The title of this post has been running through mind for several months now. I’m still not sure I know what to do with that idea, but I’ve been sitting on it long enough. Time to think out loud and see if anything sticks. In a figurative sense, I stand by gravesides most of the time I teach classes, write articles … More To Be a Historian Is To Speak over Gravesides
Here… • This Saturday links wrap is quite a bit later in the day than usual because this morning I decided to join every other writer with a platform and muse about Prince. • There’s no charge to read this blog, but occasionally I’ll invite you to support a worthy cause like Minnehaha Academy. • On Tuesday we celebrated the … More That Was The Week That Was
A list, but it can’t be click-baity with this kind of bait, right? So this past Tuesday my friend Sam Mulberry and I got to co-host a special presentation in the Bethel University Library: a walk down memory lane for GES130 Christianity and Western Culture, a staple of Bethel’s gen ed curriculum for three decades now. While it was … More 6 Reasons to Watch a 40-Minute Tribute to a 30-Year Old Western Civ Course
In recognition of Veterans/Remembrance Day, Fletcher Warren and I are proud today to unveil the final version of Bethel at War, 1914-2014: A Digital History of a Christian College in a Century of Warfare. Whether you’re a Bethel alumnus, student, or employee, a member of its denomination, someone who’s interested in the histories of higher education, Christianity (especially … More At Long Last, the Official Debut of Bethel at War, 1914-2014!
Last month I posted an excerpt from Shirley Mullen’s foreword to Becoming Grace, a volume I helped to edit about the history of Grace College and Theological Seminary. Today I offer the book’s second foreword, written by Jeff Bach, in its entirety. Jeff is an accomplished historian of Pietism and is best known for his landmark book … More Jeff Bach on Becoming Grace
10/20/14 – Thanks to Dave Bruno and John Fea for responding to my post last week suggesting “Six C’s of Writing Institutional History”! In a comment on that post, Dave elaborated on his suggestion that historians might practice a kind of institutional “confession,” while John — busy writing his own institutional history, of the American Bible … More Responses to My Post on Institutional History
During the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) meeting late last month, I had the honor of chairing a session on the role that historians can play in helping institutions during seasons of change. Despite the early start time (8:00 on a Saturday morning), we had a nice crowd show up to hear a terrific set of … More Six C’s of Writing Institutional History
For longer than I want to admit, Mark Norris, my colleague in the History Department at Grace College, and I have been working to pull together an edited volume on the history of our institution. We know that institutional histories don’t often represent the best in critical scholarship and are often assumed to be merely … More Examining Institutional Memory
The Pietist Schoolman 