Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on-line that caught my attention this week.

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Myron Magnet on John Jay

Historians and tobacco.

Art Remillard on Southern Irreligion.

George Schulman on civil religion

Student reflections on C. Vann Woodward's The Burden of Southern History

Jon Rowe: Misusing the American Founding for political purposes.

Religion and foreign policy.

Jenell Williams Paris on excellent professors.

Stephen Prothero: A Buddhist moment in America

Springsteen was the second biggest money-maker in 2009.

Apply for the American Antiquarian Association's Summer Seminar in the History of the Book.

Was Robert Livingston a scoundrel?

Harold Holzer on Lincoln's Cooper Union address.

Gerald Russello reviews Theodore Malloch, Thrift: Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue.

Catherine Allgor on Dolley Madison's kindness.

Congrats to the Canadian men's curling team.

Anthony Grafton reviews Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas

The ugly side of the Olympics.

Did Washington and Lincoln lie in office? Most Americans think so.

Did John Brown's house have secret slave tunnels?

Matthew Battles reviews Robert Darnton, The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future

The best-read presidents.

Henry Jaffa on Lincoln in Peoria.

Jean Bethke Elshtain reviews Jon Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right

Pete Hamill reviews James S. Hirsch, Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend. A podcast of the review can be found here.

What a Gold Medal does for a community.

Is There a Religious Reason For Opposing Health Care?

Paul Raushenbush does not think so:

From my perspective I cannot think of one religiously based argument against reforming America's health care system. Health care reform is fundamentally about keeping health care costs affordable for those who already have some kind of insurance, and making it available for the millions who do not have it.

Care of our basic well-being is an essential element of religious concern. In my own tradition of Christianity, Jesus was in the practice of healing those who were sick (the roots of the word salvation is connected to healing), and he mandated his disciples to go about the business of healing the sick and providing for the poor. Christians alive today are meant to continue the work of Jesus and be the body of Christ. While we may not have miraculous healing powers ourselves, we do have the ability to make sure that the miraculous healing ability of medicine is available to all who need it.

I honestly hope that someone will correct me about this, but it seems to me that the objections to health care reform always come down to selfishness. People who enjoy good health care are worried that their own care might suffer if it were extended to a wider group, or else they resent that they might have to pay a bit more to allow for health care for the poor. Putting aside the fact that those with money will always be able to buy superior health care, and that insurance companies continue to raise costs on health care annually -- with reform or without it -- the religious objection to these arguments is that they are grounded in making self interest the priority at the expense of the well-being of others. This selfishness is the antithesis of the religious impulse.

Those whom we identify as truly religious are those who live their lives not thinking how they can best arrange the world to serve their own interests, but who instead see the world through the lens of compassion and attempt to live in service to others. Again, speaking for the Christian tradition, it is clear that Jesus is especially concerned with those who were living in poverty, who were outcasts, or who were sick. Jesus never mandated his followers to seek the best they could for themselves, it was always through the lens of the 'least of these.' If we conveniently forget the plight of the millions who live without health care and who face the decision between paying for an operation or keeping a home, then we are not really considering the religious perspective on health care. It becomes a classic case of the powerful protecting their own interests while the weak suffer -- an equation that must be repugnant to the religious sensibility.

Read more here.

Are You A Member of the Millennial Generation?

Take this fourteen question quiz and find out. I scored a 12, which means I am a Baby Boomer. This means that I am part of a generation that technically ended before I was born.

How did you fare?

You can learn about Millennials (as compared to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers) here.

The Problem With A Lot of Christian Writing

Al Hsu, the author of an interesting blog called Suburban Christian, cites a passage from Philip Yancey's 1982 book Open Windows about the problem with a lot of evangelical books.

. . . Christian authors tend to give only the ideas and thoughts, without tracing the personalities involved and the context of how those thoughts developed. Too often religious books are organized and written like sermons, with an outlined structure superimposed on the content.

Many successful evangelical authors are not authors at all; they are speakers who make their living by speaking at churches and conferences. One can hardly blame them for organizing their written material in the same way as their spoken material, and often it sells well. But speakers who write books in the same style defy the basic rules of communication. Writers cannot merely list facts and hope to penetrate readers’ brains. They must take readers on an emotional journey to hold their attention. People do not read the same way they listen, and a book-speech is effective only among an audience previously committed to agree with the material. It cannot reach out to a noncaptive audience such as a world skeptical of Christian ideas. That requires books created according to the rules of written communication.

An author cannot captivate an audience with his or her own personal magnetism as a speaker can. Authors must use such techniques as a gripping narrative style, well-placed anecdotes, suspense, and a structure that compels a reader to follow the train of thought. To a diverse audience, ideas come across best when they are embodied and live within a visual, imaginable context.

As someone who does a lot of public speaking and is writing a book which I hope will be read by evangelical audiences, I learned a lot from this short excerpt.

Books ans Culture On-Line

If you have not already seen it, check out the new Books and Culture website.

Going Digital in the Archives

I am pretty traditional when it comes to archival research. Back in the mid-1990s when I first started my dissertation, I used to come to the archives armed with legal pads, note cards, and pencils. I now use a laptop, but my technological prowess ends there. I am, however, willing to learn about technology and the art of research from younger scholars who know what they are talking about.

Shane Landrum is one of those scholars. I just finished reading a talk he delivered recently at the Yale Graduate Conference on digital history. His paper was entitled "Camera, laptop, and what else?": Hacking better tools for the short archival research trip." Here is a taste:

Unlike many private and some public libraries, the National Archives allows researchers to bring in digital cameras, tripods, and even flatbed scanners. There’s a basic process in place to ensure that you’re not shooting classified materials; it’s about as open as I could imagine for an archival library. When I go, I take the following materials:

• Nikon Coolpix compact camera, 7 megapixels ($130); if you’re purchasing one, look on reviews to make sure that the camera supports a macro (close range) mode. You may also want to check out how much barrel distortion the camera has when it zooms in. Most photos will be at wide angles, but it’s nice to be able to zoom in on details of text without the image being too distorted. It’s also good to have a camera that can handle low light levels well without blurring; not every library is well-lit for photography, and some libraries won’t allow tripods.
• Sharpics table-mount monopod (www.sharpics.com, $50). This is the one piece of equipment people ask me about constantly, because it’s vastly easier to work with than a tripod when you’re shooting straight down. It’s also compact and lightweight.
• My laptop, an early-2006 MacBook with upgraded RAM and hard drive; initially $1500, and I’ve spent about $200 per year on upgrading to larger hard drives as prices drop. It’s nice to have a computer with user-replaceable hard drives and RAM, so that you don’t have to pay the manufacturer’s high prices.
• A USB flash-media reader ($5 on eBay); faster than plugging a cable into your camera.
• Extra flash-media cards, 2GB size ($25 total on eBay).
• Rechargeable AA batteries (4) and AC charger ($30). I also have Nikon’s AC adapter, which is nice for a day when I plan to plug the camera in, put it on the tripod, and spend all day shooting papers. Otherwise, batteries work just fine, are more versatile for other electronics I own, and take up less room in luggage.
• Blank CDs or DVDs for backups.
• Headphones and an iPod, to lighten a very repetitive task

This entire piece is must reading for graduate students or anyone else who wants to be on the cutting edge of archival research.

