How Many of Them Have You Read?

Time magazine has released its all-time best non-fiction books written in English since 1923 (the year Time published its first issue).  Here are a few highlights:

The "History" section includes books by David Halberstam, Dee Brown, and Howard Zinn. (I might add that none of these authors are historians.  Dee Brown was an activist.  Halberstam was a journalist.  Zinn was an activist pretending to be a historian).  Where is Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, Carl Sanburg, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Oscar Handlin, Perry Miller, Daniel Boorstin, C. Vann Woodward, James McPherson, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Jack Rakove, Annette Gordon-Reed, Robert Dallek, Sean Wilentz, Eric Foner, and David Hackett Fischer?

There is also a category for "Social History" which includes books by Betty Friedan, Jared Diamond, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Harrington, Martin Luther King Jr., and Studs Terkel.  (Again, none of these authors have written anything close to what the academy defines as "social history," but we need to remember that this is Time we are talking about).

The "Ideas" section includes books by Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama, Benedict Anderson, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Reinhold Niebuhr, and John Rawls.  It also includes Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Where is Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism?

The "Essays" category includes collections by Susan Sontag, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and David Foster Wallace. Where is Wendell Berry?

The "Non-Fiction Novels" section includes works by Tom Wolfe, Normal Mailer, and Truman Capote.

The "Politics" section includes books by Woodward and Bernstein, Samuel Huntington, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, George Orwell, Theodore White, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Hofstadter.

The best books on "War" include Shelby Foote's The Civil War.

The "Autobiography and Memoir" category includes Obama's Dreams from My Father in addition to works by Gertrude Stein, Maya Angelou, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Stephen King, and Bill Bryson.

The "Biography" category includes Alex Haley's biography of Malcom X and Robert Caro's study of Robert Moses.  Does David McCullough deserve to be on this list for his biography of John Adams?

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser made the "Business" list.  So did Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed.  And what would the "Business" category be without Milton Freedman's Capitalism and Freedom.

Strunk and White's Elements of Style made the "Self-Help/Instructional" list and Jim Bouton's Ball Four made the "Sports" list.

Check out the list and let us know which books Time left out.

Gordon College's 39-Year Old Sociologist-President is Ready to be Inaugurated

How Do You Start Your American History Courses?

Today was my first day of classes.  As I have written on this blog before, I am teaching the first half of the United States survey and an upper-division course called "Teaching History."  My classes meet back-to-back, at 1:00 and 2:00pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in Messiah College's Frey Hall.

I am pretty traditional on the first day of class.  I pass out the syllabus and work my way through it.  I discuss course objectives, textbooks, and assignments.  On occasion I will ask students to tell me their name and major.  Sometimes I wish I was more innovative.

What do you do on the first day of your American history courses?

The Blog Commentator as Theologian

I was recently talking with a few colleagues about the practice of commenting on blog posts.

For whatever reason, we do not get many comments on the posts we publish here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home (my site meter, however, tells me that many of you are reading or at least checking in, even if you are not commenting.  Although I would love to see more comments.  Hint. Hint).  Other blogs have comment sections that are far more active.

One of my colleagues, a fellow historian, was noting that the practice of history can often take place through commentary on blog posts.  Scholars and other interested parties debate historical interpretations and forge new ones in the tiny, obscure comment spaces provided by Blogger or Word Press. As far as I know, these historical conversations are not even picked up by Google.  (But I could be wrong.  If I am, somebody please correct me).

Another colleague (separate conversation) was a theologian-philosopher who was fascinated by the way some of the deepest and most intellectually stimulating theological conversations take place in the comments of a controversial or provocative blog post.

Jim Rice, the editor of Sojourners magazine, is fully aware of the impact of blog comments.  In a recent post at the blog of the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary, Rice, with an assist from Karl Barth, reminds Christians that they all have a responsibility to "bear witness to the Word" in the world.  This makes us all, to some degree, theologians. It also means that we need to remember to bear witness with not only our actions, but our words.

So how does this relate to blog comments?  I will let Rice explain:

“Even the most able speech of the most living faith is a human work. And this means that the community can go astray in its proclamation of the Word of God, in its interpretation of the biblical testimony, and finally in its own faith. Instead of being helpful, it can be obstructive to God’s cause in the world by an understanding that is partly or wholly wrong, by devious or warped thought, by silly or too subtle speech. Every day the community must pray that this may not happen, but it must also do its own share of earnest work toward this goal. This work is theological work.”


While “too subtle speech” doesn’t often seem to be the problem in the blogosphere, Barth’s point is that the community of faith is responsible for correcting understandings that are wrong, devious, warped, or silly. And isn’t that exactly what happens in blog comments? People jump in to render their version of the truth. Barth makes clear that the responsibility isn’t only for the community of faith, but for individual Christians as well, who are also “responsible for the quest for truth in this witness. Therefore, every Christian as such is also called to be a theologian.”

Imagine the consequences if all Christians, or all people of faith, took that to heart. What would it look like if we consciously approached our online commentary as theological work, as seeking explicitly to serve as a vehicle for the Word of God? How would that understanding change our tone, our spirit, the way we express ourselves and the content of our reflections? At the very least, thinking theologically about the way we post online might help us to elevate the level of discourse here on earth.

Teachers Seldom See the Fruits of Their Labor

I think all of us who teach wonder if we have made any difference in the lives of our students.  We wonder if they are taking the lessons we taught them and applying them in real life after graduation. 

As Nate Keuter points out, this is perhaps the most frustrating part of teaching.  While all of us have students who stay in touch and regularly thank us for our classes and investment in their lives, most of the students we teach disappear from our lives after the semester is over.  In our more reflective moments, we wonder if they are learning or have learned anything from us?  Do the seeds we cast bear any fruit? 

The "powers-that-be" in the academic world have responded to these professorial feelings of insecurity about their effectiveness through standardized tests and endless assessment. We can now be reasonably sure whether or not we are actually teaching anything to our students. While such an approach to measuring student learning can be helpful, it does not give us a sense of how our former students are using their education in real-life situations a year, or two years, or five years, or a decade, or three decades after they leave college.  Assessment of this kind does not measure those "aha" moments when a former student finally makes the connection between his or her life and that seminar discussion on historical thinking.  We will never know.

