Changes at the David Library of the American Revolution

There are some changes going on at one of my favorite places to conduct research: The David Library of the American Revolution. in Washington Crossing, PA.

Patrick Spero, the David Library Historian, is stepping down to accept a teaching position at Williams College. In an e-mail to the friends of the library CEO Meg McSweeney summarized Spero's short tenure at the DLAR:

Dr. Spero was responsible for developing and supervising the Library’s academic programs. During his tenure here, Pat advanced a number of initiatives, including teacher workshops and a systematic acquisitions plan. His tenure with us may have been brief, but it was certainly eventful, both for Pat personally, and for the David Library. While he was a member of our staff, he completed and defended his dissertation, became a father, moved into the only surviving pre-Revolutionary tavern building in Philadelphia, and became the husband of a Ph. D. when his wife Laura completed and defended her dissertation. All the while, he worked tirelessly on the behalf of the David Library, enhancing existing programs, initiating new ones, developing academic policies, fostering partnerships between the Library and affinity institutions, and inspiring his colleagues, both on staff and on the Board, to think strategically in order to insure DLAR’s sustainability into the future. Although we will surely miss Pat’s energetic presence on the Library campus, we will continue to benefit from his many lasting accomplishments.

Spero will be replaced by William P. Tatum III, who will assume the newly renamed position of Sol Feinstone Scholar at the Library. McSweeney writes:

Will... is a Ph. D. candidate at Brown University. A scholar of British and American military history, he is scheduled to defend his dissertation (on the British military justice system 1715-1784) in the fall (his dissertation committee is comprised of Tim Harris, Gordon Wood and Gregory J. R. Urwin). A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, Will also studied at Exeter University in England. This year he was a Fellow of both the David Library of the American Revolution and the West Point Summer Seminar in Military History. He is relocating to Pennsylvania from his home in Glendale Springs, NC and will reside on the David Library campus.

If you want to meet Will Tatum, the DLAR is having an open house on Saturday, July 3, from noon to 5pm. They will view the director's cut of the movie musical 1776 and George Boudreau will present a lecture at 3:30 entitled "Auspicious Moments in an Inauspicious Space: Independence Square, America's Birthplace.”

I wish the DLAR all the best as they move through this period of transition.

New Digs at the American Antiquarian Society

Back in the late 1990s I attended a summer seminar on early American print culture at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. Later I published an essay in their academic journal. But I have never held a visiting fellowship there. This post about the new fellow's residence at the AAS might just prompt me to apply for one of their programs.

Congrats on the new building!

Presbyterians on the Decline

I was caught off guard by Peter Smith's article in this morning's Louisville Courier-Journal.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) lost nearly 3 percent of members in 2009 and passed a grim milestone in the process -- becoming less than half the church it once was at its peak membership in 1965

Wow! How should we interpret these numbers?

BTW: Smith is a great religion reporter. I met him briefly in January when he gave a talk at the Winter Meeting of the Louisville Institute.

A Movie About Philosophers

Learn more about it here. Or watch the trailer.



HT: Christopher Benson at Evangel

R.R. Reno: Memory Redeemed

I was quite taken by R.R. Reno's recent piece on history and memory at the First Things "On the Square" blog. Reno writes about the power of the past to "give us a legacy, a place in the world, a place to stand." He suggests that we need to "feel the weight of an accumulated, narrated, memorialized past."

Yet he is also aware that the past can sometimes be a "curse" more than it is a "blessing." Think about Rwanda, Nazi Germany, or American slavery. Do those who go through such events want to remember them? Is forgetting possible? Reno writes:

A healthy society needs to let bygones be bygones, but I’m not sanguine about the prospect that many will turn to forgetfulness... It’s not easy to do, certainly not for a society. Even the strenuous efforts that the Stalinist era commissars to air-brush inconvenient elements of the past into oblivion failed, and not surprisingly. The past exercises a tenacious hold on individual minds. We are made to remember. A more successful strategy is to craft memories that soften our impulses toward grievance and reduce our desire for retribution.

And he concludes:

So go, go to battlefields and memorials and museums. Make personal pilgrimages to old family homes and haunts. Let the past weigh upon you. Sing the national anthem this Fourth of July. Historical memory is something Americans need today, not so much because we have bitter grievances to overcome, but because we lead increasingly uprooted lives that tempt us to think of other memories, other cultures, as phenomena to be managed and manipulated rather than engaged and respected. We need the past and the soul commanding power of the memory in order to be responsible global citizens. For only men and women who know their own place in the world and feel the binding power of memory can resist universalist fantasies that are invariably felt by others as imperial arrogance. As Richard Weaver, a wise steward of memory, once wrote: “There can be no internationalism without a solid, intelligent provincialism.”

My post here does not do justice to the entire article, which focuses a great deal on the Civil War. Read the entire piece here.

This all sounds a lot like the "cosmopolitan rootedness" I wrote about in The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

What is the Most Cited History Journal?

According to Robert Townsend's post today at AHA Today, the American Historical Review is the most cited academic journal in the field of historical studies. This is not surprising. The AHR remains the flagship journal in the field.

I did find it a bit surprising however that the Journal of Environmental History ranks second on the list, ahead of The Journal of American History.

The most cited article in the last ten years was William J. Novak's "The Myth of the 'Weak" American State" from the June 2008 AHR.

What Do You Know About Religion and the Founding: Take the Quiz

I have been blessed with a great editor for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction. (Westminster/John Knox, February 2011). Jana Riess is a gifted and prolific writer about American religion. She has a Ph.D in American religion from Columbia, has written books about Mormonism, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and sacred places, was the former Religion Book Review editor for Publisher Weekly, and has been on a mission to "tweet" the entire bible.

She also has a great blog at beliefnet called "Flunking Sainthood." Check out yesterday's entry on the religious roots of America. She gives a nice plug to Was America Founded as a Christian Nation and provides a quiz, much of it based on her reading of our book, for all you experts on religion and the American founding.

Speaking of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, we are beginning to put together some speaking engagements related to the project. If your church, college, university, library, class, historical society, book club, or organization would like to set up an event sometime between March 2011 and March 2012, please contact us at jfea(at)messiah(dot)edu

Progressives, Conservatives, and Porchers

Over at Front Porch Republic (FPR), Patrick Deneen defines these terms. Here is a taste:

A commenter on my most recent posting writes:

While there is much truth to what you write, in my experience as a pedestrian/bicycle/transit/sustainability advocate in the Madison, Wisconsin area, the people most inclined to have doubts about STEM are self-described liberals and progressives. When Wendell Berry spoke here last fall, the Overture Center was filled to overflowing with progressives – I doubt many Unitarians missed it.