What are some of your archive strategies? Is the use of a camera a pretty common occurrence these days?

(While we are talking about cameras, I am looking to buy a decent digital camera to take pictures for the blog. Can I get a good one for under $300? Any advice? I know nothing about cameras).

NPR on James Dobson's Last Day at Focus on the Family

Today was James Dobson's last day on the air as host of Focus on the Family radio show. He will soon join his son Ryan on a new syndicated radio show called "Family Talk with James Dobson." Though Dobson downplays it, his new radio show will compete with Focus on the Family programming.

On today's NPR "Morning Edition," Dan Gilgoff of CNN suggests that Dobson's decision in recent years to make his old radio show more political may have alienated listeners to "Focus on the Family" who tuned in primarily for advice on how to build healthy families. He also notes that the new leader of Focus on the Family, Jim Daly, is much more of a "Rick Warren" type of evangelical. In other words, he is not the same kind of cultural warrior that Dobson had been.

Four Historians Recieve National Humanities Medals

The Washington Post reports (HT: Ralph Luker at Cliopatria):

"Sorry I'm a little late. I had this thing I had to do," joked President Obama, just before an afternoon ceremony at the White House on Thursday in which luminaries in the arts and academics were presented with the highest medals for achievements in their fields.

He was more than an hour late and he'd already spent a grueling day at a bipartisan health-care summit, but the atmosphere in the East Room was light and the president was clearly in the mood to relax, awarding the National Medal of the Arts and the National Humanities Medal to 20 recipients, including singer Bob Dylan, actor and director Clint Eastwood, painter Frank Stella and Nobel laureate and author Elie Wiesel...

The humanities citations went to prizewinning authors and historians Robert A. Caro ("The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate"), Annette Gordon-Reed ("The Hemingses of Monticello"), David Levering Lewis ("W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963") and William H. McNeill ("Plagues and Peoples"). The list also includes speechwriter and lawyer Theodore Sorensen, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Philippe de Montebello and philanthropist Albert H. Small, as well as Wiesel, founding chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the author of "Night," whom the president gave his own big hug.

Hercules: George Washington's Chef...And Slave

The "Restaurant and Food" section of the Philadelphia Inquirer is running a two part series on Hercules, George Washington's slave and chef while he served as president in Philadelphia from 1790-1797.

Recent controversy over the President's House, at Sixth and Market Streets, has renewed interest in Hercules and the lives of the other eight slaves who worked for Washington during his presidency in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797. Their story surged into the international spotlight with the 2007 dig that unearthed the kitchen foundation and an underground passageway leading to it, obviously used by servants. Ironically, the kitchen where Hercules toiled was just in front of the new Liberty Bell Center.

Here's more:

The saga of Hercules has emerged as compelling historical drama - his rise from plantation slave to respected chef in the president's kitchen, his appearance as a loyal servant trusted to stroll the city's boulevards in fine clothes, and his clever escape.

Indeed, a supposed portrait of Hercules in full cook's regalia that has been attributed to Gilbert Stuart has become one of the iconic images of the slave memorial being built at the President's House and now scheduled to open this year.

Through the eyes of George Washington Parke Custis, the president's stepgrandson, who grew up in his Philadelphia home, Hercules was a "celebrated artiste" in the kitchen, "as highly accomplished a proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States." He also was the family's beloved "Uncle Harkless" and a gilded boulevardier, the "veriest dandy" of his age, Custis wrote in his 1860 memoir.

But contemporary historians such as Mary V. Thompson of Mount Vernon, Anna Coxe Toogood of Independence National Historical Park, David R. Hoth of the Washington Papers at the University of Virginia, and Edward Lawler Jr. of the Independence Hall Association have gone beyond Custis' memories to tease the outlines of Hercules' narrative from household account books, correspondences, and Mount Vernon farm reports.

His story has become the inspiration for preachers' sermons, a televised chef segment on PBS, and activists and historians who want to bring sharper focus to the Founding Fathers' dark entanglement with slavery.

"It helps people understand . . . freedom for whites was often built on the backs of enslaved people," says Gary B. Nash, a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Slavery is liberty's evil twin brother. We think of them as polar opposites, and yet they're joined at the hip."

Check out the entire article to learn more about Hercules. Part One is here. Part Two is here.

Ernie Freeburg, Eugene Debs, and the Coon-Hunting--Groceryman--Politican--County Music Impresario Who is a Knoxville Legend

I love reading human interest stories about historians, especially historians who I know.

I spent six or seven years grading Advanced Placement United States History exams in San Antonio with Ernie Freeberg, a professor of history at the University of Tennessee. We did not get to know each other very well, but I always enjoyed chatting, however briefly, about his scholarly work on Laura Bridgman (which won the prestigious Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association in 2002) and Eugene Debs.

I recently discovered this article about Ernie from a Knoxville, TN newspaper. He discusses his recent biography of Debs, Democracy's Prisoner: The Prisoner, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent. Ernie's book has been on my "to read" list for some time now. I developed an appreciation for Debs after reading Nick Salvatore's wonderful Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist and Ernie's book seems to be another well-written account of the Socialist leader. Here is a snippet from the article:

Democracy's Prisoner reads in places, like a novel, with swift pacing. History scholars aren’t known to be graceful writers, but Freeberg is an unusually good one. “It all has to do with being a journalist,” he says, crediting his background as a radio reporter in Maine. Full time for three years, part time for five, he had to file multiple news stories each week, and he learned how to tell a story. “So many people who have written about Debs are admirers who put him on a pedestal. I was determined not to do that.” Though he worked on the book for close to 10 years, he claims he never tired of his subject. Part of it was the engaging cast of characters: He mentions economist/activist Scott Nearing, American Communist John Reed and writer Max Eastman, who shaped Debs’ life and times. “And I have to admit I was seduced by Debs’ personality,” he says. He enjoyed finding each new anecdote that added to his subject’s complexity.

But another part of the article deals with the house in which Ernie and his wife now live. It apparently once belonged to a Cas Walker (there is a picture of his bust below). I have never heard of Cas Walker, but he seems to be a local Knoxville celebrity. The article describes him this way:

Groceryman and provocateur, country-music impresario, coon hunter, and longtime city politician, Walker was a reputedly millionaire, but lived in this relatively modest house in a working man’s neighborhood, with dog kennels and a small stable for a pony in the back yard.

