Connection

The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest exists to encourage and train graduate students to blog about history—as a way to teach beyond the classroom, market their scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities.

This year’s theme is Connection. We are looking for blog posts that highlight connections that occur within, among, and between cities and their residents. This might be literal physical connections, like roads, bridges, subways, or sidewalks. It might be connections forged among people within a single city or commonalities between two (or more) cities. It could be routes of travel of people or goods, or elements of nature or pollution, by water, land, or air. It might be an overlooked causal connection—an action and reaction, a link over time—or a special relationship or feeling associated with an urban environment: What makes one feel connected to a city? If you can work the ideas of “connection” and “urban history” into your piece, you are well on your way.

This year we’d also like to encourage our authors to use the blog format to its fullest—include the features unique to an online platform and often not available in other media. There are many ways to enhance your piece beyond the written word. Place hyperlinks within the text as an alternative or supplement to footnotes to link directly to articles, databases, documents, or archives that you discuss or that support your argument. Take advantage of the ability to include image, video, or audio files (original, copyright free, or with permission).

All submissions that meet the guidelines outlined below will be accepted. The Metropole’s editors will work with contest entrants to refine their submissions and prepare them for publication.

In addition to getting great practice writing for the web and experience working with editors, the winner will receive a certificate and a $150 prize!

The contest is now open to submissions; the deadline for entries is Friday July 12, 2024. Entries must be emailed to themetropole@urbanhistory.org. Posts will run on the blog in August and early September, and we will announce the winners in October. Finalists will have their entries reviewed by three award-winning historians.

Contest Guidelines

1. Contest entrants must be enrolled in a graduate program.
2. Contest entrants must be members of the UHA. A one-year membership for graduate students costs $25 and includes free online access to the Journal of Urban History.
3. Contest submissions must be original posts not published elsewhere on the web.
4. Contest submissions must be in the form of an essay related to the theme of “Connection.” Essays can be about research, historiography (but not book reviews), or methodology.
5. We encourage contest entrants to read Lessons Learned from Three Years of the Blogging Contest. Essays that stick to the following criteria will be most successful:
   • Write for a non-academic audience and assume no prior knowledge.
   • Don’t try to do too much; focus on one argument, intervention, or event.
   • Spend more time showing than telling.
   • Include images and illustrations that help the reader visualize the people, places, or sources you write about.
   • Include hyperlinks to connect readers to additional information.
6. Posts must be received by the editors (themetropole@urbanhistory.org) by Friday, July 12, 2024, at 11:59 PM EST to be eligible for the contest.
7. Posts should be at least 700 words, but not exceed 2000 words.
8. Links or footnotes must be used to properly attribute others’ scholarship, reporting, images, and media. The Metropole follows the Chicago Manual of Style for citation formatting.

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Featured image (at top): Charles R. Parsons and Lyman W. Atwater, “The Great East River Suspension Bridge: Connecting the Cities of New York & Brooklyn, from New York Looking South-East” (New York: Currier & Ives, ca. 1877).