Here… • We took a big step closer to the publication of The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education, so I celebrated by passing along the table of contents (with sample quotations from each piece). • I shared a Lenten meditation on the scriptural reminder that “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” • About … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • First things first: the results of the great beard vote are in and… Thanks for voting, everyone! • In other news… January 30th happened to mark the birthday of one world leader tied to World War II, the rise of another, the assassination of another, and the funeral of another. Hmm. • WWII … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • When the week started, did I think that I’d writing about the spiritual implications of birdwatching? No. By Thursday afternoon had I written the phrase “orni-theological musing“? Yes. Blogging is weird. • Jared Burkholder introduced us to the Moravian branch of the Pietist family tree. I’m hoping for a sequel in which he … More That Was The Week That Was
‘Tis the season for media old and new to trot out their “best of” lists for the soon-to-conclude year. As I did in 2012, I’ve been working on collating some such lists into a Christmas gift-giving guide for history buffs. In the process, I’ve been heartened to find a few academic historians garnering praise for … More Academic Historians On (and Off) Year-End “Best of” Lists
Here… • Announcements: Books & Culture is alive and kicking; Efrem Smith took a new job; the U.S. News Best Colleges report came out and it’s still ridiculous. That is all. • Not exactly the finest hour for either Britain or France: the Phoney War of 1939-1940. And WWII would get worse for both countries … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • Just when did Americans start calling the Civil War the Civil War? (Hint: not during the War of the Rebellion.) • My series on how WWII has been commemorated considered the semi-revival of traditional memorial structures like statues, then the way that commemorative meaning is determined and communicated. • Two 20th century events … More That Was The Week That Was
If you’re not a member of the American Historical Association (AHA), you might not have heard that our guild is in the middle of a fracas heated enough to have generated its own hashtag: #AHAgate. Or perhaps you have, since it attracted the attention of the New York Times on Monday. Quick version: nine days … More The Underquestioned Assumption at the Heart of #AHAgate
Here… • I concluded my series on patriotic songs in American hymnals: part two introduced a few songs that never made it into more than one or two hymnals; part three asked why even very popular patriotic songs fail to appear in many hymnals. • No, Pope Francis did not promise “get out of purgatory … More That Was The Week That Was
A brief follow-up to Tuesday’s post, “The Humanities in Crisis, or Not“… Historian Ben Schmidt (by way of journalist Jordan Weissmann) argued that any fear that the humanities (history, philosophy, literature, languages) are in crisis should be tempered by the reality that (aside from an outlying boom that peaked in 1966) those disciplines have about … More Curriculum and the Health of the Humanities
Earlier this year the New York Times ran a story about an English professor at Duke University named Cathy Davidson, who decided to replace more traditional term papers with a course blog for which students would regularly contribute 500-1500 word posts. While much of the Times article focused on the arguments for and against what … More Student Blogging: A Report from a Modern European History Course
The Pietist Schoolman 