The Ghost turns two

Celebrating my second year

Two years ago today I published my first essay in this space, a history of social dancing at Pepperdine called Why Pepperdine banned dances. Since then, I’ve published more than fifty essays on topics spanning the university’s history, from events taking place years before the founding to the latest happenings on campus, and even glances to the future. On the first anniversary of this project, I wrote an essay explaining its origins. In this essay, I’ll focus on my second year.

The work of which I’m proudest from this year is my series celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of major events at Pepperdine in the year 1975. These have been some of my most deeply researched essays so far (~250 footnotes altogether), and together their 30,000-plus-words constitute what I believe to be the most in-depth history ever written about a single year from Pepperdine’s past. Whether you’ve realized it or not, that series has been building toward a dramatic climax, to be discussed in the final installment in two weeks.

The way I see it, most of my essays belong to one of these four categories:

1. Deep dives on major events from Pepperdine’s history;

2. Explainers on what I think of as “symbols of Pepperdine” (logos, traditions, official statements, etc.);

3. Critical editions of important historical documents, resolving thorny textual histories; and

4. Argumentative essays telling you what I think about some (usually historical) question.

Over the past year, I’ve made an effort to write essays in each category. Among the deep dives were essays on the Harding College exodus of 1969, the Smoot affair, the shah debacle, and the parrot fever pandemic of 1929–1930. In the category of explainers on “symbols of Pepperdine,” I discussed the affirmation statement, the flag, the Founder’s Day tradition, and Pepperdine songs. In the last year I’ve published two critical editions of writings by George Pepperdine: one on his 1937 chapel speech “Our Responsibility,” and another on his essay “Why Build a Christian College.” And finally, year two saw the publication of a few argumentative essays, including one on the legacy of the blowout preventer, one defending the surprisingly controversial view that Pepperdine is in Malibu, and another calling for a revival of the university press.

I’m pleased with the diversity of these essays, but I’m eager to try new genres as well. I’ve experimented a couple of times with more memoir-inflected essays, including “The gift of books” and “The time Banowsky almost took the LCC job,” both of which blend personal writing with university history (with varying levels of success, I think!).

At the end of my first year, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to maintain my pace of one essay every other week on average. I’m happy to report that year two had an even higher productivity than year one, both in terms of number of essays and their average length. Looking ahead to year three, I hope to continue along the same lines, perhaps taking on more ambitious projects, as time allows.

I am still interested in publishing guest posts. I’ve cultivated an audience interested in reading about Pepperdine and its history. If you have an idea for an essay on a related topic, please reach out here on Substack or find me on Twitter.

Thanks for your continued support. It’s gratifying to know so many people are interested in reading about the history of Pepperdine. Please show your support by sharing my work with anyone who might be interested. If you have a topic you’d like me to investigate, please get in touch. I have developed a rather lengthy backlog of ideas for future essays, but I’d be glad to add yours to the list.