Keuter describes the frustration of it all:

We teach students one semester, and if we are lucky over the course of several semesters, but very rarely do we enjoy the privilege of seeing them apply what they have learned in our classes as they grow, mature, and prosper. Very rarely do we get to see the seeds of knowledge that we like to think that we are planting grow, blossom, and fruit. Equally problematic, when a student leaves our classroom, we often are unable to see the threats to the "crop," the withering, moldering, and russeting caused by metaphoric pests — for example, misapplying a principle, or forgetting a fundamental lesson — and so are unable to offer corrective help as a farmer or gardener would to their crops. We are often powerless to help students after they leave our classrooms. Of course, if you take it too far, the whole student/crop metaphor gets obnoxious, and wrongly implies that students are passive crops, and teachers omnipotent farmer-gods.

Not being able to see, though, is endlessly frustrating. And indeed this frustration has motivated many aspects of contemporary academic life, not the least of which include the national testing movements at the high school level and the increasingly loud calls for “accountability” at all levels of education. We all, whether we are teachers, administrators, or simply concerned citizens, want very badly to be able to “see” the results, the successes and failures, of our educational systems...

...But especially at the undergraduate level, our ability to observe students’ progress is often obscured. When we are very, very lucky, we hear back from students, and have the pleasure of seeing their progress. Perhaps they e-mail us, months or even years after a class, to say how they’ve been applying something from the class, or to relay an anecdote about how something discussed in class finally "clicked" for them. Perhaps they drop by our offices one day, to express thanks, or, in a moment of exuberance, to report how "that thing you taught us" helped them out in another class, or another part of their life. Whether you are a welder or a professor, it is affirming to be able to step back and see the results of your work. But it’s considerably easier to put your eyes on that work if you’re the welder.

I don't think there is any way of relieving the frustration that Keuter writes about.  It comes with the job.

Is Robert E. Lee's Profile Carved Into the Back of Abe's Head at the Lincoln Memorial?

Mollie Reilly discusses some of the more popular Washington D.C. historical rumors.  And some of them may be true!  Here are my favorites:

No, Lee's head is not carved in the back of the Lincoln Memorial.

Yes, the Washington Redskins have accurately predicted every presidential election (except one) since 1936.  If the Skins win its last home game before the general election, the incumbent party stays in the White House.

Yes, there may be blood stains on the US Capitol staircase from the shooting of congressman William Preston Taulbee in 1890.

U.S. Grant did not invent the term "lobbyist."

Yes, you can see Darth Vader in the Washington National Cathedral.

See Reilly's piece for more.  HT: AHA Today

The Broccoli Approach to Selling the Humanities

Daniel Everett, the dean of arts and sciences at Bentley University in the Boston area, thinks that our efforts to sell the humanities to students is the equivalent of trying to force broccoli down their throats.  He writes at Inside Higher Ed:

I couldn't agree more with the idea that the humanities are important. But this type of approach is what I call the "eat it, it's good for you" response to the curricular doldrums of humanities. That never worked with my children when it came to eating broccoli and it is even less likely to help increase humanities enrollments nationally today.

Everett believes we as humanities professors need to rethink how we play the "critical thinking" card:

It is also vital that we of the humanities not overplay our hands and claim for ourselves a uniqueness that we do not have. For example, it has become nearly a truism to say that the humanities teach "critical thinking skills." This is often correct of humanities instruction (though certainly not universally so). But critical thinking is unique neither to the humanities nor to the arts and sciences more generally. A good business education, for example, teaches critical thinking in management, marketing, accounting, finance, and other courses. More realistically and humbly, what we can say is that the humanities and sciences provide complementary contexts for reasoning and cultural knowledge that are crucial to functioning at a high level in the enveloping society.

Thus, admitting that critical thinking can also be developed in professional schools, we realize that it is enhanced and further developed when the thinker learns to develop analytical skills in history, different languages, philosophy, mathematics, and other contexts. The humanities offer a distinct set of problems that hone thinking skills, even if they are not the only critical thinking game in town. At my institution, Bentley University, and other institutions where most students major in professional fields, for example, English develops vocabulary and clarity of expression while, say, marketing builds on and contributes to these. Science requires empirical verification and consideration of alternatives. Accountancy builds on and contributes to these. Science and English make better business students as business courses improve thinking in the humanities and sciences.

Everett calls for an integration of humanities with the professional disciplines.


The cultural zeitgeist requires of education that it be intellectually well-balanced and focused but also useful. Providing all of these and more is not the commercialization of higher education. Rather, the combination of professional education and the humanities and sciences is an opportunity to at once (re-)engage students in the humanities and to realize Dewey's pragmatic goal of transforming education by coupling concrete objectives with abstract ideas, general knowledge, and theory.

Thoughts?

Relax. Levitical Law is Not Coming Anytime Soon

The chorus of writers defending Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann against charges that they want to create a theocracy continues to be heard from the pages of national newspapers, magazines, and influential blogs.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Charlotte Allen rips on liberal journalists, politicians, academics, and pundits who have shown their ignorance of American Christianity on this front:

Such groups as Campus Crusade for Christ, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Feminists for Life have been characterized as dominionist fronts. Most recently — and hilariously — New York Times religion columnist Mark Oppenheimer postulated that Christian Reconstructionism might have been behind the recent anti-public union demonstrations in Wisconsin. After all, Gary North, Rushdoony's son-in-law, has argued that the Bible forbids public employees from organizing.

It is hard to figure out why no one in the liberal media seems to mind, say, that one of President Obama's spiritual advisors, the progressive evangelical Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine, also has a political agenda — income redistribution and greater social spending — that he says is influenced by his Christian values.

Many Jews believe that the rabbinic concept of tikkun olam, or "repairing the world," is a mandate for bettering society at large. Yet when conservative-voting Christians seek to implement their values in the public square, using the language of their faith, they're feared like carriers of bubonic plague.

The opponents of the religious right would gain a bit more credibility if they didn't feel compelled to manufacture a vast conspiracy called dominionism and throw around words like "theocracy" every time the GOP threatens to win an election. You know what they sound like? Their opposite number from the 1950s: the John Birch Society.

Meanwhile, over at Religion in American History, historian Matthew Sutton sums it up well in a post entitled "Fear This!"  Sutton writes:

...I am much more afraid of the Ralph Reeds and Karl Roves of the GOP than I am of dead Reformed preachers.  Of course when Bachmann pushes a proposal through Congress reinstituting Levitcal law, the US Supreme Scout upholds such legislation as Constitutional, and we start stoning people in the streets, we will all know that I was wrong.

