Here • Musing about what it means to say “I believe…” about the Trinity… • Two down, twenty-four to go: an alphabetical sampler of my CD collection started with the Rolling Stones (Aftermath) and Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan Live 1966). • “Moral histories” of the Second World War from novelist Alan Furst and historians Don … More That Was The Week That Was
Grades are due this Friday, so I’ll be posting some “best of” pieces while I take time away from active blogging. Given that today is Memorial Day in the United States, I thought I’d start by combining my four-part series on World War I memorials into one long post (broken up into pages). In a … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Commemorating World War I
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
One more post about British TV as I continue to reprise some posts from recent months during this mini-hiatus coinciding with Bethel’s Spring Break: my defense of Downton Abbey against withering criticism from one of Britain’s most popular historians. Downton has been back on my mind of late, after my wife and I watched its antecedent, the … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Downton Crabby
2/28/12 – Check out the new video preview for HIS230L World War I, reconfigured as a travel course that Sam Mulberry and I will lead for the first time in January 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwH-E1ayKkU
Earlier this month Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) presented an evening program focused entirely on classical music written by French and English composers during and right after World War I. Here’s the playlist if you’d like to order any of the pieces (for February 7th; the WWI music ran from 8-9pm). For the occasion Classical MPR … More WWI in Classical Music
Belatedly (and too quickly), let me wrap up this series on European museums and their role in presenting the history of the First World War. (Read the first post here.) In previous posts, I’ve employed Jay Winter’s phrase “cathedrals of the modern world” as an especially lofty vision of what museums could or should be. Today … More “Cathedrals of the Modern World”: Paris and Ieper
The last surviving veteran of the First World War died last Saturday, just shy of her 111th birthday. Her name was Florence Green. She joined the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) as a mess steward in September 1918, nine months after she turned 17 and two months before the end of the war. Mrs. Green’s … More The Last Veteran of WWI
Calling museums “cathedrals of the modern world” (as I quoted cultural historian Jay Winter last week) might seem like setting the bar awfully high. Probably too high for something like the National Army Museum in London, which seeks simply to document the evolution of the British way of war in a way that’s neither intimidating … More “Cathedrals of the Modern World”: London
Museums are the cemeteries of the arts. (Alphonse de Lamartine) Even their fans must admit that museums can feel like places where the past (or, for the poet Lamartine, art) gets embalmed and entombed. According to historian Jay Winter — already quoted multiple times in this series on exploring the history of World War I … More “Cathedrals of the Modern World”: Introduction
The Pietist Schoolman 