Welcome to the new blog for the Utah Historical Quarterly, Utah’s historical journal of record. This blog will feature less formal—but still substantively analytical—essays and thought-provoking pieces about Utah history than would normally appear in print. Blog posts may touch on current events or react to recent research findings, may include interviews with scholars or highlight the work of public history professionals working for the Utah Division of State History, or may review relevant historical research from outside of Utah’s scholarly network. The UHQ Blog will also provide readers with additional information about Utah State Historical Society events, such as its annual conference, and direct readers to the “web extras” from the Quarterly. As an appendage of the UHQ, the blog’s goal is to better facilitate quality conversations between the scholarly community and the general public.
The UHQ’s co-editors, Jedediah Rogers and Holly George, as well as Editorial Fellow Cathy Gilmore, will edit the blog. Contributors will include UHQ authors and members of the UHQ editorial board; experts working in the State History Archives, Archaeology, and Preservation offices; and scholars selected by our guest editors. Contact uhq@utah.gov if you would like to submit an essay or think piece for publication in the blog.
We will be publishing our first posts in the next few weeks, including one on the challenges and promises of using oral history to engage Native peoples and communities in the history we tell. We plan to update the blog at least monthly.
Finally, we’d like to introduce the editors of the blog.
Jed Rogers is an environmental and public historian of modern America with interests in the intersection of land, culture, and religion in the American West. With childhood experiences in varied rural and mountain landscapes of the West, he chooses to write about places familiar to him and to scout out their broader stories and meanings. Most recently that has led him to the Great Salt Lake.
Holly George is the author of Show Town: Theater and Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1920 (Oklahoma, 2016). George received a PhD in American History from the University of Washington in 2011; her research interests include culture (high and low), networks of all sorts, social welfare, and gender. Her current research, part of a collaborative book project, concerns Marie Ogden and the Home of Truth—particularly the broader cultural and political environment that influenced Ogden.
Thanks for reading, and we hope you’ll be back soon.