David Lowenthal on Nostalgia

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working my way through David Lowenthal's masterful The Past is a Foreign Country.  I continue to be impressed by Lowenthal's section on the relationship between history and nostalgia.  Here are a few quotes:

p.4: "If the past is a foreign country, nostalgia has made it 'the foreign country with the healthiest trade of all.'"

p.8:  "Most of us know the past was not really like that.  Life back then seems brighter not because things were better but because we lived more vividly when young; even the adult world of yesteryear reflects the perspective of childhood.  Now unable to experience so intensely, we mourn a lost immediacy that makes the past unmatchable.  Such nostalgia can also shore up self-esteem, reminding us that however sad our present lot we were once happy and worthwhile.  Childhood thus recalled excludes the family quarrels, the outings dominated by waiting in queues for grubby loos; 'nostalgia is memory with the pain removed.' The pain is today."

p.13: "If nostalgia is a symptom of malaise, it also has compensating virtues.  Attachment to familiar places may buffer social upheaval, attachment to familiar faces may be necessary for enduring association."

p.14: "A past beyond recovery seems to many unbearable.  We know the future is inaccessible; but is the past irrevocably lost?  Is there no way to recapture, re-experience, relive it?  We crave evidence that the past endures in recoverable form.  Some agency, some mechanism, some faith will enable us not just to know it, but to see and feel it."

p.24: "Whether recent or remote, the desired past exhibits strikingly similar traits: natural, simple, comfortable--yet also vivid and exciting."

p.29: " 'If you told Mr. George Washington the reasons why you liked his time,' and aspiring time traveller is cautioned, 'you'd probably be naming everything he hated about it.' "

p.33: "People are normally aware that the actual past is irrevocable.  Yet memory and history, relic and replica leave impressions so vivid, so tantalizingly concrete, that we cannot help but feel deprived...The hopes and fears that the past arouses are heightened by the conflict between our knowledge that its return is impossible and our desire, perhaps our instinct, that it must and can be reached."

Douthat: What Journalists Should Keep in Mind When Dealing With the Religion of Candidates

From Ross Douthat's column in today's New York Times:

1.  "Conservative Christianity is a large and complicated world, and like other such worlds — the realm of the secular intelligentsia very much included — it has various centers and various fringes, which overlap in complicated ways."

2.  "Journalists should avoid double standards. If you roll your eyes when conservatives trumpet Barack Obama’s links to Chicago socialists and academic radicals, you probably shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that Bachmann’s more outré law school influences prove she’s a budding Torquemada."

3.  "Journalists should resist the temptation to apply the language of conspiracy to groups and causes that they find unfamiliar or extreme"

4.  "Journalists should remember that Republican politicians have usually been far more adept at mobilizing their religious constituents than those constituents have been at claiming any sort of political 'dominion.'"

And Douthat concludes:

They (journalists) look at Christian conservatism and see a host of legitimately problematic tendencies: Manichaean rhetoric, grandiose ambitions, apocalyptic enthusiasms. But they don’t recognize these tendencies for what they often are: not signs of religious conservatism’s growing strength and looming triumph, but evidence of its persistent disappointments and defeats. 

Nice job, Mr. Douthat!

Pew Study on Online Education

The Pew Research Center has just released its recent study, "Digital Revolution and Higher Education."  Here are some of the findings:

• 29% of the American public believe that online courses "offer equal value compared with courses taken in the classroom."
• 51% of college presidents "say online courses provide the same value" compared with courses taken in the classroom.
• 77% of college presidents "report that their institutions now offer online courses."
• 89% of public colleges and universities offer online classes, but only 60% of private four-year schools offer online classes.
• Nearly 25% of four-year college graduates have taken a course online.  Of those students, 39% believe there online course had the same "educational value" as a course taken in the classroom.

Why do more college and university presidents believe that online education is comparable to traditional classroom courses than students who take online courses? Any thoughts?

Here is another interesting finding related to mission:

College presidents’ beliefs about the mission of higher education are linked to their views and experiences with online learning. Among those who believe the most important role college plays is to prepare students for the working world, 59% say online classes provide the same educational value as in-person classes. Among presidents who say the role of college is to promote personal and intellectual growth, only 43% say online learning offers an equal value.

A Liberal Who Believed in Original Sin

Over at the History News Network, book review editor Luther Spoehr reviews the late John Patrick Diggins's final book, Why Niebuhr Now?  It is an informative review of what looks to be a solid introduction to Niebuhr's thought by one of the better American intellectual historians of our generation.  Here is a taste of Spoehr's review:


Diggins rightly stresses how Niebuhr’s studies and his Calvinistic consciousness of original sin and the dangers of pride separated him from more confident avatars of the “American Century.”  But even in the shadow of the 20^th century’s most horrific events, Niebuhr maintained a philosophical balance between optimism and pessimism that leaned towards hope.  In the foreword to The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944), as the terrible costs of World War II mounted and democracy’s future remained uncertain, Niebuhr asserted that “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”     

Like Niebuhr, Diggins has a gift for the pithy, even the aphoristic, that is especially effective when operating in the realm of abstractions.  He is at his best when identifying sources of Niebuhr’s thought and comparing his ideas with philosophers from Aristotle and Aquinas to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.  Often he sounds downright Niebuhrian himself, as when he observes that “the essence of the Christian religion is the dialectic between grace and pride.”  And he shrewdly comments that “The Irony of American History is not a call to moral clarity but an acknowledgement of moral ambiguity.” 

Errors on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

Walter Russell Mead puts it best: "Martin Luther King was one of the most eloquent Americans of all time; it would surely be possible to find inspiring remarks to put on his monument that he actually, well, said." 

Writing at his blog, Via Meadia, Mead explains:

There are two serious errors on the Martin Luther King, Jr memorial. Not one, two.  In separate articles the Washington Post gets into the controversy:

An error has been etched in marble on the grand Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that was to be dedicated Sunday…

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”…

[But] King is not the source of that quote…Theodore Parker, a long-gone Bostonian abolitionist and Unitarian minister, is the true author.

The next error:

Someone, somewhere along the line, made a decision that makes King look like something he was not: an arrogant jerk.

“I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” That’s what it says on the right side of King’s enormous monument…[But this] is not what Martin Luther King Jr. said. King’s full quote: “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

 HT: Ralph Luker

Dispatches from Graduate School--Part 35

Cali Pitchel McCullough is a Ph.D student in American history at Arizona State University.  For earlier posts in this series click here. --JF

I just spent the last few minutes skimming the first several "Dispatches from Graduate School" entries from last fall. Just reading of my weak moments makes me anxious. But rather than deteriorating into a weepy mess at the prospect of  another mountainous year of coursework, I remember that I have an entire year (and a summer full of reflection) under my belt. I am no longer a first-year PhD student! I can walk the hall with a greater sense of assurance. Instead of an outsider desperately trying to feel at home in what seemed like an inhospitable place, I consider myself part of the community.

Not that this year won’t be tough.