It is the progressive types I know whose use of the word “community” most closely matches Berry’s definition of it. Meanwhile the notion that “community” requires respect for – and a return to – our better traditions seems to be sinking in among them (I would like to think I am assisting in this process.)

I’ve expressed my unhappiness with the term “Progressive” as a label used to describe a stance sympathetic with many of the positions embraced and advanced here on FPR. However, just as often I and many here write critically about so-called “conservatives” – particularly of the mainstream variety – whose embrace of corporatism, militarism, and cheerleading for unfettered economic growth is just as repugnant. These labels hinder often much more than they enlighten.

FPR, I think, seeks to appeal to dissidents in both camps – in no small part by pointing out the historic abuses of these labels. “Conservatives,” in many respects, are arguably as “progressive” as the Progressives of yesteryear. That is, there is little difference between those “conservatives” who cheerled “No Child Left Behind” and “progressive” advocates of centralized education; little distinction to be drawn between the embrace of “globalization” by denizens of the Left and “democratization” by the Bushies; little contrast between what is a widely shared encouragement to “equality of opportunity” and the promotion of the meritocracy by elites both Left and Right. Liberals and conservatives alike are often more similar in their fawning enthusiasm for STEM than liable to be in disagreement.

If I’m somewhat partial to the word “conservative” (and I say that never having voted Republican in my life), it’s because its etymological roots inescapably emphasize the concept of “conservation,” in contrast to the central emphasis of the word “progressive,” which is “progress” (i.e., the very opposite of “conserving”). It’s necessary to recall that it was 20th-century Progressives that actively sought the evisceration of local customs and folkways in the name of “rationalization” and scientific planning – among other things, through the advancement of the social sciences. Progressivism sought the replacement of “local knowledge” with “expertise”; its central emphasis was upon “growth” in every form (you can’t read a page of John Dewey without recognizing the emphasis upon “growth”); and, it was impatient with invocations of human falleness, sinfulness, and iniquity, instead preferring to re-describe human failings in therapeutic terms and recommending various therapies for their cure.

I am delighted that “progressives” in places like Madison, Wisconsin are flocking to hear Wendell Berry. I’d caution against embrace of that term, however (just as I mostly cringe when I hear the word “conservative” invoked). I’m open to another term – whether radical traditionalist or Jeffersonian republican or – hell – Porcher.

James Madison's Lost Law Notes

John Warren at New York History reports on a 39-page book of James Madison's law notes recently found among the Thomas Jefferson papers at the Library of Congress by legal scholar Mary Sarah Bilder. Bilder has an essay on her find in the recent issue of Law and History Review entitled "James Madison, Law Student and Demi-Lawyer."

Here is a snippet from Warren's report:

Bilder contends that the law notes demand a reassessment of Madison who, unlike other important early national leaders such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, had been thought to have had little interest in law beyond some desultory early studies.

The notes cover a wide range of topics including criminal law, the make-up of courts, elections, how to accurately measure time and even sex and relationships....

It is only a matter of time before a Christian nationalist uses these notes to prove that Madison was a Christian or was somehow influenced by Christian ideas about the law.

Soccer Fans and Messiah College

I have never been a soccer fan. But I am a sports fan, so I feel a certain sense of obligation to watch as many World Cup games as possible. My daughter, whose team just won a beach soccer tournament in Ocean City, MD this past weekend (they play in socks!), has given me a real appreciation for the game. It has been great watching World Cup games with her.

I also happen to teach at a college that U.S. News and World Report just named one of the best colleges for soccer fans in the nation. (The only NCAA Division III school on the list).

Our Messiah College women's soccer schedule magnet is now prominently displayed on our refrigerator. It looks like I will be spending several Saturday nights this Fall under the lights at Shoemaker Field.

Christine Kelly Reports on the Gilder-Lehrman Scholars Program

Christine Kelly, a student of mine, recently returned from New York City where she participated in the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History Scholars Program. This highly competitive program brings top undergraduates from around the country to New York to spend a week studying with some of the leading historians in the country. Here is Christine's thorough and honest report:

As a participant in the One Week Scholars Program with the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, I’m stunned at the sheer volume of learning that took place in such a short length of time. I learned not only a wealth of innovative ideas and interpretations on “The Coming of the Civil War,” this year’s program theme, but a great deal about myself – my personal ambitions, my capabilities, and a whole host of things I loved and loathed about academia as I dove head first into seven full days of rigorous historical inquiry.

Before I foray into the busy narrative of exactly what this program entailed, I think it’s first appropriate to mention my doubtful interaction with Gilder-Lehrman’s admissions process, since much of what I took home at the end of week relates back to this early event. Gilder-Lehrman is emphatic about its prestige as an institution. It’s committed to creating serious scholars of American history, and for a long time, this was what I knew best about it. Certainly admissions into any of its programs are competitive, but instead of welcoming this as a worthwhile challenge, I wanted to move away from it. As a maturing undergraduate, often I’ve struggled with issues of under-confidence. While I love to wrestle with the tough questions history students are prone to explore, I fear that somehow I won’t always be able to run with the fastest academic herds. My ultimate acceptance into in the Gilder-Lehrman program is a testament to the heavy support I’ve received from the History Department at Messiah, who believed in my readiness to take on difficult admissions before I could work up the courage to do so myself. Now in retrospect, my participation in the program has been a major boost to my confidence, because not only could I keep up with intense lectures and multi-layered debates, but I loved working with such content.

As for program details, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute hosted its thirty accepted students at New York University’s Greenwich Village campus. We were allowed time in the evening to explore, and I had several interesting experiences peering around quirky Village neighborhoods. During much of the day, however, I was immersed in program activities which aligned with one of two goals: (1), to educate us on a variety of scholarly readings on the causes of the Civil War, or (2), to provide information on how history is done at the professional level. The week had an equal emphasis on both teaching history and showing prospective historians the type of employment they can expect to find if they stay in the discipline. As we considered the Civil War, we met with such historians as Edward Ayers, President of the University of Richmond, Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia University, and James McPherson, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Each scholar delivered his personal view of the factors he believed most contributed to war, comparing it with wider historiography on the subject. Students were routinely allotted time for Q & A, and often we used it to question, and even demur, historians’ opinions. It was an incredible opportunity in light of how seldom undergraduates can participate in debate with historians of their stature.

Additionally, we also met with figures like Rosanne Lichatin, an award-winning high school history teacher, Dante James, a producer of historical documentaries aired on PBS, and Susan Ferber, an executive editor at Oxford University Press. Each presenter shared his or her experiences in applying history to their respective fields and advised us on necessary steps to take if we were inclined to follow a similar path. On lighter days, we took trip field trips around the city, visiting the New York Historical Society, the Metropolitan Museum or Art, or touring neighborhoods with our program director, Thorin Tritter. Each day was full of activity as we absorbed vibrant city life in combination with so many exciting events.