Here's more:

Walker died in 1998, but his house wasn’t completely cleared out, about six years ago, when Freeberg moved in. “I had read Bruce Wheeler’s history of Knoxville by the time I moved here in 2003, and knew something about Cas Walker’s mystique,” he says, smiling. Walker is a major character in Wheeler’s book, which details the grocer’s genius for spectacle. Freeberg was impressed, the first time he saw the house, by the previous owner’s security measures. “There was a ton of locks on the doors,” Freeberg says. “And floor safes.” Contrary to rumors of fortunes stashed in the house, Freeberg says the safes were empty, and he didn’t find anything of obvious value. There was a good deal of paper records, and Freeberg was going to donate it to the East Tennessee Historical Society. But when he moved in, most of it had been cleared out. A few interesting artifacts remained. One is a copy of a play called The Book of Job, by the Children’s Theatre Press, produced in Kentucky, personalized to Cas in 1960.

Take a few minutes and read this article about three very interesting guys: Ernie Freeberg, Eugene Debs, and Cas Walker.

Messiah College Humanities Symposium: Day 5

Here is the slate for the 2010 Messiah College Humanities Symposium

Plenary Session
Boyer Hall 131 | 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Talk-back session on the keynote address and the Symposium theme
panelists:, Dr. Jean Corey (English), Dr. James B. LaGrand (History), Dr. Peter Powers (School of the Humanities), Dr. Emerson Powery (Biblical Studies), and Dr. Paul Rego (Politics)
Refreshments provided.

Henry Louis Gates at Messiah College

It was a great night at Messiah College.

As I blogged about earlier today, Henry Louis Gates was on campus to deliver the keynote address for the 2010 Messiah College Humanities Symposium.

Anyone who has seen Gates's PBS documentaries on genealogy, memory, and ancestry would have been familiar with the material that he presented tonight, but Gates has such a warm and personable style it is hard not to be entertained. His talk tonight was entitled "Genetics and Genealogy."

Gates started out with a very moving clip from his most recent PBS series "Faces of America." He then talked about how he got interested in genealogy and the search for his roots. In 1977 he got what he described as a "serious case of Roots envy" after watching Alex Haley's television mini-series.

Here were few themes from the talk:

• 10.8 million Africans left Africa prior to the Civil War, but only 450,000 went to the land that would eventually become the United States. Most went to the Caribbean and South America

• Gates called our attention to a valuable resource for teaching and learning: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

• He noted that in the 1860s over half of the 488,000 free blacks in the United States lived in the Confederacy.

• He debunked the myth that most African-Americans had Native-American blood. He described this as "Have I told you about my Cherokee grandmother?" myth. In fact, only 5% of African-Americans have Native American blood. The roots of this myth come from the African-American reaction to 18th century philosophers like David Hume and Thomas Jefferson who said that native-Americans were "noble" savages but Blacks were "ignoble savages." Because of this, African-Americans have had a long history of "native-American envy"
  

• He noted that about 33% of Blacks today descend from white men.

• Gates described how he felt when he learned that he was half white and descended, on his mother's side, from an Irish King.
  

• One of the more hilarious moments was Gates describing his induction into the Sons of the American Revolution. One of his ancestors, John Redmond, fought in the Continental Army as a free black.

• He concluded with his vision for using this kind of genetic research to get inner-city African American kids excited about history and science.
  

OK--some of you are probably wondering if Gates talked about his arrest this past summer or his famed "Beer Summit" with Obama. He did joke about it during the Q& A session.

I was impressed and inspired by Gates as a public intellectual. Here is a Harvard professor committed to bringing the humanities to a larger audience.

Should Laptops Be Banned From The Classroom?

Yesterday in class I made a rather controversial comment that triggered a bit of nervous laughter among my students. To be honest I don't even remember what I said. I think it was something about the value of a liberal arts education. Whatever the case, I mentioned (half-jokingly) that I did not want this comment to appear on any of the Messiah College Facebook pages devoted to the funny or controversial things faculty say.

After making the comment I noticed a few students in the back of the class looking at a laptop giggling. It appears that one of them immediately posted a blurb on the faculty and student quote page called "Overheard at Messiah" that said: "John Fea (history prof): I just don't want this to end up on listening or overheard at messiah or whatever." I only know that this happened because the student who posted it told me after class. He seemed to have no qualms about telling me, his professor, that he had been on Facebook during my class.

More and more students now bring laptops to class. Messiah, like most campuses, is a wireless campus. Facebook updates like this can be made immediately. I have even had students use Wikipedia to check the factually accuracy of lectures.

Today's The Tufts Daily has a revealing article on this very subject. (HT: University Diaries). The author is K.C. Hallett, a senior psychology at Tufts. I will let him speak for himself:

Now I do not, as a personal rule, usually bring my laptop to class. I prefer to focus intently on the professor’s brilliant words, taking every detail to heart, because I care deeply and passionately about learning — and because every nanosecond of class costs like $600 of my tuition fees or something ridiculous like that. I also do not bring my hulking PC to class because it gets self-conscious around all the younger, sleeker Macs. Not to mention, I am also too lazy to lug it uphill. But mostly, the reason I do not bring my laptop to class is because of this learning thing we are supposed to be doing.

However, even with all my reasons, I was still surprised when my professor gave us his fair warning on in-class laptop use. How could he say something like that? What are students supposed to do without laptops? Taking notes on a laptop saves paper and also allows one to easily organize ideas. Laptops are used as tools of learning!

I believed this until last week when I came back to my senses upon arriving late to a certain class and having to sit in the only seat left in the very last row. From this new vantage point, I counted numerous laptops in use around the room. Through the course of a 75 minute class, I observed what was on these screens: One person on Blackboard.com, four people taking notes in Word documents, three people viewing the professor’s PowerPoint presentation; four people on Wikipedia.com, seven people on Facebook.com and eight people checking their e-mail. There was also one guy who played games for literally the entire class period. In fact, it could be that most students were actually on Facebook, and I just didn’t see because I was so distracted by the laser shooting around this guy’s screen.

As I continued to be distracted by the browsing all around me, I noticed students visiting other notable Web sites and programs. These included: Gmail, Google.com, the Bloomingdale’s Web site (such cute boots this season!), iChat, PerezHilton.com, Google Calendar, CNN.com, SI.com (oh, Sports Illustrated...), YouTube.com (including a trailer of the upcoming “Toy Story 3;” did you see it? It looks so good!), online versions of sudoku and solitaire, Verizon.com and various blogs.

One kid in the second row was even checking his bank account. Everyone I creeped on seemed to be using at least one application that was not strictly class-related; most used several.

A few conclusions can be drawn from this study.

Firstly, laptops give you enormous power to distract yourself or goof off in class in a more covert way than doing The Tufts Daily’s crossword under your desk.

