Here • I walked into church last Sunday and a friend of mine warned me not to read an op-ed piece in the St. Paul paper. Turns out it was David Levy’s half-baked critique of college teaching, which provided an opportunity to vent more than a little spleen to start the week. • In that … More That Was The Week That Was
I try not to post too many posts defending the beleaguered liberal arts from assorted barbarians at their gates. I’m pretty sure my feelings on that model of education are well known, or could be predicted if you just knew my occupation, and the value of the liberal arts seems self-evident to me. But two … More The Liberal Arts: From Minnesota to China
One of my favorite things about spring semester is that I get to teach a section of our department’s capstone course, HIS499 Senior Seminar. It’s fun in part because it’s so unlike anything else I teach — as close to a graduate seminar as I’m going to (or would like to) get as a professor … More What Historians Do
I happen to agree almost entirely with John’s column, but that’s irrelevant. Even if I didn’t share some of his disappointment in Obama the president vs. Obama the candidate, or if I didn’t think that Obama was unusually explicit about his faith by contrast with most of his predecessors in the White House, I’d still … More We Take Care of Our Own: Standing with John Fea
Key moments on my agenda for this particular workday: 7:45am – Drop off our twins (each suffering from an advanced case of being “terrible” two years old) at day care. Say quick prayer for their teachers. 9:00am – Deliver lecture in 100-level Western Civ course on post-exilic Judaism and its interactions with Hellenistic culture and … More The Dabbler
Are the liberal arts (e.g., history) irrelevant or out of date? Not according to Nannerl Keohane, former president of Duke University and Wellesley College: The very broad, capacious form of education that we call the liberal arts is rooted in a specific curriculum in classical and medieval times. But it would be wrong to … More A Defense of the Liberal Arts
As historians go, I’m not much of an antiquarian. Since I mostly study the 20th century, I’m little more than a glorified journalist in the eyes of some peers. And I don’t collect first editions or enjoy antiquing. But I’m grateful to my colleague Steve Keillor for passing along excerpts from the 1828 Yale Report. … More Old School Ivy League: The Yale Report of 1828
Here at The Pietist Schoolman This Week in History included the birthdays of an anthropologist and a singer-songwriter, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and two low moments in Italian military history: the sack of Rome in 410, and Brazil’s declaration of war in 1942! Wrapping up eight posts on The Pietist Impulse in … More That Was the Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 