MODERATOR'S NOTES

Surely it is a truism to declare that history is everything but less acknowledged is that the writing of history is a creative act.  Questions formed, sources studies, interpretations offered, historians engage the world in many different ways.  This year’s History Journal testifies to the diversity of approaches and formats of the historical realm.

The articles in this issue are chronologically, geographically, and thematically diverse, ranging from ancient Rome and Galatia, to Malta in the first half of the twentieth century, to the United States in the last decades of the twentieth century.  Memory informs many of the pieces, both that of participants as in the article on folklore and the Irish Famine and the suppression of memory in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of how historians scrutinize memory as in the investigation of Indigenous labor at the Petaluma adobe.  This year’s authors have moved beyond the traditional article format and explored historical themes through poetry and photo journalism. For the first time, the History Journal includes a book review section which we hope will grow in the future and engage students across disciplines, offering a venue for intellectual exchange and enhancing SSU’s identity as a community of scholars.

With a large enrollment of more than a dozen students, this year’s staff faced challenges of organization.  While all of the students engaged in solicitation of submissions, evaluation and preliminary copyediting, the staff divided into teams to handle online production, print production, final copyediting and publicity.  Under the direction of editor-in-chief Jared Height, an honor bestowed on him by the class, the History Journal website has been redesigned for easier use and better navigation and to bring a standardization to editions of the History Journal over the years.  We have also begun an archival project to scan and upload all past issues of the journal.  We will continue to publish the journal in its traditional print format—no format is more stable or lasts longer than paper -- but hope soon to have all issues of the journal available online.

We hope you will enjoy this issue of The History Journal for its high level of historical scholarship and creativity.  Rest assured, the contents of the journal represents the hard work of its authors and editors.  No ChatGPT, no Bard, no Bing.  May it always be so!

Kathleen M. Noonan

Moderator

The History Journal