Secondly, you can be pretty sure that if you’re doing something personal on your laptop during class, some creeper like me is going to be looking over your shoulder. We can’t help it. The Interwebs are so full of flashing lights and pretty colors; it’s like a carnival on your screen. So you might want to think twice about what you’re looking at (this means you, Bank of America guy), or who you’re Facebook-stalking.

Clearly, most laptop-in-class users are paying no attention in class and therefore shirking duties as committed undergraduate students at such a fine institution of higher learning (and active citizenship). Never mind that most of these in-class laptop users are actually the most knowledgeable students (and active citizens). If we all really cared about learning, instead of “taking notes on our laptops” we would simply take notes on real paper and avoid the temptations of distracting those around us and our own selves.

Making these observations has made me realize something valuable. I know next class, I will be sitting up front with the people who care about learning. Better yet, I’ll be closer to my cute teacher’s assistant.

I think Hallett is describing a pretty common phenomenon. In my large US Survey lecture course I will sometimes wonder up the aisles where, if I look back, I am positioned to see the screens of student laptops. Most students are taking notes. Some students are on Facebook or e-mailing and quickly switch screens when I turn around to walk back to the lectern. Some students actually don't care and continue to play their computer games.

Let's get some reaction on this one from students and professors. Should professors be concerned that students are surfing the web, updating Facebook, or writing e-mails during class? Should professors ban laptops from class?

The lines are open!

Marilynne Robinson and Calvinism

I am have been plodding my way through Marilynne Robinson's 1980 novel Housekeeping. For whatever reason, I am having a hard time connecting with the characters and the novel as a whole. That is why I was glad to read Thomas Gardiner's essay "Marilynne Robinson, Narrative Calvinist." Gardiner explores the theological dimensions of Robinson's writing in a way that has helped me make better sense of Housekeeping. Here is a taste:

For Robinson, Calvin's theology centers on the belief that God has given individuals the ability to commune with and respond to him without the mediation of priests or bishops. "Perception is at the center of Calvin's theology," she observes; God willingly floods our senses with his grandeur in such a way that we can take it in and reflect it back, his glory "shining forth" as we participate in it. "It is as if we were to find a tender solicitude toward us in the fact that the great energy that rips galaxies apart also animates our slightest thoughts." Think how elevated a vision of the human soul this is, Robinson suggests, and how far it is from how we often view ourselves.

At the same time, our ability to perceive God is deeply compromised. None of us sees clearly; indeed, none of us even desires to. All of us turn away from God's presence, failing "to acknowledge what ought to be obvious," Robinson writes, inclined instead "to indolence and selfishness, dishonesty, pride and error, cruelty." She calls the notion of total depravity the "counterweight to Calvin's rapturous humanism," insisting that we can't understand the one aspect of his thought without the other.

Working together, writes Robinson, these twinned elements of "our strangely mixed nature" mean that the passage of a soul "through the vale of its making, or its destruction" will be marked by halts and recoveries, each attempt to find meaning chastened by a recognition of limits. This almost exactly describes Ruth's voice in Housekeeping, now traced to one of its sources...

Mobility and the Historical Profession

Historiann has an interesting post on professional mobility within the historical profession. It is really two posts in one.

First, she reflects on the way that upward mobility among academics disrupts lives and often brings an end to the everyday nature of friendship. Historiann laments the fact that she has been left behind by friends in pursuit of "new jobs and lives."

Her post got me thinking about the priorities of academics. We are often restless and ambitious creatures, always looking for the next big gig. I realize that there are a lot of reasons why people leave one academic institution and go to another one. No institution or job is perfect. But why don't we hear anything about staying put? Why is the idea of investing in a place or an institution such a foreign concept to academics? I appreciate Historiann's honesty--academic mobility can be painful to those who leave and those who are left behind. Yet we are all ready to deal with the pain for a lighter teaching load, higher salaries, and more prestige.

Second, Historiann wonders about upward mobility for Associate Professors. She writes:

I’ve noticed a lot more movement at the Associate level in history hires in the past five or ten years than I was led to believe existed 15 or 20 years ago. I’ve been invited to apply for some jobs at the Associate level, too. When I was in graduate school and making my first forays onto the job market, the conventional wisdom was that all of the movement was at the Assistant Professor level, and that if you were tenured somewhere you were pretty much stuck there unless and until you turned into a “star” who was recruited somewhere else at the full Professor rank. Are any of you seeing the same thing? What about other disciplines? What’s up with this?

As usual, Historiann's commentators offer some rich insights.

HuffPost Religion

The Huffington Post is going into the Religion business. Yesterday it launched "HuffPost Religion" with a strong lineup of religious bloggers that includes Jim Wallis, Eboo Patel, Joan Chittister, Deepak Chopra, Brian McClaren, Steven Waldman, and Sam Harris. The blog will be edited by Paul Brandeis Raushenbusch, the dean of religious life at Princeton University. This is worth a bookmark.

Here is a description of the blog (HT: Mediabistro):

HuffPost co-founder and editor in chief Arianna Huffington said:

Religion plays a central role in American life, yet all too often, when talking about it, we end up talking at each other instead of with each other. This is a shame, especially at a time like this, when the economic struggle in many people's lives has led to a deeper questioning of our values and priorities. Whether you are a believer or not, this is an essential conversation to have, and I'm delighted we will be having it on HuffPost. As a passionate and brilliant religious thinker, pastor, writer, and college dean, Paul Raushenbush is ideally suited to the challenge of presenting multiple viewpoints and insights, as well as the real-world implications of religion on American life.

Raushenbush added:

HuffPost Religion aims to more accurately reflect the large cross section of insights provided by religious people beyond the more narrow range commonly depicted. Religion far transcends politics and moves beyond right versus left. Our goal is to create a place for a dialogue about the many aspects of religion and spirituality that is open, intelligent, forward-thinking, and unafraid of challenging the conventional wisdom. The section also looks at what religion has to say about all subjects, from politics to pop culture.

Why We Need Anne Hutchinson

Anne Hutchinson is fun to teach to evangelical students. Many of them are conflicted about her legacy in American culture. Some of them see her as a prototype for evangelical feminism, religious freedom, and the good old American spirit of resisting governmental authority. Others see her as a problem-- someone who got in the way of the Puritan "city upon a hill." Either way, she was a troublemaker.

Over at Killing the Buddha Arthur Goldwag has a reflection on the role of heretics in American culture. He concludes that we need heretics like Hutchinson, strong individuals who "simply don't know how to say 'yes' to anything that is dogmatic, authoritarian, or unspiritual." How American! Here are a few snippets, including a few references to the Texas Social Studies controversy:

Consider Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), whose arguments with mainstream Puritanism made her, at one time, the most hated woman in America. “Your opinions fret like a gangrene and spread like a leprosy, and infect far and near, and will eat out the very bowels of religion,” her erstwhile teacher Minister John Cotton admonished her, as she was excommunicated from the Church of Boston and consigned to the mercies of the wilderness. The Puritans celebrated when they received word of her death seven years later; its grisly circumstances—she and more than a dozen members of her household, including six of her fifteen children, were scalped by an Indian war party—were regarded as wondrous evidence of divine providence...

