Best Academic Weblog

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It's official.

cgbvb was honored last night, at the Awards banquet at Computers and Writing 2005, as the 2005 Kairos Best Academic Weblog. And as Mike notes in his announcement, not more than an hour later, Andrea Lunsford cited me in her keynote address. That qualifies as a doubleshot of academic goodness, guaranteed to perk up my day, and it does/did. Now, of course, I'm dying to hear/see what Andrea had to say about me...

I'm not looking to wax all "lifetime achievement" or anything, but I did want to thank the judges, both (obviously) for recognizing me but also for what must have been a great deal of reading and a difficult decision. Our little corner of the (academic) blogosphere has grown a lot in the last year, so don't think it false modesty if I say that part of doing this successfully is having people to talk with and ideas to work with. The claim, which still makes the rounds from time to time, that blogging is just self-indulgent, public diary-writing fails to take into account how important it is to each of us to have readers, fellow writers, comments, trackbacks, etc. So thanks also to the folks in my blogroll, and really to anyone who's taken to stopping by on a regular basis, whether you've left traces or not.

In my graduate course this summer, one of the issues that's emerged occasionally is the relationship between academic conversations and privilege, and one of the things that I'm slowly coming to realize is that this site has had a profound influence on the ways I think about academia and publication. It's hard not to be (sometimes more than) a little cynical about the economy that we academics find ourselves thrown into, and yet, for me, blogging operates outside of that system, and productively so. While the publication process can sometimes feel like an esoteric brand of hazing that rewards little more than raw persistence, whatever privilege and status I've earned here I've earned because of an ongoing commitment to writing and to the topics that interest me. And I like that there's a space where that's enough. I also appreciate those spaces where it takes more than that--I appreciate the quality of research and writing that occurs in those spaces. But I think that (for me, at least) blogging allows my writing a balance that I've only discovered in the past year or two, a balance between the event/performance and the dailyness that most of my writing embraces. I've said this before, but it bears repeating: we teach our students that their products should emerge from an ongoing process, but we're really bad at practicing what we preach.

And so that's maybe what I'm proudest of when it comes to being recognized as best academic weblog. It feels like I'm being rewarded specifically for practicing what we preach, for being both a teacher of writing and teacher who writes. Nothing wrong with that. Heh.

Thanks.

14 Comments

Well done, Collin. Your work influences many, and is VERY much appreciated.

Yea, Collin! Much deserved.

Very Cool! Congratulations on a well deserved award!

YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now you'll have to put up a sign on your blog that says "MY BLOG IS BETTER THAN YOURS!" :)

Anyway, I think there's no doubt that CGBVB rocks the casa.

Congratulations on the award, richly deserved. I'm not the only one riding your technological coattails and damned grateful for them. And an excellent acceptance speech, as well—and appropriately published :)

Heartiest congratulations! I knew you'd get the award and would have been outraged had anyone else gotten it. :-P Seriously though, there are many good academic bloggers, but you stand out.

Congrats, Collin! That's great news! And well-deserved.

Looks like this is the place to be!

I'll add that, when it was announced at the dinner, there were quite a few loud congratulatory whoops, in addition to the considerable applause.

And I agree with Becky: great post.

Congratulations! As a student and aspiring intellectual/academician/writer, I really appreciate the academic blogs that I read every day. It's a wonderful forum for readers and writers. Self-expression is a beautiful thing!
I am excited that blogging is being recognized as an important medium.

I was one of the whoopers. I have to say it was the first award given at the conference that I was at all excited about.

And I can't agree more about the value of practicing our preaching. Though sometimes we should characterize it as "eating our own dog food." :)

Congrats, Collin. You deserve it.

you are King!

Cgbvb: genuisly aiding our ascent from the long tail, one entry at a time. Now I probably ought to put a second link from the blogroll just to celebrate. Congratulations...well deserved.

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This page contains a single entry by cgbrooke published on June 18, 2005 6:38 PM.

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