Most Americans have only vague knowledge of our Civil War. That knowledge focuses on the best-known battles, places, and people east of the Mississippi. However, St. Louis, the Ozarks, and Missouri were important in that conflict. Research Professor Jack Morgan‘s recent book, Through Irish and American Wars: The Life and Times of General Thomas W. Sweeney 1820-1892, fills in an significant part of that history. Published by the Irish Academic Press in 2006, this book is essential reading for the history of the American Civil War.

On September 18, Professor Morgan lectured on General Sweeney at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. His lecture, part of the Smurfit-Stone Endowed Professorship in Irish Studies, was titled “General Sweeney in St. Louis and Missouri.” This invited lecture shows the recognition that Professor Morgan’s research is achieving.

I highly recommend Through Irish and American Wars as a well-written and informative history. General Sweeney and his life are presented vividly.

Many people write diaries, journals, logs, and so on. Most write for their own purposes — keeping records, expressing emotions, exploring ideas, and exploring writing are all done by journal keepers. To read someone else’s journal is to enter in some way into the writer’s experience, especially if the writer did not intend her journals to be read. The diary or journal becomes a kind of mirror for the writer’s self, and, unlike a literal mirror, the diary retains an impression of what it reflects.
On September 7 and 8 of this year, Dr. Anne Cotterill, Associate Professor of English and Technical Communication, attended a conference at Princeton that explored this topic. The conference focused on Elizabeth Isham, a 17th century diarist.
Dr. Cotterill presented a paper on Saturday, September 8, along with a young man named Isaac Stephens, a graduate student in history whose almost-completed dissertation concerns this memoir and this woman and her family. They are the two scholars who’ve been working the longest on Elizabeth Isham and her text. Dr. Cotterill’s paper was taken from a longer piece she’s written on Elizabeth’s memoir, entitled, "Fitting Words at the ‘pitts brinke’: The Achievement of Elizabeth Isham." Dr. Cotterill plans to send the longer article to The Huntingdon Library Quarterly.

One consequence of the increasing use of the World Wide Web is the migration of scholarship to online venues. Internet publication has many advantages for scholarly and creative work, especially ease of access for millions of people.
Dr Elizabeth Cummins, Professor Emeritus of English and Technical Communication, is one of the scholars whose work is being published online. Her Judith Merrill: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography has just been published by the Center for the Bibliography of Science Fiction and Fantasy at Texas A&M University.
The site’s Introduction explains the background: the loss of print publishers for scholarly bibliographies and yet the continuing need scholars have for such bibliographies. Sponsored "by the Science Fiction Research Association, The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, Extrapolation magazine, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection, Cushing Library, Texas A&M University," the Center is a fully qualified scholarly publisher
Earlier in the history of publication on the World Wide Web, many questioned whether such publication really counts as "scholarly," as legitimate publication, or as a kind of vanity publishing. Like other Web publishers, the Center for the Bibliography of Science Fiction and Fantasy qualifies as a full-fledged scholarly publisher. The bibliographies it publishes are reviewed by a qualified editorial board just as they would be for hard copy publishers.
Congratulations to Dr. Cummins on the latest publication of a labor of scholarly love. Judith Merrill is a crucial editor and writer in SF; now scholars around the world have ready access to this outstanding bibliography.