To complete my reflections, I believe a mentioning one last detail is in order. In addition to my other experiences, I found that for the first time in years I felt somewhat self-conscious about my enrollment at Messiah College. I hadn’t realized it, but my encounter with higher education up to this point had been from an entirely, primarily Protestant Christian, perspective. Some peer interactions were admittedly awkward, because to attend Messiah College is after all, to wear one’s beliefs, at least in broad strokes, on one’s sleeve. This observation easily lends itself to a whole other conversation on the implications of religion and secularism on America’s current generation of emerging adults, but for now, all I can say is that it was an awakening experience for me to view my own education in light of others. It appears that by and large, post-Enlightenment secularism rules the day in intellectual circles. As for me, I was renewed in my commitment to a marriage of faith and scholarship, two concepts that are not mutually exclusive, but do require exceptional maturity and thoughtfulness to maintain given what I found were pressures to the contrary.

The Gilder-Lehrman Institute provided me with a number of excellent opportunities to stretch and reconsider my life as a student and an individual. It was challenging, but entirely doable and wholly worthwhile. I definitely recommend this program to future inquisitive history students.

Thanks, Christine!

Glenn Beck and Change Over Time

Over at the History News Network Randall Stephens has a great post on the way in which the political Right distorts history by failing to grasp the concept of "change over time." His primary target is Glenn Beck:

Beck’s political grandstanding and maudlin theatrics are offensive enough. (I can think of no better ipecac for the typical humanities professor.) But it’s his ahistorical theories of the past that disturb me most. Beck, like many conservatives, Christian or not, is incapable of coming to terms with the notion of change over time. What was true for bewigged, knee-breeches-wearing, slave-owning nabobs in eighteenth century Virginia must be just as true for a minivan-driving NASCAR dad in 2010. (Still, few of those NASCAR dads would adopt some of Ben Franklin’s woolly polytheistic notions.) Did America’s public schools once allow Protestant-styled prayers in the classroom? Then they should do so still. Were women once the caretakers of hearth and home? Then maybe they should still be. Didn’t learned folks once believe that the Grand Canyon formed in a matter of days during the flood of the Old Testament? Or was it millions of years in the making, as modern geologists would have us believe? The flood story—biblical, less complicated, more interesting—makes more sense.

Ahistorical logic knows few bounds. Beck applies his shoddy history to the left, too, which he dispatches with relish. If members of the California Workingmen’s Party or the American Federation of Labor hated blacks and Asians in the 1870s and 1880s, then they must still hate them. Was Woodrow Wilson a white supremacist? Then it follows that progressives today are, too. Maybe the New Left adage about a usable past should be retooled as a mis-usable past for Beck, Christian Nation historians, and the like. (I wonder what representatives of the NAACP make of Beck’s “use” of Martin Luther King.)

Stephens's criticism is on the mark. It echos the similar argument I am making in the introductory chapter to Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction. (Available in February).

But I wonder--does this failure to see change over time only apply to the Right?

Robert Byrd: The American Historian's Senator

Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died today at the age of 92, was a friend to American history. Thousands of teachers benefited from his sponsorship of the Teaching American History Grants. Whatever you thought about his politics, the historical community will miss him dearly. Let's hope that someone takes up his mantle as an advocate for the study of the American past.

For Byrd's links to the historical community see the post on his death at AHA Today.

The Least Expensive and Educationally Sound Textbook

Last week the Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill requiring faculty at Pennsylvania state colleges to assign "the least expensive, educationally sound textbooks." The Pennsylvania House of Representatives still needs to pass it before it becomes law.

As everyone knows, the price of college textbooks is outrageously high. If this bill forces textbook companies to rethink their prices, it might be a good thing. Yet many professors think that this proposed bill goes too far in the sense that it curbs the academic freedom to choose the best textbook.

Interesting--the predominately liberal professorate is complaining about government intrusion on their individual liberties.

It would seem to me that such a law would be nearly unenforceable. Any professor could make an argument as to why their textbook is an economically sound option. Moreover, as this article in Inside Higher Ed suggests, most professors are very conscious about keeping textbook costs down for their students.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

Washington Post on Ted Widmer.

Make the devil mad--go to Bob Jones University.

Garrison Keillor on the end of an era in publishing.

The Christianity of Manute Bol. More here.

Martyr Mirror turns 350.

Smith College fires all its chaplains.

"Was America Founded as a Christian Nation" and "The Declaration of Independence: A Christian Document?" holding #1 and #2 at The Thoughtful Christian.

Ragan Sutterfield reviews Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, The Wisdom of Stability.

Shane Claiborne: The economic draft.

Teaching military history in a time of war.

Battle Cry For Freedom discussion group at The Atlantic.

Book blogging

H.W. Brands reviews Leo Damrosch, Tocqueville's Discovery of America

Wendell Berry Rips the Modern Research University

The other day we wrote about Wendell Berry's decision to remove his papers from the University of Kentucky. Over at Science Insider Berry explains his decision.

Berry uses this interview to chide his alma mater:

Q: The University of Kentucky aspires to be a top research university. But you believe land-grant universities like Kentucky have gone astray in their mission.

W.B.: The Morrill Act [which in 1862 established what became a vast network of so-called land-grant colleges and universities] says they're to give [money] "to the endowment, support and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without exclusion of other scientific and classical studies ... to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the pursuits and professions of life."

I think [UK] has gone astray first with its long emphasis on research instead of teaching. If you promote research, which can be quantified, and make it the paramount issue with promotion and tenure and salary raises, then you diminish the standing and importance of teaching necessarily, which can't be quantified. ... Administrators have to find a way to reward professors for teaching.

And so the University of Kentucky has for some time had a program to become a top-20 research institution. Every sizable university in the country has that program, as if the present top 20 is going to stand back while the others pass them. I don't think that's going to happen for most of them. Well, let me not speculate.

The issue for me is that the University of Kentucky has a mandate to look after the country people and the rural landscapes. [It's] promoting a research agenda that is without standards. Will it do harm to our people here, or will it be of some use? I can't discover that there is any such standard by which the effectiveness or usefulness or beneficence of the research can be judged. They're going to take the [research] grant money and do what they are asked to do with it.

I've raised an issue ... with the president's promotion of a program he calls STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This is not conformable to anybody's idea of a liberal education. This is a curriculum entirely devoted to technical subjects.

Q: One might argue the best way to help "country people" is to prepare them for this new [science-based] economy we have.
W.B.: To prepare them for city life.

Q: But you don't need to be in a city to do science or technology.
W.B.: They can live in the country and be city people by means of their computer. But what we're doing here is ignoring the economic value of landscape and doing very little to protect it. I've been helping the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, promote their 50-year farm bill that would address in agriculture, for example, the issue of land leased, soil erosion, toxicity, and the destruction of rural communities and the cultures of husbandry.