Over the course of the next two semesters I need to prepare my secondary field (which is now officially Urban History—perhaps more on this at another time); perform my History Graduate Student Association responsibilities (as Secretary); read for my Qualifying Exams; submit conference proposals and scholarly articles; ready History to the People for its February 1 launch; and again find that sensitive balance between school, family, and life. It’s hard to explain, but the tasks seem far less daunting, less intimidating.

The confidence that comes from successfully battling the insecurities and emotions of the first year will hopefully propel me into a strong second year. I’m especially excited for my coursework. Each of my courses will provide me the opportunity to produce work that will contribute to my thesis. Space and Place, a research seminar, will allow me to better understand and then to utilize space and place as categories of analysis. In Community History, I will analyze the central elements of American community life. I’m taking one comparative course, Modern European History, which will focus on the major European capitals (and on New York City) from the beginning of the nineteenth century through the mid twentieth century. The course will provide me an opportunity to read for my secondary field and spend more time engaging in the theoretical approaches to urban history.

In my very first Dispatch, I found the marathon to be a useful analogy for graduate school. This analogy has served me well and I must keep my own advice close as I embark on year two. I wrote that “I can commit to the next four-years with the intensity essential to not only tackle the hills, but to cross the finish line at a sprint.” As I begin the second leg of  my four-part marathon I feel determined, but I am fully aware of the hills (there are plenty of examples of first-year hills on this blog). Nevertheless, I will continue protect myself from  injury, fuel adequately, and move forward toward the finish line.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

Jim Cullen reviews Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other.

Goshen College decides on "America the Beautiful."

John Turner reviews Chris Beneke and Christopher Grenda, ed., The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America.

Dean Curry, my colleague at Messiah College, on tolerance and evangelicalism.

Carol Faulkner reviews Leigh Eric Schmidt's Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr and Madwoman.

In defense of Civil War reenacting.

How to write a job letter for an academic position.

You might be an evangelical....

Miroslav Wolf and Christian Smith discuss their new books.

History wars in the U.K.

David Neff interviews Mark Noll on his new book Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind.

Darryl Hart on dominionism, conservatism, Bachmann, and Schaeffer.

Teaching for uncoverage.

For $5.00 you can get a 5-star review of your book at Amazon.

In defense of the Teaching Company.  (Now called "Great Courses").

What should we ask political candidates about their faith?

The five best biographies of one-term presidents.

Comedian Andy Samberg plays McEnroe, Agassi, Borg, Sampras, and Connors.

Most Popular Posts of the Last Week

Here are the ten most visited posts this week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

1.  Palin: The National Endowment for the Humanities Need to Go (August 2011).
2.  E-Card of the Day (August 2011).
3.  The Top Ten Most Religious Cities in America (November 2010).
4.  Did Adam and Eve Exist? (August 2011).
5.  8 Ways Conservatives Misremember American History (August 2011).
6.  Some Tips for New Ph.D Students (August 2011).
7.  Educated People Tend to Be More Religious...Sort Of (August 2011).
8.  The "Thirteenth Floor in a Hotel vs. "The Moral Majority in a Tri-Cornered Hat" (August 2011).
9.  Michelle O' Bachmann (July 2011).
10. The Benefits of a Classroom Lecture (June 2011).

Pat Robertson and the Jeremiad

In 18th-century New England, earthquakes were usually interpreted as signs that God was punishing his covenanted people.  Massachusetts felt the effects of regional earthquakes in 1638, 1661, 1663, and 1732.  In 1727, the Boston area was hit with an earthquake that, by today's estimation, would have reached 5.5 on the Richter scale.  In 1755, the area was hit with an even larger earthquake, registering about 6.2.  (In that same year a massive earthquake, probably 8.5-9.0 on today's Richter scale, hit the Portuguese city of Lisbon).

Puritan ministers responded to these earthquakes and tremors by climbing into their pulpits and warning the people--God's new Israel--of their sins.  These jeremiads were a fixture of New England religious culture. 

But the 18th century was also an age in which Puritans were starting to explain things through science.  As Harry Stout has shown us, Puritans never stopped responding to natural disasters and other societal problems through jeremiads. But we also know that many of the 18th-century descendants of Puritans were integrating their Calvinist faith with the new ideas emanating from the Enlightenment.

For example, John Winthrop, the great-great grandson of the Massachusetts founder by the same name, argued that earthquakes were best explained by science, not theology.  He has often been described as the founder of the science of seismology. After the 1755 quake, Winthrop engaged in an extended debate with New England clergymen Thomas Prince over the cause of earthquakes .  Much of this exchange took place in the pages of The Boston Gazette.  Prince defended the the traditional Puritan view of earthquakes as signs of God's judgment.  Winthrop defended a scientific explanation.

I should add that for many 18th-century New England Calvinists, the scientific and religious explanations for earthquakes were not mutually exclusive.  Earthquakes could be explained both scientifically AND providentially. New Englanders could comfortably embrace both of these  explanations.

Of course Winthrop's understanding of how earthquakes happened eventually won the day, but the old jeremiad tradition has not disappeared in American life.  In fact, 40% of Americans believe that earthquakes and other natural disasters are signs from God.  The jeremiad tradition lives on in folks like Pat Robertson

Here is a snippet from the Washington Post's coverage of Robertson's remarks about the earthquake that hit the east coast earlier this week:

 Pat Robertson, natural disaster interpreter extraordinaire, said on Wednesday’s 700 Club that the earthquake that struck the Washington region Tuesday “means that we’re closer to the coming of the Lord.”

On Thursday’s broadcast, Robertson pointed to the damage to the Washington Monument in the earthquake as a possible ‘sign’ from God:

“It seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power. It has been the symbol of our great nation. We look at the symbol and we say ‘this is one nation under God.’ Now there’s a crack in it... Is that sign from the Lord? ... You judge. It seems to me symbolic.”

 ...Robertson has a history of blaming natural disasters and terrorist acts on the victims. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, Robertson commented that Haitians had made a “pact to the devil” and were being “cursed” through the earthquake. He suggested that Hurricane Katrina was the result of legal abortion, according to Time Magazine. And in the wake of 9/11, Robertson had a now (in-)famous exchange with the late Jerry Falwell in which the two religious leaders suggested that the United States “deserved” the attacks for its tolerance of secularism, gays, abortion, feminists and pagans. Robertson’s religious worldview sees God as a being that can withdraw his protection from the United States based on the country’s morality.

