The Pietist Schoolman

LONDON – Greetings from my favorite city in the world, where I’ll be spending the first eight days of a three-week travel course on the history of World War I.

Joined by my friend and colleague Sam Mulberry and his wife, Anne-Britt, we’re taking twenty students from Bethel University on this, our third iteration of the WWI travel course. Those of you who have been reading The Pietist Schoolman since the very beginning may recall that my first blog series was an attempt to think through this trip, day by day. We first offered the actual course in January 2013, then repeated it in 2015.

While it’s a bit disorienting to come back from a four-month sabbatical on the East Coast, spend just a few days in Minnesota, then hop a plane for England, I’m excited to introduce our largest group ever to the history and memory of a war at the time of its ongoing centenary. We’ll start this morning with a walking tour of WWI memorials in central London:

Click here to learn more about each stage of the trip — including a tour of the former Western Front and stays in Paris and Munich.

Apart from my regular Tuesday posts at The Anxious Bench, I don’t expect to do much blogging during January. But if you’re curious, we’ll be sharing photos and student reflections on social media. Look for the hashtag #BethelWWI on Twitter and Facebook, or follow my Twitter account or the Facebook page for Bethel’s History Department.