Q: What was wrong with the University of Kentucky naming its building the Wildcat Coal Lodge?
W.B.: I want to mention another issue before we get to the coal. The University of Kentucky owns a forest called Robinson Forest. For many years that forest has been unlogged. And very careful records have been kept about water quality and so on. Recently, the university decided that the forest had to produce an income and they contrived of an experiment that required logging part of it. A number of years ago they sold the coal rights on part of it and strip mined it. [But] logging is going on all over this state. They can do a logging experiment without resorting to logging this forest if they wanted to.

They dealt very poorly with those who opposed the project and wanted to talk to them about it. I was a member of the opposition. Then the issue of the Wildcat Coal Lodge came up. I have been an opponent, in my writing and in other ways, of surface mining. ... The university has never taken a stand on the issue, ... but when they accepted a $7 million gift from the coal industry and named their dormitory the Wildcat Coal Lodge, that meant that they had explicitly come out as an ally of the coal industry. That meant I can't be an ally of the university anymore, obviously ...

This is a heartbreaking thing for me. The university is an alma mater. I have two degrees from the University of Kentucky. I taught there. They have honored me. I have friends there; I have friends that are currently teaching there. And so this is a break that feels to me like a family disruption.

Judgment in the Fullness of Time

A few weeks ago we blogged about a Stanley Fish column in which he wrote about his boyhood classical education. Earlier this week, Fish wrote a follow-up column on how students evaluate their professors. Here is a taste:

A number of responses to my column about the education I received at Classical High (a public school in Providence, RI) rehearsed a story of late-flowering gratitude after an earlier period of frustration and resentment. “I had a high school (or a college) experience like yours,” the poster typically said, “and I hated it and complained all the time about the homework, the demands and the discipline; but now I am so pleased that I stayed the course and acquired skills that have served me well throughout my entire life.”

Now suppose those who wrote in to me had been asked when they were young if they were satisfied with the instruction they were receiving? Were they getting their money’s worth? Would they recommend the renewal of their teachers’ contracts? I suspect the answers would have been “no,” “no” and “no,” and if their answers had been taken seriously and the curriculum they felt oppressed by had been altered accordingly, they would not have had the rich intellectual lives they now happily report, or acquired some of the skills that have stood them in good stead all these years.

The relationship between present action and the judgment of value is different in other contexts. If a waiter asks me, “Was everything to your taste, sir?”, I am in a position to answer him authoritatively (if I choose to). When I pick up my shirt from the dry cleaner, I immediately know whether the offending spot has been removed. But when, as a student, I exit from a class or even from an entire course, it may be years before I know whether I got my money’s worth, and that goes both ways. A course I absolutely loved may turn out be worthless because the instructor substituted wit and showmanship for an explanation of basic concepts. And a course that left me feeling confused and convinced I had learned very little might turn out to have planted seeds that later grew into mighty trees of understanding.

“Deferred judgment” or “judgment in the fullness of time” seems to be appropriate to the evaluation of teaching.

Fish's point reminded me of a chance meeting I had with a former student a few years ago. My primary recollection of this student was his/her constant complaining about the amount of reading in my course. I always assumed that he/she was dissatisfied with the history education he/she was getting. But now, about five years after graduation and with a masters degree in hand, this student could not stop speaking favorably about the education he/she got at Messiah College. He/she sung the praises of the academic rigor of the very classes that he/she once complained about. Was this the same person?

What if this student wrote his/her evaluation of the course five years after taking it?

Is Institutional Loyalty an Unnatural Act?

I have been thinking a lot lately about institutional loyalty for a lecture I need to give this fall. Are college professors individual agents who are loyal first and foremost to careers, ambition, and academic disciplines? If so, where does that leave loyalty to one's institution?

Last week Historiann wrote a very thought-provoking post on this subject. She feels loyal to the historical profession, her colleagues and friends in academia, and her students, but she does not feel loyal to the university that employs her. She offers some very strong examples from her career as to why it is difficult to be loyal to such institutions. Here is a snippet:

Another reason I’m mistrustful of the rhetoric on “loyalty” is that it’s deployed selectively against some faculty more than others. As many of you have suggested in the comments, women’s extramural job-seeking is understood (and sometimes retaliated against) as unseemly ambition, whereas white men are not only encouraged to pursue other jobs, some are even patronized or scolded for their complacency if they aren’t on the hustle. Given the hostility that women’s ambition is met with, I think Lance is correct that nonwhite faculty also face similar skepticism and anger for seeking out other employment opportunities. This is the presumption of institutions that still see themselves as bastions of (white and male) privilege: We took a chance on you, an outsider in our club! We employed you! How dare you respond by finding another job?

I had a little taste of this my very first year in a tenure track job in my former department. I won a fellowship from the Newberry Library in Chicago. When I marched down the hall to talk to my department Chair about what I assumed would be great news–someone else was buying me a leave term so that I could research my book!–I was lectured that “it was good that [I'd] be gone only one semester, because [I] need[ed] to establish [my]self here.” When I replied that I thought that winning a nationally competitive grantwas a good way to establish myself at that institution, he replied, “I mean with your teaching.” From that point on, the department that employed me pretended that I must be a bad teacher, because they couldn’t suggest that I wasn’t a good enough scholar. That’s the price I paid for taking that grant, a price that eventually got so high that I resigned. The Chair of the department (a different person from the Chair described above) then spread rumors that she knew someone in my new department and that that person had told her that they didn’t really want me. (Which is why they offered me the job? Wev. I was outta there.)

In short, I have never seen an institution operate as though it were loyal to me. Why should I owe it loyalty?

Historiann is not the only one writing about this issue. Over at Brainstorm, Stan Katz has weighed in on the question of institutional loyalty. Here is a taste:

In my academic experience it is pretty frequently the the case that one is asked who could be counted on to assist in some activity that will not produce any self-evident benefit for the volunteer. The question "whom could we ask" has become much more frequently asked over the half-century of my career. I suppose the obvious reason for this is that careerism of a narrow and nasty sort has become the norm among professionals in every area, from law to higher education. While the reward structure in academia has not really changed all that much in the past generation, a narrower understanding of the importance of research has come to dominate our reward and promotion structure. And as the definition of professional success has narrowed, unapologetic self-interest has limited the plausible range of professional desirable options for faculty activity. That is to say that, if you aspire to write a book or article every year, you don't have time for much else.

This is, I suppose, simply to note what so many commentators have observed, that university faculty are more and more single-mindedly committed to their own professional welfare to the exclusion of just about everything else—including the welfare of the institutions that employ them. I am old enough to realize that there probably never was a golden age in which professors were good institutional citizens first and individual professionals second, but I do remember times in which, at least, community loyalty was not considered an unnatural act. Them days are, I realize, gone forever—and for a great many, very complicated reasons.