Paul Boyer and the Brethren in Christ Church

Many readers of this blog will recognize the name Paul S. Boyer.  He is the Merle Curti Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Early Americanists will know him as the author of Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft.  Scholars of twentieth-century culture might know When Time Shall Be No More or By the Bombs Early Light. Before coming to Messiah College, I used his co-authored U.S. survey textbook, The Enduring Vision.

Devin Manzullo-Thomas reminds us that Boyer was also a member of the Brethren in Christ Church, the denomination that founded and remains loosely connected to Messiah College.  Devin has tracked down a piece Boyer wrote for the History News Network reflecting on his experience growing up Brethren in Christ.  Here is a taste:


My future perspective as a historian was influenced, too, by my very conservative religious upbringing. The Brethren in Christ church, an offshoot of the Mennonite church, took seriously the biblical injunction"Be not conformed to this world." The members did not vote, generally refused military service, and dressed very plainly-no neckties for the men; head coverings, cape dresses, and dark stockings for the women. They avoided the movies and other worldly amusements, and viewed the secular power of the state with profound skepticism. I'm no longer a part of that subculture (which in any event is very different today), but its influence has shaped my life and work.

A grade-school teacher in Dayton, Ohio taught me that history is something people can feel passionate about. A southerner, she informed us in no uncertain terms:"If you get nothing else out of this class, just remember that slavery was NOT the cause of the Civil War." But I can't claim that the study of history initially gripped me very deeply. My copy of David Saville Muzzey's A History of Our Country, assigned in a high-school class, is full of my scribbled drawings and witticisms (e.g.,"In Case of Fire, throw this in"). The teacher called him"Fuzzy Muzzey," signaling us that even textbook writers need not be viewed with total reverence. Now a textbook author myself, I appreciate Muzzey a little more. He writes in his preface:"Boys and girls have sometimes said to me that they have 'had' American history, as if it were measles or chicken pox, which they could have and get over and be henceforth immune from. … Do not for a moment think that you are `going over' American history again in high school in order to add a few more dates and names to your memory. You are studying a new and fresh subject, not because American history has changed, but because you have changed. ... You are getting new outlooks on life,--new ambitions, new enthusiasms, new judgments of people and events. Life broadens and deepens for you. So history, which is the record of former people's ambitions and enthusiasms, comes to have a new meaning for you."

After high school I enrolled at Upland College in California, a small denominational school that has since closed. Wendell Harmon, who had written his Ph.D. thesis at UCLA on the Prohibition movement in California, taught U.S. history at Upland. Wendell had a skeptical turn of mind and a dry sense of humor. His classes, including a seminar on American Transcendentalism, jolted me into realizing that studying history could be intellectually engaging, even fun. In June 1955, preparing to leave for two years of voluntary service in Europe with the Mennonite Central Committee, I asked Wendell for reading suggestions. His list included Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition (1948). I devoured the book, writing on the flyleaf words that were new to me (salient, milieu, inchoate, sinecure, ubiquitous). Hofstadter's cool-eyed revisionist look at America's political heroes was eye-opening. There is no canonical version of history-all is up for grabs! My copy of this 95-cent Vintage paperback, now falling apart, is still in my library. 

You may recall that we did a post recently on Paul's brother, Ernest, a pretty good scholar in his own right. (That post, I might add, was also inspired by a post by Manzullo-Thomas at The Search of Piety and Obedience).  The Boyers were a pretty intellectually-charged Brethren in Christ family.

Does Anyone Travel to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Just to Visit a Bookstore?

Brett Foster does.

Foster, an English professor at Wheaton College, describes his journey from the Chicago suburbs to Harrisburg to visit the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, a store with the largest stock of scholarly and academic books between New York and Chicago.

Here is a taste of his piece in Books and Culture:

...continue along the turnpike to Harrisburg: Midtown Scholar Bookstore, in the old-and-revitalizing Midtown section of Pennsylvania's capital, across from the historic Broad Street Market. The owners say they have the largest stock of academic books between New York and Chicago, and, having visited twice now, I see no reason to doubt this claim. Their large, well-decorated, incredibly inviting ten-thousand-square-foot space is packed with 100,000 used, out-of-print, and scholarly books, with multitudinous others available online. (In fact, I first discovered Midtown Scholar when it kept appearing as a seller of books I was searching for on the Web—no matter how obscure the title.) Despite its name, Midtown Scholar has a great selection of more general titles, and is very family- and community-friendly to boot. I feel confident in calling it one of the best independent bookstores in the country today.

I live less than ten miles from the Midtown Scholar and I am very, very embarrassed to say that I have not made a visit yet.  I promise that I will be making my way there very soon.

The Midtown Scholar is part of an ongoing revitalization of the "Midtown" section of Harrisburg.  It was founded by Eric Papenfuse (a Yale Ph.D in early American history) and his wife Catherine Lawrence (a Yale Ph.D in European history and a former member of the Messiah College History Department).  Eric and Catherine left the academic world to invest in the revitalization of Harrisburg.  They brought their passion for urban development, their love of books, and their scholarly knowledge to bear on the creation of this truly unique bookstore.

Check out this video:

Can I Get a Job With a History Major?

Anyone who has followed this blog for any period of time knows that I believe the answer to this question is "yes."  For those of you who are new to the blog, or just need a refresher, I would encourage you to check out our "So What Can You Do With A History Major" series.

But as Casey Wiley points out, there is another way of thinking about the college experience.  Wiley, who teaches writing at Penn State, does not want us to forget that college is also about intellectual development and studying something that you love, regardless of the vocational possibilities.  In today's Inside Higher Education he reflects on this motivation for attending college.  Here is a snippet:

I began college in 1999 as a business major because that was the box I checked off on my college application. I slogged through a year of accounting and management classes that I couldn’t get interested in. My sophomore year, on a whim, I took Literature of the Jazz Age and Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing, and I found myself thinking about these classes outside of the classroom: I imagined Langston Hughes’s character Simple rambling down a busy Harlem street; I felt driven to write at length about my experience as a counselor at a fledgling summer camp for children from low-income families. In short, literature and writing just clicked for me. So I filled out a change-of-major form, following what I guess I could have defined as my…fervor. (Let’s not use the “passion” word yet.) I was, then, an English major....

Nine years out of college my English degree is beginning to “pay off” in the traditional college-to-job equation, if that’s how we want to look at it. At the end of the semester I was promoted to a full-time lecturer at Penn State. While I’m not tenure-track, my salary jumped, and more importantly the job comes with good health coverage and benefits. But finding this sort of stability took longer than it did for most of my high school and college friends, and most of them out-earn me. Sure, maybe I could have taken my degree to a PR firm or law school or, well, Target or stayed at any of my past jobs, but at the end of the day, I’m following what years later I’m realizing is my passion. I’ve felt plain happier, far more intellectually challenged and emotionally fulfilled teaching at the college level than I have as that football intern or working in alumni relations at a college or tutoring in a writing center, or teaching tenth graders. I’m energized working with college students — I believe truly that every one of them has important ideas, or can develop these, and express them at various levels on paper. As long as they show genuine effort, I will work hard to help them become better writers in whatever their futures hold.

