Here… • Just when did Americans start calling the Civil War the Civil War? (Hint: not during the War of the Rebellion.) • My series on how WWII has been commemorated considered the semi-revival of traditional memorial structures like statues, then the way that commemorative meaning is determined and communicated. • Two 20th century events … More That Was The Week That Was
What do war and veterans memorials mean? What should we think or feel when we visit them? And who decides the answers to those questions? Not long after leaving Highway 61 (the famous road that follows the Mississippi River) and entering the southeastern Minnesota town of Wabasha, you’ll arrive at its small Veteran’s Memorial Park. … More Commemorating WWII: Meaning, Power, and Worship
My recent tour of about twenty memorials in southern Minnesota (plus one in western Wisconsin) was meant to help immerse me in the era of World War II, which I’ll be teaching next January at Bethel University. But more often than not, what I saw were relics of the 1990s or 2000s, not the 1940s … More Commemorating WWII: Back to the Future
It is now generally conceded that mere shafts of granite and statues of bronze, be they ever so artistic, are inadequate to express the tribute we would pay to our soldiers of democracy. Writing in American Architect in 1919, Martha Candler was about a generation too early to speak for most readers of that journal. … More Commemorating WWII: Living Memorials
At least, that’s how it might feel for the next few weeks… Some explanation: Next January, for Bethel’s three-week “interim” term, I’ll be debuting a new course on the Second World War (HIS231L), designed to alternate J-terms with a long-standing class on the First World War (HIS230L) that I’ve converted into a travel course in … More WWII Takes Over The Pietist Schoolman
With two exams to grade at work, it seems like a good moment to rerun some favorite posts from the first three months of 2013. We’ll start by stretching the “Best of The Pietist Schoolman” definition a bit and collate four posts I wrote for our department blog, at different points along the way in … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Teaching WWI in Europe
Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel and elsewhere around the world. I don’t think it’s widely known in the United States — partly because it falls on the 27th day in the Jewish month of Nissan, and so moves year by year within the Gregorian calendar — but even if this is … More Holocaust Remembrance Day
Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is … More The Cross: A Good Friday Meditation on World War and Holocaust
1/14/13 – Greetings from Paris! I hadn’t intended to post a new update on our history of World War I trip until our off day, but having just finished the Western Front leg of our trip today, I just had too many highlights to save until Thursday. You can find my post (with some more … More All Still Quiet on the Western Front…
1/11/13 – If you’d like to read some highlights and see some pictures of our first week studying World War I (in London and Oxford), I posted a summary at our department blog this morning. On to the Western Front!
The Pietist Schoolman 