Nevertheless, the anomic condition of the contemporary academy bothers me, and I am sure it worries some of you. If so, you are "the usual suspects." You are the people who agree to join the committees whose tasks seem tangential to the mainstream of professional activity within our universities. You are especially the volunteers for community-based activities. You are the people who serve local, regional, and national activities that are not professionally oriented. You are the people who make time for the members of our institutional communities who are in distress and need help, even if that help is only a shoulder to cry on. You are the people who speak truth to power. You are those who put being civil above being right....

I can't imagine that Katz would disagree with Historiann's horror stories about the institutions where she has worked and I am guessing that Historiann is willing to concede that the "anomic condition" of academia can at times be harmful to the education mission of a college or university. Great posts!

In the end, I find myself more attracted to Katz's angle on this issue. If I learned anything in graduate school it is that ambition and self-interest are at the heart of academia. I have developed some good friendships in the academy and am loyal to my discipline, but I think I would be very lonely in my profession if I could not practice my trade at a place that had a mission that was worthy of my loyalty. I know the job market is tough and you need to take the jobs that are out there, but I would probably leave the academy before I took a job at a place that was not worthy of my loyalty. I know that within the culture of academia this idea sounds outrageous, but who says we all must conform to the cultural academia?

Ways to Connect With the Way of Improvement Leads Home

As we enter our third year, I want to remind you that there are many ways to connect with what we do here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Don't be shy! Here are a few ways to connect:

• Become a follower of the blog through Google. You can do that by clicking the "Follow" button in the left column of this blog.

• Join The Way of Improvement Leads Home Facebook group by clicking on the Facebook icon in the left column of this blog

• Have you read The Way of Improvement Leads Home? Would you like to someday? Join the Philip Vickers Fithian Fan Club on Facebook.

• Interested in the Greenwich Tea Burning Project? Join the project's Facebook group.

• Are you a history major or former history major doing something exciting with your degree? Have you transferred the skills you have used as a history major to a non-history related job? If so, we want to head from you! Consider contributing something to our "So What CAN You Do With a History Major Series."

• We are all about places here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Take a picture of your favorite local place--it could be anywhere. And we will post it on the blog as part of our "Places" feature.

• Start a Junto and tell us about it in a guest blog post. For those groups interested in reading The Way of Improvement Leads Home in your Junto I can get you a serious discount on the paperback for your group.
  

• Invite us to come and speak about The Way of Improvement Leads Home to your Junto, school, library, club, church, or historical society. If we can work out the details, I am happy to come. If you have assigned the book to your class, consider a talk by the author. jfea(at)messiah(dot) edu

• We are always looking for correspondents to report on major historical conferences such as the AHA, the OAH, the Omohundro Institute, and others.

Thanks for reading! I look forward to another year of blogging!

University Presses and E-Books

Over at AHA Today, Robert Townsend reports from the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) annual meeting. It appears that university presses are publishing more and more history monographs, but "there are no guarantees that the resulting monographs will appear in print." Townsend continues:

A strong theme in the discussions at the meeting was the waning market for traditional print publications and ongoing experiments with digital forms. Sessions on library acquisitions made the point clearly—as library directors and specialists offered substantial evidence that books published in print receive scarce and diminishing use, while online publications generate significantly more attention. In a context where university libraries are suffering from sharp cuts to their book-buying budgets, they described a strong imperative to shift their buying to e-books—especially for books by first-time authors and on narrow or obscure topics. As a core market for monographs, this would place significant pressure on the presses.

Given the evidence of declining use of print in academic libraries, a few speakers noted an odd disconnect between scholars’ roles as producers and consumers of print publications. Almost all authors want to see their books published in print, but as consumers (both in the libraries and off-site in their research and reading) they are clearly gravitating toward the consumption of electronic publications. So how long can these two patterns coexist?

While no one ventured a specific answer to that question, it was clear that the presses are actively working to develop the tools and infrastructures to publish books electronically, both for the library market and for general readers. The meeting was filled with reports on experiments with new types of online publication—ranging from the costs and staffing involved in making books available on iPads and Kindles to discussions about whether the presses should take on roles as “service providers” for authors looking to publish their work online. And a draft report on the economics of scholarly publishing distributed at the meeting (which will hopefully be available online soon) highlighted a number of the interesting experiments already taking place among the presses, which could serve as models for this new direction in publishing.

I have mixed feelings about electronic books. I would be in favor of having specialized academic monographs (books that sell under 500 or so copies) published in electronic form only. Such books do not have a wide readership and are seldom read word-for-word. On the other hand, there are a lot of books--even many by university presses--that are geared toward a wider readership. Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer to read a book in print so that I can hold it and mark-it-up.

Greenwich Day 4 and Wrap-Up

The current phase of the Greenwich Tea Burning Project came to a close last night and the team has returned safely to their respective homes to get on with the summer. Day 4 was bittersweet. We had a productive day in the archives, but also had to say goodbye to all of our new friends and acquaintances.

Two of those new friends were Tom and Mabel, the owners of the Greenwich General Store, which also happens to be the only store in this tiny historic town. Tom and Mabel cooked lunch for us each day and by the end of the trip seemed to really look forward to our daily visits. (You can see some of the team with Tom and Mabel at the Greenwich Tea Burning Project Facebook page).

Of course we also said goodbye, at least for now, to Jonathan Wood and Warren Adams, the guardians of the Lummis Library collections. We are grateful to Jonathan and Warren for keeping the library open for us and providing us with access to the materials. Jonathan was our fearless leader for the entire week and we appreciate his passion for history and working with students. We also want to thank him for taking us to Ocean City and buying us that delicious gelato!

I think the team left Greenwich pretty fired up about the project and the general sense was that we need to make another visit to complete our research.

But most importantly, I think the students who worked for the Greenwich Tea Burning Project got a glimpse of the way in which the study of history can serve a local community. Greenwich has a population of 800, so the presence of five "outsiders" wondering down "Ye Greate Street" (Greenwich's main street), stopping into Tom and Mabel's for lunch (a community gathering place), or touring some of the town's eighteenth-century buildings, created quite a spectacle. Moreover, I think we are doing a service to this community by helping them to uncover their past and explore their identity in new ways. For the first time this week I truly saw the connection between the practice of history and service-learning.

Want to learn more or see the photos from the trip, join our Facebook Page!

Greenwich: Day 3

We had another productive day in Greenwich, New Jersey despite the 98 degree heat. After a quick stop at the local Best Buy to purchase a hard drive, we spent the day reading diaries, records from the Women Christian Temperance Union, newspapers from the 1970s, and a newsletter published by the alumni association of a country school. I had a chance to interview a 92-year old gentleman who lived in Greenwich from 1918-1936. We also got a tour of the Gibbon House (built in 1730), the Greenwich Quaker Meeting House (built in 1771), and the 18th century home of Philip Vickers Fithian.