Sometimes you just have to follow your passion and study what you love.

Fundamentalism and Class

Janine Giordano Drake, a graduate student at the University of Illinois and a reader of this blog, is working on a fascinating dissertation entitled "Between Religion and Politics: The Working Class Religious Left, 1886-1936."

In this video (unfortunately the video cuts off after only 10 minutes of what I assume was about a 20 minute talk), Drake presents some of her research on fundamentalism, class, and labor at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.  Drake shows how fundamentalists drew on the organizational tactics of the Labor Temple to get working class people to attend their churches.

Addendum:  Janine's paper is part of a larger session on  "Religion and Politics" that includes presentations on Catholics and Jimmy Carter (Larry McAndrews), Mormons and race (Elise Boxer), fundamentalism during the Great Depresssion (Christopher Schlect), and postwar evangelical Methodism (W. Andrew Tooley).

The War of 1812: The Movie

Whoever made this video has not read Alan Taylor's The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies.  But it is still hilarious. HT: Joe Carter

The Mindset List, 1915

Many of us are familiar with the Beloit College mindset list.  This is the list that helps professors understand the world view of first-year students.  For example, here are a few snippets from the list for the class of 2015:


The Mindset List for the Class of 2015 Andre the Giant, River Phoenix, Frank Zappa, Arthur Ashe and the Commodore 64 have always been dead. Their classmates could include Taylor Momsen, Angus Jones, Howard Stern's daughter Ashley, and the Dilley Sextuplets.

1. There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
2. Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
3. States and Velcro parents have always been requiring that they wear their bike helmets.
4. The only significant labor disputes in their lifetimes have been in major league sports.
5. There have nearly always been at least two women on the Supreme Court, and women have always commanded U.S. Navy ships.  

In the spirit of the Beloit list, English professor Tim Morris has put together the "Mindset List, Class of 1915".  Here is a taste:

The class of 1915 thinks

• What Russo-Japanese War?
• Model T Fords have always been available to the public.
• Mr. Dooley has always been holding forth in The Chicago Post.
• Car windows have always been made of isinglass.
• William Jennings Bryan has always been fat.
• They may think the Haymarket Riot is some kind of rural misunderstanding.
• They have grown up with Coca-Cola.
• The Babcock Carriage Company has always been working on an electric car.

First the National Cathedral...Now the Washington Monument

The National Park Service reported yesterday that the recent earthquake produced a 4-foot crack in the Washington Monumnent.  Here is a taste of an article from NBC News:

Cracking was found in the stones at the top of the Washington Monument Tuesday evening, the National Park Service reported.

The crack was located in one of the triangular faces at the top of the monument.  It runs at an angle, and measures approximately 4-feet long and an inch wide, NPS spokesperson Bill Line said.

The cracking in the Monument was discovered during a secondary inspection, conducted by a helicopter crew Tuesday evening. Engineers on Wednesday morning were working to determine the severity of the damage.

"An outside engineering team will take whatever amount of time they need," Line said. "They are going to do a structural analysis of the crack."

Although the grounds near the Monument reopened on Tuesday, the interior is closed to visitor until further notice.  Authorities put up a fence creating a 150-foot perimeter at the Monument's base.

NPS is confident the Monument will reopen, but it is too early to give an estimate, Line said. He emphasized customer safety.

The National Park Service also temporarily closed the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial and the Old Post Office Tower as a precaution following Tuesday’s earthquake.  The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials reopened at about 7:20 p.m.  The Old Post Office Tower opened at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

 

View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.

Teaching With Social Media

How many of you use social media in the classroom or for other pedagogical purposes? 

As many of you know, I participated in an orientation on social media yesterday with the entire faculty and co-curricular staff at Messiah College. The half-day session was led by Chris Grant, a social media guru and marketer who works with several colleges and universities to help faculty better expand their social media presence.  We heard presentations on how faculty are using Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and LinkedIn to improve their teaching, professional profile, and "web presence."

I did a short (10-minute) presentation on The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  I discussed how I got into blogging, what kind of time commitment I make to the blog each day, how I perceive the blog in my "professional profile," and what others (like you) are saying about the blog.

During the Q&A, Chris Grant asked me if I used the blog as a teaching tool. I said that I do not directly use the blog in my teaching.  I usually do not require students to read it (although some of them do on their own).  But I do think the blog has an indirect influence on my students and especially former students.  I have found that those who did not read the blog when they were undergraduates are now reading it as former college students.  Many of them have told me that they use the blog as a way of continuing their history education and staying connected to the Messiah College History Department.

The more I thought about Chris Grant's question, the more I realized that I am pretty traditional when it comes to teaching.  And I think that this is generally a good thing.  While I certainly use YouTube, PowerPoint (when appropriate), websites, and electronic databases, the core of my teaching centers around reading, discussing, and lecturing about American history in a face-to-face classroom community.  At this point in my career I am willing to explore how I might use social media to tweak my pedagogy (I am actually going to use Skype as a guest speaker in a few college and high school history classes around the country this year), but I am not sure I am ready to depart from a more traditional approach--one that includes a close reading of primary sources in community, the occasional lecture, and the Socratic give-and-take of a flesh and blood classroom.

Having said that, I would be interested in learning more about how and if you use Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media in your history classes.  Ideas?

Cultivating Piety: The Religious World of Joseph Price

This year I have contracted with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to write four essays in Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine.  The essays are focusing on the history of religion in the Keystone State.  Thus far I have written an article about William Penn's "Holy Experiment" and a report on my travels to a few historical sites in central Pennsylvania. 

My third installment is entitled "Cultivating Piety: The Religious World of Joseph Price."  It focuses on the life of a Quaker farmer in Chester County who left a very detailed diary of his daily experiences in the Delaware Valley from 1789-1828.

Here is a taste:

Joseph Price (1752–1828) was a carpenter, coffin-maker, sawmill operator, innkeeper, turnpike supervisor, and farmer who lived in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County. His daily activities were governed, like most ordinary men living in the early American republic, by the relentless regularity of the agricultural calendar and the market economy. Price's economic activities, recorded roughly every day of the year between 1789 and 1828 in the tiny spaces of his diary, offer one of the best pictures of life in southeastern Pennsylvania during the four decades following the American Revolution.