But three and a half centuries after her death, she still has the power to inspire—and, just as she did in her own day, to drive some people crazy. Just as I began to write these pages, a story broke in the news about the Public School Textbook Committee that was recently appointed in Texas. One of its members, Peter Marshall (whose eponymous ministry is “dedicated to helping to restore America to its Bible-based foundations”), objected when a proposed fifth grade history textbook included Anne Hutchinson in a list of “significant colonial leaders” along with William Penn, John Smith, and Roger Williams. “Anne Hutchinson does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen,” Marshall wrote. “She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn’t accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble...”

But when all is said and done, the Texas textbook commissioner might have said it best: Anne Hutchinson was a troublemaker—her most important legacy was her very ungovernableness. Hutchinson epitomized Jesus’s all-or-nothing morality and Protestantism’s dissenting spirit. During America’s birth pangs, when our Puritan forefathers were assembling the machinery of a theocratic state, the truest, deepest believer of them all—a woman and a midwife yet, who was pregnant most of her adult life and up to her elbows in blood and bodily fluids—tried to toss a monkey wrench into the works.

For a nice introduction to Hutchinson I recommend Timothy D. Hall, Anne Hutchinson: Puritan Prophet.

Introduction to the David Library of the American Revolution

This just came across my Facebook news feed. Those who live in the Philadelphia-Bucks County, PA area might be interested

Interested in using the David Library's Collections for Your Own Research? Wondering Where to Start? On Saturday, March 6 ast 9AM, we're offering a workshop to help patrons acquire skills they can use to navigate our collections. Presented by Librarian Kathie Ludwig, our one-hour workshop is designed to introduce new patrons to some basic research techniques and to provide an overview of our collections. It's fun and "hands-on," and covers the resources you need to access information on any aspect of the Revolutionary War era that interests you. $10 Suggested Contribution. Reservations required. Call (215) 493-2233 ext. 100.

Technology and Tenure Requirements

If you want to get academics fired-up about something (or get their dander a-risin'), propose that they should have more rigorous requirements for tenure. This is precisely what James McWilliams , a history professor at Texas State University, has suggested in his post today on the New York Times, Freakonomics blog.

McWilliams argues that technology has made scholarship in the humanities so much easier that administrators should consider raising the bar on the number of publications necessary for tenure. I am guessing that he is referring here to the Readex databases that allow key word searches of many early American newspapers and pamphlets. Here is a taste of his argument:

Right now it’s typical for a history department to require the publication of a book for tenure—some places, like my own institution, will accept five peer-reviewed articles (which basically means you can cannibalize your dissertation). Writing a serious book in six years (the average time for tenure review) is no mean feat, but keep in mind that every newly minted Ph.D. has already done most of the research for his or her book when the tenure clock starts. It’s just a matter of revising the dissertation into a book. Not easy, but then again, not a project that necessarily demands six years. It’s perhaps for this reason that some universities are starting to demand the publication of a book and “significant progress” toward a second...

But, to my knowledge, that’s as aggressive as upping the tenure requirements have gotten. Again, I’m entertaining this claim with many reservations—for example, upping tenure requirements will most likely lead to an increase in mediocre work—but I think there’s a case to be made that a university’s tenure demands should keep pace with technological advances. Recall, it took me an hour to generate a decent document base for my weed article, a couple of days to see what other historians have said about the topic (not much), and a few weeks to write the piece.

A few thoughts:

1. McWilliams is right when he says that Readex databases and others like them make research a whole lot easier. Messiah College bought the Evans Early American Imprints, Shaw and Shoemaker Collection, and Early American Newspapers a few years ago and it has changed my research life. It also allows my students to do real early American history research without having to go to an archive. (By the way, Messiah is a private school, but it is not particularly wealthy. We are a tuition driven place. How then could we afford this database? By pooling resources. The library, the history department, and, if I remember correctly, several other relevant departments chipped in to make the purchase a reality. I am proud to work at a school that values such resources enough to come up with creative ways to make them available to their faculty and students).

2. McWilliams underestimates just how much work goes into turning a dissertation into a publishable book, especially at places with heavy teaching loads.

3. McWilliams assumes that all colleges and universities are in the position to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on Readex databases.

4. McWilliams fails to recognize that not all humanities scholars use databases in their work. Some do fieldwork or read documents that are only available in archives.

4. There is something a bit unsettling about a guy who has published four books in the past five years talking about raising the bar for tenure. We are not all superstars like James McWilliams.

I would encourage you to read the comments section of the original post (51 and counting) for more insightful critiques of this piece.

Want To Learn How To Use A Semicolon?

I am not good at using semicolons. As a result, I seldom use them in my writing.

But thanks to my friend and English professor Marti Eads, I now feel a bit more confident in using the "most feared punctuation on earth. Marti called my attention today to this website. I encourage anyone who needs a primer on semicolon use to check it out.

Paul Revere's Ride Turns 150

Most of what my students know about Paul Revere comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1860 poem "Paul Revere's Ride."

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year....

Boston 1775 has a nice post on the 15oth anniversary of the publication of Longfellow's poem and some of its apparently missing or forgotten lines. Here is a taste:

This year marks the 150th anniversary of one of the most important events in determining how Americans remember the start of the American Revolution: Henry W. Longfellow wrote and published “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Before then, Revere was recalled locally; now more people probably know his name and what (Longfellow wrote that) he did than know what Samuel Adams did for independence...

I’m helping the effort by building the 150 Years of “Paul Revere’s Ride” website with announcements of more events, and resources for teachers and readers. For example, the text originally published in The Atlantic Monthly turned out to be missing several lines from Longfellow’s draft—and he had no one to blame but himself....

Anyone interested in knowing more about Revere and his famous ride should read David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride

Messiah College Humanities Symposium: Day Four

Here is the slate for day 4 of the 2010 Messiah College Humanities Symposium. The highlight of the day will be the plenary lecture by Henry Louis Gates.

Alternate Chapel: “Remembering Through Technology”
Boyer Hall 237 | 9:45 –10:30 a.m.
Grace Park, Hannah Faye Zarate, Dr. Eugene Rohrbaugh
(Computer Science)
YouTube can be used to capture historic moments in the lives of people and communities. The capturing of memory through technology can be a way to give voice to communities of color. Hannah Faye Zarate and Grace Park will use their personal stories as Asian/Pacific Islanders at Messiah College to capture how they remember in this new age, how they have used media and YouTubing to capture in film what is important to them, how they face racial tensions here on campus,
and how they are agents of change in racial reconciliation.

