is a free online forum that creates a space for moderate academic discussion among humanities scholars of all levels. Within H-Net there are over 100 sub networks to which members can subscribe. It was through one such sub group, H-Slavery, that PhD candidate Stephen Leccese was recently published. After completing a historiography that demonstrated how historians assessed the relationship between slavery and capitalism in the United States, Stephen looked for a more popular and social forum where he could publish his work. He connected with the H-Slavery editor, informed him of his area of expertise and provided a description of the paper. The editor told Stephen to create a “topical guide to slavery and capitalism,” to cover major themes, historians, potential directions for the field. Stephen said, “The whole point of the post was to elicit feedback from other H-Slavery users. It was meant to be comprehensive enough to provoke thought and discussion, but brief enough to allow users to give us good advice on how to expand it.” And he did expand upon it. About a week later, after receiving numerous helpful comments, Stephen updated and finalized his topical guide.
About the experience Stephen commented, “I think the digital format of H-Net provides a unique opportunity for scholars to interact with each other in a much faster and more efficient way than through journals or conferences. These can take months; we had feedback from some esteemed scholars in a day.” So, check out and join H-Net! Besides being a space for scholars to publish and read what their colleagues are publishing, it is a network that posts publication calls, fellowships, conferences, etc.
Check out Stephen’s publication and H-Net here: https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/pages/76870/capitalism-and-slavery-united-states-topical-guide