At first glance, one would be hardpressed to describe Price's diary as religious. It mostly includes entries about building houses, harvesting wheat, and conducting business. Yet it was in the midst of performing these daily tasks that Price cultivated personal piety and forged a religious identity. He was a fourth-generation Pennsylvania Quaker who, by all accounts, was a leader in the local meeting. By interspersing spiritual and religious reflections with his writing about business affairs, his diary provides a remarkable glimpse into the way religion was lived at the time. Too often historians of the American religious experience - and, by extension, the Pennsylvania religious experience - focus on the institutional dimensions of religion: houses of worship, the clergy, and congregations and schools. While such an approach is certainly important, so are the manifestations of religious life tucked away in diaries such as Price's. For many ordinary people, the sacred was practiced and cultivated in the midst of the profane.

Read the rest here.

This Week's Patheos Column: Why Conservative Churches Are Growing

In 1972, sociologist Dean Kelley wrote a book entitled Why Conservative Churches are Growing. Kelly, an executive with the mainline and ecumenical National Council of Churches, wanted to know why mainline Protestant denominations were declining in membership and conservative evangelical churches were experiencing rapid growth. He concluded, among other things, that churchgoers wanted to belong to congregations that made demands on their lives. Mainline churches, Kelly argued, were so concerned about image, courtesy, cooperation, and being non-dogmatic that they were failing to attract churchgoers who wanted their churches to be more than community centers. Kelly issued a stern warning to his fellow mainline Protestants: their watered-down version of Christianity was a recipe for disaster.

Evangelicals have been touting Kelly's findings for years. For many of them, Why Conservative Churches are Growing provides sociological evidence for what they knew all along—the Holy Spirit is blessing evangelical churches because they have remained true to the tenets of orthodox Christianity, including the inerrancy of the Bible and the necessity of a born-again-style conversion. During the 1920s the Protestant mainline may have won control of the denominations, but they were unable to win the souls of ordinary Americans.

Read the rest here.  And if you like what you read, feel free to click the "like" button.

Today's Presentation

Thanks to all of you who responded to my request for help with my Messiah College blogging presentation. 

All went well.  A few people I talked with were quite impressed that I was able to round-up so many comments from blog readers in such a short time period.  And such a diverse vocational mix! (Relatively speaking, of course). I was able to share remarks from a history professor, a religion and women's studies professor, a Ph.D student in American history, a United Methodist pastor, a Christian publishing house editor, a Messiah College colleague from the Math department, and a high school teacher.  (I should also note that the United Methodist pastor's remark about his high school daughter's interest in making an admissions visit to Messiah drew applause from the audience!)

Once again, I appreciate the fact that you read The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Keep reading.

Readers: I Need Your Help!

Tomorrow morning is Messiah College's "Community of Educators" Day.  This is the day when all the professors and co-curricular educators gather together for training on a particular topic or theme that is pertinent to our work at a Christian liberal arts college and our development as scholar- teachers.  This year's topic is social media.

My provost has asked me to do a ten-minute talk on blogging, particularly as it relates to my work here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  Ten minutes is not a lot of time to cover all that we do here, so I am turning to you.

What do you think I should say?

I need to come up with something by 8am tomorrow, so don't be shy. If you come up with something good, I just may quote you during the talk! I hope you will seriously consider this.  It would be great if I can get up there tomorrow morning with a few good words from my readers.  Thanks!

National Cathedral Damaged During Earthquake

From the Huffington Post:

A spokesman for Washington National Cathedral says at least three of the four pinnacles on the central tower have fallen off and the central tower appears to be leaning.The pinnacles are the top stones on the cathedral's towers.

Richard Weinberg, director of communications for the cathedral, said the cathedral has been evacuated and stone masons are assessing the damage.

The Washington National Cathedral is an Episcopal Church landmark in the capital. Located in the northwest quadrant of the city near foreign embassies and the vice president's residence, the gothic-like structure is among the tallest in the city. It's historically been the site of funerals and memorials for presidents and statesmen.

Gerson: Bachmann and Perry Are Not Dominionists

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson does not deny that Republican presidential candidates Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry have opened themselves up to a host of criticism with some of their recent remarks, but they are not planning a theocratic take-over of the United States.  In other words, they are not "Dominionists" or "Reconstructionists." 

As Gerson puts it, there is a difference between "religiously informed moral reasoning in politics" and "a kind of soft theocracy." 

He writes:


Bachmann is prone to Tea Party overstatement and religious-right cliches. She opened herself to criticism by recommending a book that features Southern Civil War revisionism. But there is no evidence from the careers of Bachmann or Perry that they wish to turn America into a theocratic prison camp.

If this kind of attack sounds familiar, it should. It is not just an argument but a style of argument. Critics of a public figure take a marginal association and turn it into a gnostic insight — an interpretive key that opens all doors. Barack Obama was once trained in a community organization that was associated with Saul Alinsky , whose organization was reportedly subject to communist influence. And we all know what that means. Or: Obama’s father was a socialist, anti-colonial Luo tribesman, and, well, like father like son. Never mind that that there is no serious evidence of political philosophic influence of father on son.

Many have become unhinged by the interpretive power of a simple idea. In the case of Dominionism, paranoia is fed by a certain view of church-state relations — a deep discomfort with any religious influence in politics: Even if most evangelicals are not plotting the reconstruction of Cromwell’s Commonwealth, they nevertheless want to impose their sectarian views on secular institutions. It is a common argument among secular liberals that the application of any religiously informed moral reasoning in politics is a kind of soft theocracy. Dominionism is merely its local extension.

E-Card of the Day

HT: Alan Bloom

The Annual Reading of Washington's Letter to the Touro Synagogue

When I lecture on Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, I am often asked about what the founding fathers thought about religious liberty for Jews.  While there were not many Jews in revolutionary America (probably between 1300 and 3000 Jews in a population of close to 3 million), nearly all of the founders defended the right of Jews to worship freely.  In most states, Jews were not permitted to hold political office, but they could practice their faith without persecution.

When asked about Jews I often refer to George Washington's 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.  (You can read it here).  In this letter, Washington affirmed the right of the Touro Jews to worship according to their consciences.

I learned recently that Washington's is read annually in the Touro Synagogue.  Read all about it at The Providence Journal.

BTW, for a solid treatment of Jews in early America, I recommend Bill Pencak's Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800 (University of Michigan Press, 2005).

