“If it’s so easy, let’s see you do it” will be an eminently fair response to this post, offering as it does a suggestion for how to give speeches or preach sermons at college commencement or baccalaureate exercises from someone who’s done neither. Here goes… It’s been a commencement-filled weekend for me: my own university’s … More Sent Out to Serve, and Suffer
Here • Celebrating my colleague, mentor, and friend G.W. Carlson — retiring from full-time teaching after nearly 45 years on the faculty of Bethel College (now University). • GW would have been much more articulate (and fiery) than me in explaining why history is a perfectly good field of study for anyone passionate about social … More That Was The Week That Was
I doubt he’d remember, but I first met G.W. Carlson in March 2002. Neither of us could have guessed that ten years later I’d be helping to make this movie about him: Back to March 2002… I had just turned in my dissertation and was in town for my brother’s wedding. We grew up in … More Commencement: A Tribute to G.W. Carlson
Last week I was pleasantly surprised to receive the following query from one of our admissions counselors at Bethel: she had been talking to a prospective student who wondered which major would be most beneficial in preparing someone to fight sex slavery, estimated to be the second largest criminal enterprise in the world today (after … More History and Social Justice
5/24/12 – After a two-month break while my co-host Chris Moore and his wife Stacy welcomed their first child, a new episode of The Policast is now available on iTunes U. The Policast is a political affairs podcast that we’ve produced occasionally this spring and to which we’ll return in a more regular fashion as the presidential and … More On This Episode of The Policast…
Every one of the now nine years I’ve taught at Bethel University, I’ve led a section of our department’s capstone course, HIS499 Senior Seminar. In it, our majors conduct a significant project of original historical research on any topic of their choice, which leaves me to act more as facilitator and editor than lecturer. We … More Bethel’s History Senior Seminar Presents…
For a college professor/baseball fan like myself, this news was hard to hear: As of Wednesday morning, 917 players had appeared in at least one big-league game this season, according to STATS LLC. Of that group, only 39 — or 4.3 percent — were confirmed by their teams of MLB as having obtained four-year college … More The Thinking Man’s Game?
The ten most popular posts in the last month here at The Pietist Schoolman: Tolkien, Lewis, and the Memory of War Pietism Colloquium on iTunes U Pietism Colloquium Recap: Scot McKnight In Celebration of Students My MTV Unplugged Moment “Do college professors work hard enough?” The Best National Anthems: Introduction Gladness, Need, and Calling: Frederick … More The Big Ten
Here • My unplugged concert for student teaching assistants in Bethel’s Western Civ course, caught on film by my trusty friend Sam. • Jazz, Nazi-style. • The third and final part of my series recasting church history as family history looked at the disenchanting process of engaging in remembrance. • My students and I had … More That Was The Week That Was
One of my favorite blogs is Past Imperfect, produced by the Smithsonian Magazine and featuring terrifically well-written stories about a fascinating array of historical subjects. (A piece on female pirates won one of the last Cliopatria awards for historical blogging before Cliopatria closed down.) Well-researched but accessible, I’ve taken to recommending several of its best posts … More Nazi Jazz
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