As a teacher, I grow restless easily, tinkering for the sake of tinkering. But even in those classes that I teach yearly or semesterly, there are certain fine-tuned exercises that I expect to repeat for years to come. One of those happened last week in my upper-division survey of modern European history, when after one … More Ordinary Men: Empathy and Judgment in the History of the Holocaust
Today in my Modern Europe class we’re wrapping up a week on the Holocaust by watching a German movie about Sophie Scholl and the other Munich University students who formed the anti-Nazi White Rose movement. It’s as hopeful (and it’s definitely bittersweet) a note on which I dare end so dark a chapter of history. … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Teaching the Holocaust
Here • My usual weekend links wrap-up got pushed back a day because I spent Friday and Saturday in Boston, at the biennial meeting of the Conference of Faith and History. I posted some thoughts on Friday morning/afternoon panels, plus Tracy McKenzie’s monumentally important (I think) presidential address. Then one more on the Saturday sessions, … More That Was The Week That Was
Here • My colleague Christian Collins Winn shared his year-opening chapel talk at Bethel, in which he suggested how Pietism might provide a model for civil discourse. (And be sure to check out Brian Gumm’s response to that post at his blog, Restorative Theology. It was certainly gratifying to read that he thinks Christian and … More That Was The Week That Was
Here • The 70th anniversary of a dark day in French history, when French police helped their German occupiers to round up 13,000 Jewish women, men, and children, cram them into a bicycling arena without sanitation, and eventually send them to their deaths in Auschwitz. • The summer’s half over, but there’s still time for … More That Was The Week That Was
July 16-17, 1942 – Over 13,000 Jews are arrested in Paris, including four thousand children More than half were crammed into a Paris velodrome known as the “Vel d’Hiv.” There were no bathrooms; the only food came from too-rare visits by Red Cross and Quaker relief workers; and the only water came from a single … More This Day in History: The Rafle du Vel d’Hiv
Actually, “Those Were The Weeks That Were,” as I’m backtracking over ground left uncovered during my days off… Here I’m weary of things “being meta,” but this is my version of it: watching on YouTube as someone sings along to my own voice singing in another YouTube video visible in the background. Of course, me … More That Was The Week That Was
Here • Most importantly, one of you paid a visit that happened to be the 25,000th in this blog’s still-brief history. Now, I happened to talk with another blogger recently for whom this number would represent a good half-week’s worth of traffic. But I’m still amazed that anywhere near that number of people would want … More That Was The Week That Was
Here I still think I might want to visit a Charles Dickens amusement park, chemical smell-pots and the Pizza Hut notwithstanding. I put the cart before the horse slightly and speculated from where a “Pietist vision” would come — without actually describing said “Pietist vision.” The last part in my series on World War I … More That Was The Week That Was
I don’t think my wife reads this blog all that often. But once we get past some self-analysis and a quick review of a terrible chapter in history, know that this post is ultimately a tribute to her and others like her who work with children with developmental delays. I cry pretty easily. At funerals, … More There’s No Crying in History: Teaching the Holocaust
The Pietist Schoolman 