Keynote Address: “Genetics and Genealogy”
Keynote Address of the Symposium and second keynote address of the
Centennial Year | 8 – 9:15 p.m. | Brubaker Auditorium
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ph.D., will deliver the second keynote lecture of the Centennial year and the keynote address for the Messiah College Humanities Symposium. Dr. Gates is editor-in-chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field of African American Studies and Africana Studies, and of The Root, an online news magazine dedicated to coverage of African American news, culture, and genealogy. In 2008, Oxford University Press published the African American National Biography. Co-edited with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, it is an eight-volume set containing more than 4,000 biographical entries on both well known and obscure African Americans. He is most recently the author of In Search of Our Roots (Crown, 2009), a meditation on genetics, genealogy, and race, and a collection of expanded profiles featured on his PBS documentary series, “African American Lives.” His other recent books are America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans (Warner Books, 2004), and African American Lives, co-edited with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford, 2004). Immediately following the lecture, audience members are invited to attend a public book signing by Dr. Gates in the Eisenhower Campus Center. This event is open to the public. Seating is by ticket only; no charge.

For tickets, call the Messiah College Ticket Office at 717-691-6036. Please visit messiah.edu/centennial for details on when tickets are available

Book Signing with Dr. Gates
9:15 – 10 p.m. | Eisenhower Campus Center Commons
Friday, Feb. 26

Way of Improvement Leads Home Chosen As Top Religion Blog

A study by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) has included The Way of Improvement Leads Home on the list of the 100 "most influential blogs that contribute to online discussion about religion in the public sphere and the academy." You can read SSRC's study of academic and religious blogging here and see the top 100 blogs here. I hope to blog about the report soon.

Here is the study's description of "The Way of Improvement Leads Home":

John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College, offers commentary on “the intersection of American history, religion, politics, and academic life.” Blog posts focus on American religious history, current dilemmas concerning the role of religion in public education, and questions regarding the religious inflection of historical narratives. Messiah College, where Fea professes, is “committed to an embracing evangelical spirit rooted in the Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan traditions of the Christian Church.”

Others on the list include:

Articles of Faith (Boston Globe)
Christianity Today Blog
Crunchy Con
Dallas Morning News Religion Blog
dotCommonweal (Commonweal magazine)
Faith and Theology
First Things Blogs
Get Religion
God and Country (US News and World Report)
God's Politics (Sojourners)
The Immanent Frame (SSRC)
In All Things (America magazine)
Killing the Buddha
Martin Marty Center (University of Chicago Divinity School)
Of Sacred and Secular (Austin American-Statesman)
On Faith (Newsweek-Washington Post)
Religion Dispatches
Religion in American History
Theolog (Christian Century)

We are honored to part of such great company!

Writing Leads to Thinking (And Not the Other Way Around)

"Writing is not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in my mind. Writing is a magical process that makes it possible to think differently."--Lynn Hunt

This how Lynn Hunt ends the first paragraph of her article "How Writing Leads to Thinking (And Not the Other Way Around)". It is a brilliant piece from a brilliant historian. You need to read it all, but here are a few random highlights.

Reorganizing your notes is a form of house cleaning; it might make you feel good about yourself as a tidy person, but it will not produce a chapter—or even a page. Only writing can do that...

Whether you use an outline or not (I jot down bullet points in no particular order as a way of starting), what really counts is momentum, not momentum as in a jet racing forward to the completion of its route but rather momentum as in three steps forward, two steps back, two or three pages written (maybe even five!), then revised the next day while another one, two or three are added, and so on. If you are tearing up all your pages and throwing them away day after day, if you are changing your tack every day you sit down, if you are waiting for inspiration to come before writing the next page, your problem is not intellectual, it is most likely psychological, painfully so

Admittedly, momentum requires a certain tunnel vision. This is one of the dirtiest of the dirty little secrets about writing. Everything about history and life itself is potentially infinite (except one’s life span, unfortunately). There is always another document that could have been consulted, just as there is always another fact about a friend or partner that if you knew would make you understand her or him better. But life is short and if you want to write more than a dissertation or one book or two books and so on, you have to limit yourself to what can be done in a certain time frame. You cannot accumulate pages if you constantly second guess yourself. You have to second guess yourself just enough to make constant revision productive and not debilitating. You have to believe that clarity is going to come, not all at once, and certainly not before you write, but eventually, if you work at it hard enough, it will come. Thought does emerge from writing. Something ineffable happens when you write down a thought. You think something you did not know you could or would think and it leads you to another thought almost unbidden...

Sometimes another eye provides the added sunlight needed for new growth. I have picked up countless tips about writing from the editors assigned the thankless task of improving my prose, whether in a scholarly book or a textbook. You can only really figure out what you think if you first put it on paper and then develop some distance from it. It has to be a part of yourself, but a part that you are willing to release from yourself. Most problems in writing come from the anxiety caused by the unconscious realization that what you write is you and has to be held out for others to see. You are naked and shivering out on that limb that seems likely to break off and bring you tumbling down into the ignominy of being accused of inadequate research, muddy unoriginal analysis, and clumsy writing. So you hide yourself behind jargon, opacity, circuitousness, the passive voice, and a seeming reluctance to get to the point. It is so much safer there in the foliage that blocks the reader’s comprehension, but in the end so unsatisfying. No one cares because they cannot figure out what you mean to say. How much better it is to stand up before the firing line and discover that no one ordered your execution. The most the critics want is an intense fencing match, and you are more than up to the challenge because you have honed the edges of your research and said forthrightly what you thought...

Now back to the writing!

Teaching at the Regional State University

Not all of us end up in the Ivy League or at the Research I University. Julie Gergits never expected to be teaching at a place like Youngstown State University, a regional state university in Ohio. Like all of us, she thought she would be following in the footsteps of her graduate mentor and land a job at a research university.

In a very insightful piece in today's Inside Higher Ed Gergits reflects on her experience at Youngstown State. She is not bitter or angry, but has admitted to the fact that Youngstown has, in many ways, had a powerful influence in shaping how she understands her academic vocation. And, if I read her correctly, she is pretty happy there. Actually, she is a bit concerned about Youngstown's decision to become an "urban research university."

Here is a snippet:

Although Youngstown State can’t counter-offer or grant merit pay to keep faculty members, the university does have powerful indirect devices to persuade colleagues to stay: good health care coverage, excellent retirement benefits, straightforward tenure and promotion guidelines, full-year sabbaticals, half-year faculty improvement leaves, and generous dean’s reassigned time. Our universities seduce faculty members into staying. But money and benefits are not what my colleague meant when he asserted that our university eats its young. He meant that YSU’s heavy teaching and advising load, endless committee appointments, and somewhat eccentric scholarship expectations make it hard to develop the kind of “productive” career that many new Ph.D.’s expect.