We ended the day with a trip to the Ocean City boardwalk where we ate the famous Mack and Manco's pizza and Schriver's gelato.

One more day left. Phase two of the Greenwich Tea Burning Project is already in the works.

Interested in learning more? Join us on Facebook at "Greenwich Tea Burning Project."

Happy Birthday!!

We have made it through our second year here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home! This blog was started on June 23, 2008. Many, many thanks for all of our loyal readers. I hope we are doing something useful here.

Wendell Berry Pulls His Papers from University of Kentucky

Agrarian writer Wendell Berry is pulling his personal papers from the University of Kentucky because the university has named a dorm for UK basketball players the "Wildcat Coal Lodge." See this article from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Greenwich: Day 2

The Greenwich Tea Burning Project is starting to hit its stride. Today we examined a few late nineteenth-century diaries, a diary from the 1930s, and newspapers from 1958, 1974, and 1976. I conducted three interviews with local residents, including the town fire-chief. The team is beginning to settle into their surroundings at Lummis Library, but tomorrow we may be overrun by a bunch of eager genealogists. (The library is open to the public!).

Cali M., one of our team members and the staff photographer, has started a new Facebook page called "The Greenwich Tea Burning Project." If you have any interest in Greenwich, NJ and the surrounding area, local history, the relationship between history and memory, Philip Vickers Fithian, tea parties, public history, or small town USA, then this group is for you. Or you may also want to consider joining if you happen to know one of the project's research associates. Or you may just want to join for the fun of it.

Tomorrow will be a lighter day. Stay tuned.

Greenwich: Day One

Blog posts will be sporadic the next several days as I am spending the week in Greenwich,New Jersey-the ancestral home of Philip Vickers Fithian. I am trying to make some headway on a project I have been working on for several years about the Greenwich Tea Burning. The working title of the project is "The Greenwich Tea Burning: History and Memory in an American Town."

I actually have a team of students with me this time--two current students and a former student who will begin a Ph.D program in U.S. urban history in August. I also have the 2010 Mechanicsburg, Middle School 6th Grade Student of the Year with me. (She also happens to be my daughter). The students are getting some good experience in a small archive. They are reading newspapers, minutes of organizations like the Daughters of the Revolution, and diaries. I am conducting interviews with local Greenwich residents. (I did three today and have three more slated for tomorrow!).

It was a long day in the archive today, but we are off to a good start. I will try to provide a bit more detail about the project in future posts.

Sunday Night Odds

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

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

Jim Cullen reviews Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South.

Do academics need to develop thicker skin?

Myths about the Pony Express.

A.C. Grayling reviews Leo Damrosch, Tocqueville's Discovery of America.

Jonathan Alter on BP and the progressive tradition in America.

Books for curmudgeons.

He just wanted to watch the World Cup. This is wrong on so many levels.

R.I.P. Manute Bol. In addition to being over seven and half feet tall, he may have also coined the phrase "my bad."

Kelly Baker on Sarah Palin

Historiann on institutional loyalty.

Founders envy.

Are unpaid internship exploiting students?

4o awkward questions for college tours

Poems about famous theologians.

More Brazil soccer evangelicalism

Southern Baptists and the oil spill

Congratulations Devin Thomas

Why don't we feel awe in the presence of machines anymore? Christine Rosen explains.

What to do when the room in which you teach becomes a "smart classroom?"

What happened to Winston Churchill's cigar?

Where are Americans moving?

Happy Father's Day

A reminder for Fathers from Harry Chapin

David Bebbington Interview

I just ran across this interview with British evangelical David Bebbington, professor of history at the University of Stirling in Scotland. As some of my readers know, Bebbington is the author of Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. In that book, he defined evangelicalism using four terms: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. These terms have become known as the "Bebbington quadrilateral."

The interview comes from the Brethren Archivist and Historians Network Review and has been reposted on the website of the Christianity and History Forum. Here is just a brief taste:

NTRD: We’ve already talked about evangelicals being involved in the world of scholarship. Mark Noll, as you know, has famously written in the first sentence of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind. In the light of what you’ve been saying, do you think this is less true of evangelical historiography or are there still deficiencies?

DWB: Mark Noll would himself say that in the area of philosophy in the United States there is a remarkably developed evangelical mind. So there are exceptions to that generalisation. What is more, in the area of historiography in the States—the church history of the United States—I think it would be fair to say, is dominated now, as was not dominated twenty years ago, and certainly forty years ago, by evangelical scholars. So that historiography, yes, is another growing exception in the United States and one of the chief reasons why that is so is Mark Noll! Another reason is the work of George Marsden with his seminal work published in 1980 on Fundamentalism and American Culture which I think showed the remarkable potential for relating evangelicalism to its setting in terms of American historiography. That has led to an efflorescence of work in America, but also has had a ripple effect on developments elsewhere. So I think that there has developed something approaching an evangelical mind.,,

Can You Go Home Again...And Preach?

Over at Call & Response blog, Louis Weeks, the president emeritus of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, writes about returning to Memphis to preach a sermon to the members of the congregation in which he was raised.

As I read Weeks's account his home going, I could not help but think about another Presbyterian minister--this one from the 18th century--whose "Way of Improvement" also led him "home."

Here is what I wrote about Philip Vickers Fithian return to his home pulpit--the Greenwich Presbyterian (NJ) Presbyterian Church--in January 1775:

The real test of Philip's pulpit skills would come later in the month when he preached several sermons at the Greenwich Presbyterian church. The prospect of delivering a sermon at Greenwich was daunting for several reasons. Greenwich was the largest Presbyterian congregation in southern New Jersey. It was the church in which he had been baptized and catechized and where his spiritual mentor, Andrew Hunter, had served the Presbyterian faithful for thirty years. It was also the place where evangelical heroes such as Whitefield , Tennent, and Finley had preached during the First Great Awakening, a fact that most likely did not escape Philip's historically sensitive mind. As he looked over the pews from his perch in the Greenwich pulpit he could see that the "House was very full" with people eager to hear Cohansey's favorite son expound on the Scriptures. Philip made it through his first sermon at Greenwich with little problem, but the following week the congregation was sprinkled with "several Strangers of Note," a scene that made the young preacher "dashed & terrified." Later in the month, with Hunter seated in the front of the congregation, Philip developed a case of the jitters so great that it temporarily paralyzed him the pulpit. During the course of his message before a packed Greenwich meetinghouse he went into a panic. His thoughts escaped him, his speech failed him, and he came "within an Inch," he claimed of losing his sight. "How unwelcome, how distressful, how unpopular is this involuntary flutter!" he wrote.

