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Cliopatria

  • Feb 10, 2006

    Joan Scott and the AAUP

    by Cliopatria

    No AAUP committee is more important than Committee A, which investigates allegations of institutional abuse of the AAUP’s academic freedom guidelines. Princeton’s Joan Scott recently concluded a stint as chair of the committee, for which she remains, through 2008, a consultant. In light of the definition of “academic freedom” offered yesterday, in print, by Scott, she should step down from
  • Feb 10, 2006

    Why?

    by Cliopatria

    Why does the Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Lectureship Program still include Paul Buhle as a"distinguished lecturer"?
    Why does Ward Churchill continue to be a member of the faculty
  • Feb 9, 2006

    History Carnival notice

    by Cliopatria

    The next History Carnival will be hosted on 15 February by Natalie Bennet at Philobiblon.

    Email nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) to natalieben[AT]journ[DOT]freeserve[DOT]co[DOT]uk, or use the submi
  • Feb 8, 2006

    Speaking Truth to Power

    by Cliopatria

    If you live outside the Atlanta area, you probably didn't get wall-to-wall television coverage yesterday of the 6 hour funeral rites for Coretta Scott King at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. I may have been the only person she knew who wasn't invited to speak! The service began at 12 noon and was supposed to end at 3:00 p.m., but that was only when the President and three former presidents made their exit. The rest of us carried on for another three hours.

    Like other funerals for promin

  • Feb 7, 2006

    Cartoons and Sin

    by Cliopatria

    At the risk of re-opening Chris Bray's can of worms regarding the Jyllands-Posten bru-ha-ha, I would like to reflect, briefly, on some of the issues underlying the recent furor. In particular, I want to get at the question of whether Islam really forbids representations of the Prophet Muhammad. However, as a disclaimer, let me state that my expertise lies more within the realm of political theology (siyasa) than in issues of sin and
  • Feb 7, 2006

    Just for fun--Hi Ho, Shekel!

    by Cliopatria

    Not long ago, Andrea Most of the University of Toronto produced a book called MAKING AMERICANS: JEWS AND THE BROADWAY MUSICAL. The work discusses the ways American Jews shaped the culture of the Broadway musical in its Golden Age and used it to express central tropes in their life and identity as outsiders. A reading of it has produced astounding results.

    One of the centrepieces of Most’s book is a chapter on Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical “Oklahoma!” and

  • Feb 6, 2006

    NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 12, #6; 6 February 2006)

    by Cliopatria

    SPECIAL POSTING!


    PRESIDENT SUBMITS FY 2007 BUDGET – BUT IS IT DEAD ON ARRIVAL?
    After a weekend of strategic leaks announcing various aspects of the president’s budget proposal, on 6 February 2006 the White House officially submitted to Congress its $2.7-trillion budget proposal designed to fund the operations of the federal government in FY 2007. For a variety of reasons Washington insiders are already debating whether the budget is DoA – “Dead on Arrival.” After it
  • Feb 6, 2006

    McPherson's folly?

    by Cliopatria

    This week HNN in its section on "doyens" of History (“Deans” to the Anglophones), features an extended article in praise of Professor James M. McPherson, the eminent specialist on the American Civil War. I note that among the long list of writings produced by Professor McPherson, nowhere is mentioned his short book "Is Blood Thicker Than Water?"(1998), his single work outside the field of the Civil War and abolitionism, and the one in which (pace David Walsh’s comments) McPhe
  • Feb 6, 2006

    A note on Betty Friedan

    by Cliopatria

    As everyone has been saying, the icons of another era are fast leaving us. The latest, of course, is Betty Friedan, who died Saturday at 85. Almost everyone in the feminist blogosphere has written about her passing, and there is much that is good and interesting to read.

    I wrote yesterday that I had mixed feelings about Friedan's legacy. On the one hand, there is no question that she deserves tremendous credit for helping launch the revival of the feminist movement in the 1960s,
  • Feb 6, 2006

    "Freedom" and the Jyllands Posten

    by Cliopatria

    Grading undergraduate papers at UCLA, I was always amazed by the chasm between performance and expectation. The student who was supposed to turn in a well-argued five-page evaluation on the course reading, and who instead handed in five pages of blockquoted Wikipedia entries in random order? Shocked -- shocked! -- by his F. He threatened to appeal to the professor, to give me a bad evaluation, to...to...to... He was so spectacularly beside himself he could barely think of all the horrible things
  • Feb 6, 2006

    Knit Hats and Other Things

    by Cliopatria

    James H. Johnston,"The Man in the Knit Cap," Washington Post, 5 February, is a fascinating story of the author's three years of research on the life of Yarrow Mamout. Born in Guinea in about 1736, he was enslaved as a teenager, and sold in Maryland. In 1796, he was freed by his owner and bought property in Georgetown, DC, in 1800. There are two surviving portraits of Yarrow Mamout in his old
  • Feb 5, 2006

    More Dispositions

    by Cliopatria

    NCATE, the national accrediting agency for teacher-training programs, continues to be on the defensive for its new"dispositions" criteria, which has been used at several institutions to screen out potential teachers solely on the basis of their beliefs on social or political issues. Today an op-ed in the Washington Postsummarizes many of the key cases, the first of which went public at Brook