At Youngstown State and similar state colleges and universities, we become the kind of professionals our university values, not the kind we intended when we first joined the profession. After accepting positions at teaching-intensive universities, many are stunned by the direction their careers take and how academic roles are shaped by the institutions. Working for an Ivy League institution or a big state research university would also shape careers and lives, but new faculty members don’t anticipate the consequences of working for the “lower-tier,” “open-admissions” universities and colleges that pick them up fresh out of graduate school.

As a “lifer” at a mid-sized, teaching-intensive state university in northeast Ohio, I can affirm that my career neither looks like that of my graduate-school professors nor conforms to the career I envisioned. Luckily, it’s far better than I imagined — I’m happy at a teaching-focused university. However unlikely the event, I have to admit that I dreaded winding up at a prestigious research university where I would have to focus more on scholarship and far less on teaching. However, an uncomfortably large number of my colleagues are startled and resentful as they look around and find themselves, as they say, “trapped” in a “lower-level” university, with no way to “escape.” Many new Ph.D.’s find that their paradigm of a university faculty member’s academic and professional life clashes with the reality of their careers, and some are unable — or unwilling — to adjust...

Messiah College Humanities Symposium: Day 3

Here is today's slate for the 2010 Humanities Symposium

Faculty-Student Colloquia: “Structural Chaos: Crafting a Memory of Adrian E. Wilson”
Boyer Hall 131 | 4–4:45 p.m.
Francis Eanes ’09 and Dan Webster ’09, Dr. Helen Walker (English)
Author James Carroll posits that “to be made in God’s image is to do this: arrange memory and transform experience according to the structure of narrative [because] the story is what saves us.” The chaos that results from our memories can be controlled by words on a page. Narrative is the medium in which Francis Eanes and Dan Webster preserved the most chaotic incident of their lives: the death of their friend, Messiah student Adrian Wilson, in 2008.

Faculty-Student Colloquia: “Jogging the Memory: Using Social Media and Physical Presence to Strengthen Organization-Publics Relationships,”
Boyer Hall 131 | 4:45–5:30 p.m.

Dr. Nance McCown (Communication) and Students
Memory can be fleeting, especially in light of today’s never-ending information overload. Because of this, organizations must compete vigorously to build strong relationships by maintaining a “top-of-mind” presence with their publics. Many organizations are using social media as yet another avenue to reach publics, but how effective are their efforts? Past research indicates that online efforts must be supported by offline efforts for maximal return on investment, and that people engage more readily in online relationship building and donating if they have experienced an in-person connection with the organization in some way. Students in the Fall 2009 Public Relations Campaign class researched this issue for offcampus client CURE International. Results formed the basis for planning and implementing a public relations campaign to launch CURE’s new child surgery sponsorship program.

Faculty Lecture Series: “Remembering our Beginnings: The Brethren In Christ Church and Messiah College”
Boyer Hall 131 | 7–8:30 p.m.
Dr. E. Morris Sider (History)
The College and the supporting denomination were virtually one and the same in the earliest years. The beginning of the College was in large measure tied to the changing cultural outlook of the supporting denomination.

"A Common Hymnal for both College and Church"
Boyer Hall 131 | Immediately following lecture.

Karen Durbin, Minister of Music and Worship, Grantham Brethren in Christ Church

Following Dr. Sider’s lecture, attendees will sing hymns and songs from the first hymnal of the Brethren in Christ Church with notations. These are the same hymns that both early students and congregants sang. Worshipping together was part of the cultural dynamic at work in the denomination when the College began. Refreshments provided.

Film-Discussion: “Remembering Dismemberment: Colombian Stories of Displacement”
Boyer Hall 137 | Parmer Cinema | 9 p.m.
Dr. Kim Yunez (Modern Languages), Dr. Reid Perkins-Buzo
(Communication), Lagan Sebert and Sandra Sampayo (filmmakers)
Documentary filmmaking brings issues like that of the internally displaced people of Colombia into the public discourse. The documentary film “Busco Personas: The Faces of Colombia’s War” attests to the fact that towns were destroyed and families decimated by armed groups, and it does so by featuring the voices of the displaced. Why are there so many displaced people in Colombia? How might people who have lost everything pass along a sense of their own history and identity to the next generation? Filmmakers Lagan Sebert and Sandra Sampayo will be present to talk about the process of making “Busco Personas.”

The Mainline Protestant Surrender of Christian Education

John Schmalzbauer has an interesting post at Faith and Leadership on the way that mainline Protestant denominations have relied on para-church and evangelical resources for Christian education rather than cultivating materials of their own. Here is his conclusion:

To be sure, mainline denominations have benefited from the assistance of evangelical para-church ministries (including Sunday School publishers). As Presbyterian Richard Hutcheson notes in “Mainline Churches and the Evangelicals,” the role of the para-church is to work alongside or beside the wider ecclesia.

And yet if congregations do not learn to tend their own theological gardens, they will not survive. Such a development would be a loss to both mainline denominations and to the larger church.

From India to the Messiah College History Department

Messiah College "Listen-Up" podcast series is featuring a wonderful conversation between my colleagues, Jim LaGrand and Bernardo Michael. Jim interviews Bernardo about his experience at Messiah.

Great stuff! I am glad to have both of these guys as colleagues.

The Vatican's Top 10 Albums of All Time

Yes, you did read that correctly. The Vatican's newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has picked its ten best albums pop/rock albums of all time. And they are:

1. Revolver by The Beatles

2. If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby

3. Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

4. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

5. The Nightfly by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan

6. Thriller by Michael Jackson

7. Graceland by Paul Simon

8. Achtung Baby by U2

9. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis

10. Supernatural by Carlos Santana

I can't believe Springsteen did not make the list!

Happy Birthday to This Land is Your Land

The Woody Guthrie classic turns 70 today.

New President for Redeemer College

Redeemer University College, a Calvinist school in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, has appointed Hubert R. Krygsman as its new president.

To be honest, I know absolutely nothing about Redeemer University College. But I have met Hubert R. Krygsman a few times at meetings of the Conference on Faith and History when he was a member of the history department at Dordt College. I wish him the best as he takes on this new endeavor.

Follow the Way of Improvement Leads Home on Facebook

Ever since The Way of Improvement Leads Home went on Facebook a few months ago I have noticed that many of the most fruitful discussions about posts take place there rather than in the comments section of the blog.

So don't miss out--join us on Facebook and receive every post delivered to your home page. Just click on this link to join.

AHA Miniconference on Religion, Peace and Violence

Are you working in any of these areas?

