Is two years too soon to call something an “annual holiday tradition”? For our readers who like to give such gifts for Christmas, here’s a list of some of the history books to have appeared on the “Best of 2013” lists that I first examined in a recent post on academic historians achieving success with … More The Best History Books of 2013?
Sixty-five years ago yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly gathered in Paris’ Palais de Chaillot to approve the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Australia’s Herbert Evatt, presiding over the General Assembly, called the moment “an epoch-making event in the development of international law” and enthused that the UN was … More This Day in History: The Birth of Human Rights Law
11/27/13 – We’ll be taking today, tomorrow, and perhaps Friday off from blogging. Meanwhile, consider joining me in reading Robert Tracy McKenzie’s The First Thanksgiving over the holiday break. (See reviews by Thomas Kidd and David Swartz to understand why.) Or at least check out this and other Pilgrims-related posts at Tracy’s admirable blog, Faith … More Happy Thanksgiving!
Today I’m happy to introduce Jared Burkholder, a fellow “Pietist schoolman” who will be blogging here every other Friday! Jared is Associate Professor of History at Grace College and Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, where he also chairs the History and Political Science department and directs the Office of Faith, Learning, and Scholarship. He holds … More Introducing Jared Burkholder, Our New Regular Guest Blogger
Few recent movies have received the acclaim accorded to 12 Years A Slave, currently owner of a 95% “fresh” rating at the critic aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. But then few recent movies attempt to immerse audiences in the antebellum experience of a free black man taken into bondage from 1841 to 1853 — working from the … More 12 Years a Slave: Film as History
When I teach my Human Rights in International History course next spring, we’ll quickly come to the distinction between the “first generation” of political, legal, and civil rights and the “second generation” of social and economic rights. While the United States was an early adopter of the first, this country has had a more complicated … More A Constitutional Right to Education?
Now that we’re into the academic year and I’m both busier and readership is up, I thought I’d ease into the week by reposting a couple of pieces that you might have missed during the warmer months. I’ll start with a three-part series from July. Which patriotic hymns are most popular? Have they changed over … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: A Brief History of Patriotism in American Hymnals
While taking notes earlier this month at the Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial in Rochester, MN, I couldn’t help but overhear the following from another (rather loud) visitor: Kids should come here and read all this stuff because they don’t teach [it] in school. Yes, and no. (Well, more like: yes, and NO!) Yes: there is … More Commemorating WWII: The Memorial as a Work of Public History
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
Yesterday Elesha Coffman proposed a fun historical exercise over at the Religion in American History blog: develop an American equivalent to Mark Noll’s list of fourteen Turning Points in church history. It’s not as easy as it might seem. For example, she argued that American church history is both too big and too small to … More What Are the “Turning Points” in American Church History?
The Pietist Schoolman 