Check out Steven Mintz’s piece at Inside Higher Ed. Anyone who reads this blog will know that I agree with him. I’ve staked a lot on Mintz’s claim in the title of this post A taste: I understand that at […]
Archives for January 2023
The National Prayer Breakfast is next week. “The Family” is not running it.
Some of you may remember Jeffrey Sharlet’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Most people learned about “The Family” (or The Fellowship) from the 2019 Netflix series based on the book. I reviewed the Netflix […]
Evangelical roundup for January 26, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Evangelicals in Cambodia celebrate 100 years. More on an evangelical church in Boston engaging Black theology. Evangelical and other Protestant views on abortion. LeCrae on YouTube comments: And he is doing free shows in […]
REVIEW: What Hath Law to Do with Democracy?
In de Dijn’s history of freedom, the relationship is not entirely clear
Pope Francis: Homosexuality is “not a crime…but it’s a sin”Â
Francis recently spoke to the Associated Press: A taste: Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ […]
The National Endowment for the Humanities announces a new round of grant winners
Here are few that caught my eye: Azusa Pacific University: Outright: $149,910[Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic-Serving Institutions]Project Director: Nori HenkProject Title: Engaging Ethnic Studies and the HumanitiesProject Description: A three-year curricular development project to create and pilot three new ethnic studies […]
The integrity of history education in colleges and universities is under threat
Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historian Association, and Jeremy C. Young, the senior manager for free expression and education at PEN America, weigh-in on attempts by state legislatures to influence what happens in K-12 history classrooms. Here […]
What can we learn from Antonio Gramsci?
Here is a taste of Jacobin‘s Daniel Denvir’s interview with Yale labor historian Michael Denning: DANIEL DENVIR: This argument has implications for what has often been called “false consciousness”: the question of what to make of people holding beliefs that […]
Historians and Lying
Why are we skeptics to the core?
The Senate loves Taylor Swift
During today’s the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Ticketmaster, several United Senate senators quoted Taylor Swift lyrics: Watch:
Ed Ayers in the “burned-over district”
The historian and his wife Abby recently toured “the quiet farmlands and serene towns along the Erie Canal” once known as the “burned-over district.” As Ayers writes in this piece at Bunk: “Religious revivals, reform movements, and political conflict had […]
Will Kevin McCarthy last more than 66 days as Speaker of the House?
66 days. That’s how long Didius Julianus lasted as Roman emperor in 193 C.E. As historian Edward Watts notes, he “ran out of things to give his allies.” Here is a taste of his piece at Zocalo: Julianus was so […]
The adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb
I am looking forward to watching the documentary “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb“ Here is the trailer: Lizzie Gottlieb, the daughter of Robert Caro’s editor Bob Gottlieb, recently spoke with Literary Hub’s Lisa Liebman.. […]
Can pro-lifers on abortion and Democratic Socialists work together in Brazil?
Check out this very interesting piece at Jacobin by historian Travis Knoll: In short, [Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] respects religion without instrumentalizing or being instrumentalized by it. Such alliances have come with serious challenges, especially on sexual […]
The Author’s Corner with Thomas A. Castillo
Thomas A. Castillo is Associate Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University. This interview is based on his book, Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami (University of Illinois Press, 2022). JF: What led you to […]
Evangelical roundup for January 23, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? More on the contractual relationship between Trump and evangelicals. And here. Evangelical support for Trump in South Carolina is “softening.” A Boston evangelical church is facilitating conversations on Black theology and evangelicalism. Evangelicals resettlement […]
Structural Abortionism
In post-Roe America, who is looking out for the mother?
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Jill Lepore on why the January 6th Committee Report is a “mess” Should colleges take political positions? A. Philip Randolph Turning to the 1990s for the roots of GOP dysfunction. […]
Song of the Day
Commonplace Book #232
There is, in short, even in a conflict with a foe with whom we have little in common the possibility and necessity of living in a dimension of meaning in which the urgencies of the struggle are subordinated to a […]