Inspired by the success and impact of the miniconference on same-sex marriage held at the 124th annual meeting in San Diego, and responding to the crucial roles played by religion in the scale and nature of violence in the world today, the AHA Council decided to present a similar threaded miniconference during the 125th annual meeting, to be held January 6–9, 2011, in Boston, focusing on the theme, “Historical Perspectives on Religion, Peace, and Violence.”

Matching and building on the theme of the 125th annual meeting, “History, Society, and the Sacred,” the planned miniconference will encourage explorations of religion as a force both in encouraging violence and inspiring peace. We are eager to make the most of a key asset of the AHA, by bringing together scholars in varying time periods and geographical locales.

To plan and coordinate the miniconference, the AHA Council has formed a working group. Iris Berger, vice president of the Research Division, and Patricia Limerick, vice president of the Teaching Division, will co-chair the working group, which will also include Trudy Peterson, member of the Professional Division, Barbara Tischler, member of the Teaching Division, along with a member of the Program Committee for 2011, and a specialist on the topic.

The Council and working group invite AHA members who wish to participate in the miniconference to submit proposals relating to the topic, “Historical Perspectives on Religion, Peace, and Violence.” We welcome every disciplinary specialization, and we are eager to provide the occasion for exchanges between and among diplomatic, political, military, religious, social, cultural, and gender historians.

The working group proposes a number of possible questions for exploration. On what occasions has historical violence had religious belief as its principal cause? On what occasions has religious belief acted with equal strength as a motive for peacemaking? Do examples like Desmond Tutu’s role in South Africa’s reconciliation movement, or Jimmy Carter’s postpresidential humanitarian campaigns, stand for widespread patterns in history? Has there ever been a purely secular war?

How common are atheists in foxholes? Has the experience of combat provided the foundation for religious conversion, and transformed soldiers into peace activists? Has the emergence of violence in religious revitalization movements among colonized peoples followed similar patterns? Has the practice of casting the colonized as without souls been a precondition of violence practiced by colonizers? What lessons (if any!) does the study of the history of religion, peace, and violence offer to public officials and policymakers today? What have been the relationships between religion and violence in the public and private spheres?

The process of identifying themes and topics is still under way, so that suggestions from AHA members will receive serious and respectful consideration. Please e-mail your ideas and proposals by April 1, 2010, to Noralee Frankel, AHA’s assistant director for women, minorities, and teaching, who serves as the staff member of the working group.

Applying for a Job at a Small College

Back in January I did several posts on interviewing at the AHA. One of those posts dealt with interviewing at teaching colleges.

In the February issues of Perspectives Samuel Huston Goodfellow, a professor of history at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, has a nice piece on applying for jobs at small colleges.

Here is a taste:

Framing the letter is important. Teaching is the main focus of a small liberal arts college and your letter should reflect awareness of that fact. Starting with a discussion of your teaching credentials is a good idea. Small schools obviously want teaching experience, but more subconsciously, committee members want to know if you understand the nature of the teaching demands. Although all graduate students who get a PhD have a strong work ethic, search committees have concerns about the ability to transition from a research environment to a teaching one. Also important, particularly at smaller institutions, is some sense of flexibility. Is the candidate willing to take on courses that are not necessarily in their areas of expertise?...

The interviewers also want to know how well you will fit into the department and the college. What the interviewers are looking for may be somewhat opaque, but generally they want to see a fit with the ad and perhaps whether you bring something extra to the program. Is your teaching philosophy consonant with the department’s? Another area that might come up here is how you see yourself interacting with other departments. If you are in world history, you might be interested in study abroad opportunities, for example, or if your research is on religious culture, you might connect with religious studies. Unlike universities, small colleges are highly interdisciplinary. Campus politics will not generally revolve around department issues, but around campus-wide issues. Communicate your awareness of this in some way....

Free History Teachers Seminar at Historical Soceity of Pennsylvania

Teachers in the Philly area: Check this out:

Mapping projects allow students to connect with local history as they gather, analyze, and interpret information about their neighborhood. This PhilaPlace workshop will suggest approaches for developing local history mapping lessons and discuss ways to incorporate immigration and oral history into such projects. To learn more about PhilaPlace, visit PhilaPlace.org. Attendance qualifies for two hours of Act 48 credit. Please register in advance.

To register for this FREE workshop click here or call 215-732-6200 ext. 214.

________________________________________________
Don't Forget About...

When History and Art Collide

Panel Discussion

Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 24 at 6 PM

Philadelphia's identity is inextricably bound to its historical depth from the 17th century to the present. Its street plan, architecture, institutions, and historical figures create images in the mind's eye of its past for both residents and visitors. Philagrafika 2010's project "Out of Print" is a recognition of history's infusion into the work of visual and performing artists in the region. This panel discussion will explore the work of artists who are moving forward by looking back.

This free event is part of the Philagrafika 2010 festival. The "Out of Print" component of the festival paired five Philadelphia organizations--the American Philosophical Society Museum, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Independence Seaport Museum, the Rosenbach Museum & Library, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology--with contemporary artists. This partnership spawned unique and varied works of art. To learn more about these five projects and the Philagrafika festival, visit www.philagrafika2010.org. Program support is provided by The Barra Foundation, Inc.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Helen Shannon, Associate Professor and Director of the Museum Education Program at The University of the Arts. Panelists will include: Caitlin Perkins, Project Manager for Philagrafika 2010; Craig Bruns, Curator of the Independence Seaport Museum; Thaddeus A. Squire, Artistic Executive Director of Peregrine Arts Inc.; and Kitty Joe Sainte-Marie, project manager for artist Duke Riley.

To register for this free event, click here.

Messiah College and Evangelicalism

I stumbled across a very interesting blog today by recent Messiah College graduate Devin Thomas. Devin works as an associate in congregational relations for the Brethren in Christ Church in North America where he coordinates special projects. His blog, "the search for piety and obedience," chronicles the history of the Brethren in Christ Church.

I was especially intrigued by Devin's recent post which included a picture of Billy Graham and some of the leaders of the Brethren in Christ Church at a meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals. There is no date on the photo, but by the looks of Graham I am guessing it was sometime in the 1950s. (Devin, if you are reading maybe you can help me out on the date).

Messiah College is celebrating its centennial this year and we are thus hearing a lot about the history of the college. Several denominational and church historians have written about the history of the college and its Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan roots. There is not a whole lot written, however, about the Brethren in Christ's connection to twentieth-century American evangelicalism.

I have not been around enough to grasp the politics behind the way in which Messiah's history has been told. Some would prefer to see it is a Anabaptist college where social justice, pacifism, and the opposition to nationalism rule the day. Others refer to its Wesleyan or Pietist roots. But this photo-op with Graham clearly reveals the evangelical side of the college, or at least the denomination that founded it.

Dare I say that the Messiah College's evangelical history represents best the kind of students that the college attracts?

Whatever the case, institutional histories are probably our best example of the power of history to shape the present.