David Brooks on Courage, Deference, and Thankfulness

Do you want to live a life of service to others in the developing world (or anywhere for that matter)?  David Brooks writes that to be successful in such a mission one needs to cultivate the virtues of courage, deference, and thankfulness.  Here is a taste:

Many Americans go to the developing world to serve others. A smaller percentage actually end up being useful. Those that do have often climbed a moral ladder. They start out with certain virtues but then develop more tenacious ones.

The first virtue they possess is courage, the willingness to go off to a strange place. For example, Blair Miller was a student at the University of Virginia who decided she wanted to teach abroad. She Googled “teach abroad” and found a woman who had been teaching English in a remote town in South Korea and was looking for a replacement.

Miller soon found herself on a plane and eventually at a small airport in southern South Korea. There was no one there to greet her. Eventually, the airport closed and no one came to pick her up. A monk was the only other person around and eventually he, too, left and Miller was alone.

Finally, a van with two men rolled in and scooped her up. After a few months of struggle, she had a fantastic year at a Korean fishing village, the only Westerner for miles and miles. Now she travels around Kenya, Pakistan and India for the Acumen Fund, a sort of venture capital fund that invests in socially productive enterprises, like affordable housing and ambulance services.

8 Ways Conservatives Misremember American History

Too often the past is used and manipulated for partisan gain.  Bernard Bailyn once called this "indoctrination by historical example."  This week The Nation is running a piece by Zachary Newkirk, a senior history major at Cornell University, listing eight ways that conservatives have misremembered American history.  Since we strive to be "fair and balanced" here at "The Way of Improvement Leads Home," I would like my readers to head to the comments section and offer examples of the ways liberals have misremembered history as well.

In the meantime, here is Newkirk's list:

1.  Michelle Bachmann on the founding fathers and slavery.
2.  Secession was fine, dandy, and legal.
3.  Forgetting September 11?
4.  Mike Huckabee's "Learn Our History" cartoon series.
5.  The New Deal did harm.
6.  David Barton (Thanks for the plug, Zachary!)
7.  Textbook Textbook Revisions
8.  Jim Crow wasn't that bad.

I should note that we have addressed #1, #4, #6 and #7 here at the blog.

And now for the liberal misuses of history.  Who is up for the challenge?

Conversation in an Age of Online Chat

When I was writing The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America, I spent a lot of time reading about the eighteenth-century idea of "conversation." Philip Vickers Fithian spent a lot of time conversing with his various friends and relations.  Such conversation usually focused on the latest popular novel, some aspect of moral philosophy, or a theological topic.  The ultimate end of conversation was the self-improvement of the participants. What struck me most was that this kind of conversation was happening in the remote and rural confines of eighteenth-century New Jersey.  It was indeed a "rural Enlightenment."

The editors of the web magazine N+1 describe early modern conversation as "an exchange of ideas, a free play of wit."  It was "a vehicle of Enligthenment, fundamental to the self-improvement of civilization."  They then ask: "If talking is one thing, and conversation another, then what is a chat?"

Read the rest of the piece to find out.

U.S. Survey Syllabus: DONE

Classes at Messiah College begin next Tuesday and I have finally gotten around to writing the syllabus for HIST 141: "United States Survey to 1865."  This course has been my bread and butter for the last decade.  It is my favorite course to teach.  This year the course has 126 students enrolled.  They will hear me (or my co-teacher, Cathay Snyder) lecture on Wednesdays and Fridays and then meet in six different seminars (taught mostly by Cathay) on Mondays and Tuesdays.

I use the abridged version of Of the People: A History of the United States as my main textbook.  It is co-written by James Oakes, Michael McGerr, Jeanne Boydston, Nick Cullather, and Jan Lewis.

The only other secondary sources I use are James Merrell's essay "The Indians's New World: The Catawba Experience" and an unpublished essay of my own entitled "The Power to Transform: A Christian Reflection on the Study of the Past."  I use Merrell because it is the most teachable scholarly essay I have ever encountered.  My own piece provides much of the framework for my forthcoming book by the same title.  The response to this essay has been very positive since I first wrote it a few years ago.

I also use Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's  A Midwife's Tale documentary video.

Here are my lecture titles:

The Old World: Mercantilism
Tobacco Culture in the Early Chesapeake
The Old World: Protestantism
"City on a Hill": Puritans in America
The Middle Colonies
The Enlightenment in America
The First Great Awakening
The Colonies on the Eve of the American Revolution
The Coming of the American Revolution: Part 1
The Coming of the American Revolution: Part 2
The American Revolution
The Articles of Confederation
The Collapse of Virtue
A Federalist Vision for the United Srates
Cementing an International Reputation
Jeffersonian America: Part 1
Jeffersonian America: Part 2
The Market Economy in the North
The Southern Economy
The Age of Jackson
The Age of Democracy
Manifest Destiny
The Sectional Results of Manifest Destiny
The Coming of the Civil War
The Civil War: Part 1
The Civil War: Part 2
Lincoln's Civil War

Students read the following primary sources:

"The Trial Transcript of Anne Hutchinson"
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Federalist #10
The United States Constitution
William Lloyd Garrison, "To the Public" (from The Liberator)
George Fitzhugh, "The Blessings of Slavery"
Thomas Dew, "Defense of Slavery"
Excerpts from Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Frederick Douglass, Narrative
Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address."


We are looking forward to another good semester.

The Pope is Right

Last week Benedict XVI spoke to a group of "young university professors" in Madrid (as part of the World Youth Day events) about the need for higher education that goes beyond merely technical skills.  Here is a taste:

The theme of the present World Youth Day – “Rooted and Built Up in Christ, and Firm in the Faith” (cf. Col 2:7) can also shed light on your efforts to understand more clearly your own identity and what you are called to do. As I wrote in my Message to Young People in preparation for these days, the terms “rooted, built up and firm” all point to solid foundations on which we can construct our lives (cf. No. 2).

But where will young people encounter those reference points in a society which is increasingly confused and unstable? At times one has the idea that the mission of a university professor nowadays is exclusively that of forming competent and efficient professionals capable of satisfying the demand for labor at any given time. One also hears it said that the only thing that matters at the present moment is pure technical ability. This sort of utilitarian approach to education is in fact becoming more widespread, even at the university level, promoted especially by sectors outside the University. All the same, you who, like myself, have had an experience of the University, and now are members of the teaching staff, surely are looking for something more lofty and capable of embracing the full measure of what it is to be human. We know that when mere utility and pure pragmatism become the principal criteria, much is lost and the results can be tragic: from the abuses associated with a science which acknowledges no limits beyond itself, to the political totalitarianism which easily arises when one eliminates any higher reference than the mere calculus of power. The authentic idea of the University, on the other hand, is precisely what saves us from this reductionist and curtailed vision of humanity.