Marshall Poe
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer and historian. He is a member of the Department of History at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, and a visiting professor at Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Ypsilanti is west of Detroit and eight miles east of Ann Arbor. The university was founded in 1849 as Michigan State Normal School...
for the 2007-8 academic year.
Poe is the author or editor of a number of books on early modern Russia, and the founder and editor of
MemoryArchive, a universal wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
-type archive of contemporary memoirs he began with his students at American University
American University
American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...
in 2005. There he has contributed numerous personal accounts of his own, from playing basketball with Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, to stumbling onto a Dennis Rader
Dennis Rader
Dennis Lynn Rader is an American serial killer who murdered ten people in Sedgwick County , between 1974 and 1991....
(the infamous BTK killer) crime scene. He has also become known for his commentary on Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, the online encyclopedia.
Education and academic career
Poe graduated from Wichita High School SoutheastWichita High School Southeast
Wichita Southeast High School, known locally as Southeast, is a fully accredited urban high school, serving students in grades 9-12, located in Wichita, Kansas. The school is within the Unified School District 259. The current principal is Leroy Parks. Wichita High School Southeast is one of many...
in 1980. He earned a B.A. at Grinnell College
Grinnell College
Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. known for its strong tradition of social activism. It was founded in 1846, when a group of pioneer New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College....
in 1984 and his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in 1992.
He taught at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
until 1998, and again from 2000 to 2002, during which time he was appointed Allston Burr Senior Tutor
Allston Burr Senior Tutor
The Allston Burr Resident Dean is an assistant Dean of Harvard College and is also the highest-ranking official, other than the Master, of any of Harvard's twelve undergraduate Houses, responsible for the academic and disciplinary well-being of the House's undergraduates...
at Harvard's Lowell House
Lowell House
Lowell House is one of the twelve undergraduate residential houses within Harvard College, located on Holyoke Place facing Mount Auburn Street between the Harvard Yard and the Charles River...
. He has held fellowships at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard; the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton, New Jersey; and the Harriman Institute for Russian Studies at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
At the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
, Poe played guitar in a rock and roll band called "Do Not Erase," consisting entirely of fellows at the Institute. The name of the band is a phrase known at the institute because it is what mathematicians and others will write under their long theorems and proofs on chalk boards, especially if their equations have discovered something new.
Writing
Poe is the co-founder and a former editor of the academic journal KritikaKritika (journal)
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History is an academic journal published quarterly since 2000 by Slavica publishers, a division of Indiana University....
: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. In 2006, he worked for The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
, writing on issues such as divorce among born-again Christians, and the history of Wikipedia.
In his 2002 essay "Note to Self: Print Monograph Dead; Invent New Publishing Model," published in the Journal of Electronic Publishing, Poe questioned the viability of the old academic publishing
Academic publishing
Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...
model, arguing in favor of self-publishing and print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
. He explained how he did this with one of the two volumes of his prosopographical
Prosopography
In historical studies, prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis...
study of the Russian elite in the early modern period. "Shortly after I sent the book for review", he writes, "a very worried journal editor contacted me. He was upset that I hadn't included a copyright page on the e-book I sent him. Without a copyright page, he explained, any reader could copy my book, send it all over the world, or use it in the classroom — all without my permission. That, I responded, was the point. (I'm not sure he got it.)" The two volumes of this work were published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 as a Finnish-language counterpart of the Swedish-language Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, which had existed since 1838.- Members :The academy has a total of 328 seats for Finnish members...
in 2004.
Poe's own work has brought back from obscurity the writings of the16th-century Austrian diplomat Sigismund von Herberstein
Sigismund von Herberstein
Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein, , was an Carniolan diplomat, writer, historian and member of the Holy Roman Empire Imperial Council...
, who was one of the first European ethnographers of Russia.
Wikipedia
Poe has become known for his commentary on Wikipedia following the publication of his article "The Hive" in The Atlantic Monthly in 2006. Poe's position on Wikipedia is that it's not an encyclopedia, but a repository of common knowledge. He told Andrew KeenAndrew Keen
Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and author. He is particularly known for his view that the current Internet culture and the Web 2.0 trend may be debasing culture, an opinion he shares with Jaron Lanier and Nicholas G. Carr among others...
: "It’s more like a dictionary. It has the definition, a kind of rough description, of the way we talk about everything. It’s not expert knowledge, it’s common knowledge."
Selected bibliography
- "Russian despotism" : the origins and dissemination of an early modern commonplace. Thesis (Ph. D. in History). University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, 1993. - Foreign descriptions of Muscovy: an analytic bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Columbus, OhioColumbus, OhioColumbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
: SlavicaSlavicaSlavica may refer to:* Slavica , a Slavic feminine given name** Slavica Ecclestone, a Croatian fashion model* Slavica , a proposed writing system for Serbian and Croatian languages...
, 1995 - A people born to slavery: Russia in early modern European ethnography, 1476-1748. Ithaca, NYIthaca, New YorkThe city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
: Cornell University Press, 2000 - (Ed.) The military and society in Russia: 1450-1917, edited by Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe. Leiden; Boston, MA: BrillBrill PublishersBrill is an international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands. With offices in Leiden and Boston, Brill today publishes more than 134 journals and around 600 new books and reference works each year...
, 2002. - (Ed.) The resistance debate in Russian and Soviet history, edited by Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, Marshall Poe. Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica Publishers, 2003
- (Ed.) Early exploration of Russia, edited by Marshall Poe. New York: RoutledgeRoutledgeRoutledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...
, 2003. - (Ed.) Modernizing Muscovy: reform and social change in seventeenth-century Russia, edited by Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe. New YorkNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004 - The Russian elite in the seventeenth century. Vol. 1, The consular and ceremonial ranks of the Russian "Sovereigns court" 1613-1713. (Suomalaisen tiedeakatemian toimituksia. Sarja Humaniora, 322, ISSN 1239-6982). HelsinkiHelsinkiHelsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004 - The Russian elite in the seventeenth century. Vol. 2, A quantitative analysis of the "Duma ranks" 1613-1713. (Suomalaisen tiedeakatemian toimituksia. Sarja Humaniora, 323) Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. Electronic edition (PDF) available from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
here (alternative link, at Michigan State UniversityMichigan State UniversityMichigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
library)
External links
- Memory Archive, an online historical preservation project started by Poe.
- New Books in History, a podcast hosted by Poe featuring historians with newly issued books.
- Mechanical Icon, a collection of "video essays" on historical photographs produced by Poe.
- Collection of book reviews written by Poe for the journal AzureAzure (journal)Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation is a quarterly journal published by the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, Israel. Azure publishes new writing on issues relating to Jewish thought and identity, Zionism, and the State of Israel. It is published in both Hebrew and English, allowing for the exchange of...
.