Is the Jefferson Memorial Sinking?

No, but its sea wall is. From the Washington Post:


The brown goo oozed from the drill hole like a primordial porridge -- from 60 feet beneath the Jefferson Memorial, it was some of the muck that's under the Mall and part of the stuff that has been slowly swallowing the memorial's sea wall for years.

Centuries of Potomac River sediment and layers of dredged fill, it is the material engineers are drilling through to reach bedrock and anchor the famed memorial's sea wall, for the first time, on a solid foundation.

On Tuesday, crews working in a dewatered section of the Tidal Basin prepared to demolish the old concrete sections of the sea wall as part of the $12.4 million repair project that the National Park Service has been planning since it realized the wall was sinking in 2006.

The work is expected to keep the photogenic north face of the memorial partially obscured by construction equipment through the rest of the tourist season.

In a bit of engineering detective work, experts have discovered that the wall has been slipping away from the memorial's north plaza because the timber pilings that were used to support the wall were probably not long enough to reach bedrock when the memorial was built in the 1930s and '40s.

Studying old photos, engineers were able to determine that the piles were about 65 to 75 feet long, although bedrock starts about 80 feet down, National Park Service civil engineer Steven D. Sims said.

Did the workers cut corners? Did they make a mistake or incorrect assumptions?

"We don't know," Sims said.

The 32,000-ton Jefferson Memorial, on an 18-acre site, is solid, officials said, although it has shifted some since its construction and is monitored for movement...

Historiann Riffs on Founders Chic

Historiann delivers again.

This time she is taking on all of those historians who write books about the Founding Fathers. As she so cleverly notes, even the historians who condemn all of the writing about the Founding Fathers end up writing books about the Founding Fathers! Check out the post and, as usual, the discussion in the comments. Here is a taste:

Here’s a suggestion, boys: just stop writing about the so-called “Founding Fathers!” Stop it! Stop! Go find something new, interesting, and utterly undiscovered in the archives, for a change!

Like I said: “the gamut from A to B” in early American history. It’s all the so-called Founding Fathers, all of the time. ((Yawn.)) Now, I’d better get back to my sure-to-be prizewinning book about a little girl who spoke only Wabanaki and French and became a nun. . . yeah, that’s the ticket to a National Book Award, for sure!

Well, I guess I am one of the boring men who Historiann and her commentators are talking about. As my readers know, I have written a book about a white male during the American Revolution and will soon be publishing a book about the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers. (With a non-academic, Christian publisher no less!). My next project will be on Presbyterians and the American Revolution. It doesn't get any more boring than that. Oh well.

Public History Tenure Guidelines Released

This has been long awaited. The Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the National Council on Public History have managed to put together a report for how to evaluate public history scholarship. Here is a snippet from the AHA Today coverage:

The report argues that public history work is generally overlooked in a “tenure process that emphasizes single-authored monographs and articles at the expense of other types of scholarly productions.” Despite increasing interest in public history, public scholarship, and other forms of civic engagement in colleges and universities, current standards for evaluating historical scholarship “do not reflect the great variety of historical practice undertaken by faculty members.” Even departments that hire faculty specifically to teach public history often neglect to reward those historians for carrying out the range of public history activities required in their jobs.

The report provides clear advice for college and university administrators, department chairs, and faculty. It begins with an overview of existing promotion and tenure standards, analyzes the growing interest of college and university administrators in community engagement, and suggests how public history work should be evaluated as scholarship, teaching, and service. The committee that conducted this study hopes it will have ramifications beyond academia, perhaps in organizations, such as federal or state agencies, where the work of public historians is evaluated in promotion decisions.

The report is titled "Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian." You can read it at the National Council for Public History website. Here are a few highlights:

Departments should look beyond the "traditional monograph" in evaluating public history scholars.

The workload of public history scholars should be rethought to "give appropriate weight to community engagement and service."

Internships and community-based class projects should be "considered and rewarded as a form of scholarship."

Public history scholars with administrative responsibilities should be given the title of "director" to "formalize their dual status as both faculty members and administrators."

Department chairs should "articulate clearly in letters of support to upper levels in the tenure and promotion decision-making process that the work of public historians meets high standards for scholarly rigor in the profession."

Academic work in the field of public history should be rigorously documented.

Peer evaluators for tenure and promotion should be permitted to come from outside the academy.

What Do Emerging Adults Believe?

Over at Text-Patterns, Alan Jacobs writes about sociologist Christian Smith's new book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. Here are a few snippets from the book, culled from Alan's post.

Voices critical of mass consumerism, materialistic values, or the environmental or social costs of a consumer-driven economy were nearly nonexistent among emerging adults. Once the interviewers realized, after a number of interviews, that they were hardly in danger of leading their respondents into feigned concern about consumerism, the interviewers began to probe more persistently to see if there might not be any hot buttons or particular phrases that could tap into any kind of concern about materialistic consumerism. There were not. Very many of those interviewed simply could not even understand the issue the interviewers were asking them about....

...The majority of those interviewed stated . . . that nobody has any natural or general responsibility or obligation to help other people. . . . Most of those interviewed said that it is nice if people help others, but that nobody has to. Taking care of other people in need is an individual's choice. If you want to do it, good. If not, that's up to you. . . . Even when pressed — What about victims of natural disaster or political oppression? What about helpless people who are not responsible for their poverty or disabilities? What about famines and floods and tsunamis? — No, they replied. If someone wants to help, then good for that person. But nobody has to.

It would seem that this book should be required reading for all college professors.

In the end of the post, Jacobs suggests that his Christian students at Wheaton College are different from the American norm. As he puts it: "Not that they're untouched by the movements Smith and Snell describe, by any means; but by and larger their characters have been formed by quite different forces."

Is Jacobs right about this? To what degree have Christian college students resisted the American norm and to what degree have they conformed to it? I hope some Christian college professors and students might weigh in here.

Deneen Sets the Republican Party Straight on the Tea Party Movement

Over at Front Porch Republic, Patrick Deneen writes about his experience at the recent Bradley Institute symposium devoted to the Tea Party movement. Here are some of his thoughts and observations:

1. The Republicans and so-called conservatives at the meeting all see the contemporary Tea Party movement as a "VERY GOOD THING."

2. Several of the Republicans and so-called conservatives at the meeting believe that the Tea Party movement is "utterly consonant with the Constitutional order as established by the Founding Fathers."

3. The Republicans and so-called conservatives at the meeting ignored completely the fact that "populism for much of its history was a Left political movement that aimed above all at the restraint not necessarily of Government, but upon depredations of private industry..."

4. The attempts by Republicans and so-called conservatives to "pin all that is bad about America on the Progressive movement" ignores the fact that "at least as many Republicans advanced Progessivism as Democrats."

5. It is "far from clear that the Progressives are antithetical to the Constitutional vision of (some) Founders, and that there’s far more continuity between the Founders’ and Progressivism’s vision of a centralized, powerful state. on the one hand, and Anti-federalist and Populist criticism of public and private power, on the other."

6. The Left has failed miserably at "harnessing the anger of the Tea Parties" against corporate power. As Deneen writes:

While the anger of the Tea Partiers has been directed both at politicians and financiers, in the main that anger has been manifested as a form of enraged and often scatter-shot fury at all politicians of whatever party. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, I take it that this is because the Tea Partiers at least implicitly understand that for all of its tremendous shortcomings, the political realm is still at least partially responsive to political pressure, whereas massive corporations have become increasingly shielded from most forms of public pressure. Yet, it’s striking how feeble and ineffective have been efforts by leaders on the Left to harness and direct this anger at those massive institutionalized concentrations of private power.

This is one of the best things I have read on the Tea Party movement and it has helped me clarify some of my confusion about it.

Was George W. Bush a Pro-Life President?

Perhaps. But do pro-life presidents allow the federal government to give nearly one billion dollars in funds to organizations that promote abortion? The Catholic News Service reports:

Six organizations that perform or promote abortion received at least $967 million in federal funding in fiscal years 2002 through 2009, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report, made public June 16, looked at government funding given to Advocates for Youth, the Guttmacher Institute, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Population Council of the United States, and Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

Hospitality Pineapples, Short People, Burning Petticoats, and Closet Taxes

The Colonial Williamsburg website is running a great article entitled "Stuff and Nonsense: Myths That Should by Now Be History." It debunks several stories from early American life that are not true, yet get told over and over again at local museums and historical sites around the country.

Here are a few of these myths.

1. Fire screens were put between a woman and the fireplace to prevent the heat from melting her wax makeup.

2. Beds were shorter in those days because people were shorter

3. Houses didn't have closets in colonial days because people wanted to avoid paying the closet tax

4. Burning to death from their long petticoats' catching fire was the leading cause of death for colonial-era women, after childbirth.

5. From the era of the ancient Greeks to the eighteenth century, pineapples have been a symbol of hospitality, which is why they were frequently served to guests at meals and used as a decorative motif.

Check out the article to learn how to debunk these myths.

How Should Christians Respond to the Oil Spill?

Over at the CNN Belief Blog, Jonathan Merritt offers some suggestions (with the help of Russell Moore) for how Christians should respond to the oil spill in the Gulf. Here is a taste:

The Christian community, in which many remain skeptical of the environmental movement, appears to have come down with a case of PR schizophrenia, with reactions ranging from complacency to indignation. Most of their responses leave us asking: How should Christians respond?

An overview of those responses so far:

Ignoring it. Perhaps the most confounding reaction coming from some Christians is apathy. Many Christians seem unconcerned with what is going on in the Gulf, or at least preoccupied with “more important” political issues like Arizona’s new immigration law. Searching the web sites of major Christian groups for “oil spill” returns few or no results.

Capitalizing on it. Some Christians, particularly those who have taken a laissez-faire approach to environmental regulation in the past, have seen this tragedy as an opportunity to attack the President. Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition have both lobbed bombs, and Sarah “drill baby, drill” Palin has been clobbering the administration everywhere from Fox News to Facebook. They are hoping to tar this administration with the legacy that Hurricane Katrina left for the Bush administration...

Extolling it. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, about one third of America’s 60 million white evangelicals believe that the world will end in their lifetime. Some of them, it seems, believe the oil spill is a sign of the end times. As Lisa Miller wrote in a recent Newsweek article, “A growing conversation among Christian fundamentalists asks the question that may have been inevitable: is the oil spill in the gulf a sign of the coming apocalypse?”...

Prayerfully Mourning it. As the slick spreads and the situation worsens, a few Christians—most surprisingly, conservative evangelicals—are responding with prayer, contrition and a reconsideration of their environmental positions. These Christians realize that the world needs a thoughtful Christian community that helps the hurting, protects God’s creation, and cares more about people than politics.

An example of someone who got it right is Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He visited the Gulf region and responded tearfully on his blog:

For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment . . . Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people.”

Rather than ignore the situation or channel his energy into a political attack, he paused to mourn the loss of life, pray for the hurting, and reconsider his own positions. Moore continues, “Will people believe us when we speak about the One who brings life and that abundantly, when they see that we don’t care about that which kills and destroys?”

I Need a Course in Slow Reading

Have you heard of "slow reading?" Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, is promoting this kind of reading as means of countering the kind of reading many people are doing online these days.

At a time when people spend much of their time skimming websites, text messages and e-mails, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire is making the case for slowing down as a way to gain more meaning and pleasure out of the written word.

Thomas Newkirk isn't the first or most prominent proponent of the so-called "slow reading" movement, but he argues it's becoming all the more important in a culture and educational system that often treats reading as fast food to be gobbled up as quickly as possible.

"You see schools where reading is turned into a race, you see kids on the stopwatch to see how many words they can read in a minute," he said. "That tells students a story about what reading is. It tells students to be fast is to be good."

Newkirk is encouraging schools from elementary through college to return to old strategies such as reading aloud and memorization as a way to help students truly "taste" the words. He uses those techniques in his own classroom, where students have told him that they've become so accustomed from flitting from page to page online that they have trouble concentrating while reading printed books.

"One student told me even when he was reading a regular book, he'd come to a word and it would almost act like a hyper link. It would just send his mind off to some other thing," Newkirk said. "I think they recognize they're missing out on something."

I think I need to do a bit a more slow reading. Graduate school ruined my reading habits. There I was taught to quickly dissect books for arguments and move on to the next one. I still often read this way today. Of course blogging has not helped. In order to keep this blog moving I need to do a lot of skimming and reading in very short bursts.

I would imagine that slow reading might make me a better writer. But if everyone is "fast reading" then who is going to appreciate all the work I put into crafting elegant prose?

Do You Want to Present a Paper on LOST?

James McGrath reports on an academic conference in Hawaii devoted to the television show LOST. There will no doubt be thousands of dollars extracted from college and university "Conference Travel Budgets" to send academics on a four-day vacation (in January!) in Hawaii where they will get to talk about their favorite television show and consume exotic drinks.

Start writing your paper proposal now!

Touchdown Jesus is Coming Back

Not this touchdown Jesus, but the one in Ohio that was recently destroyed by lightning.

We can rebuild it...

MSNBC Trashes Obama Speech

Olbermann wants specifics. Matthews challenges the "meritocracy" at work here and wants "executive command." Fineman wants the oil spill to be treated as a war. MSNBC is the third cable news network, but these guys make some good points.