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Cliopatria

  • Jan 18, 2006

    Things Noted Here and There

    by Cliopatria

    Scott McLemee,"Notes from the Underground," Inside Higher Ed, 18 January, sees a shift taking place in the creation of virtual academic communities. He glimpsed it at gatherings around the MLA convention in Washington; and might have seen it again in similar gatherings around the AHA convention in Philadelphia.

    Scott Jaschik,"The New Class Monitors,"

  • Jan 17, 2006

    Jill Carroll

    by Cliopatria

    You must have heard of CSM reporter Jill Carroll who has been abducted in Iraq. Today brings the heart-wrenching report of a video and demands from her abductors.

    Here you will find her reporting for CSM [via natasha].

    Her translator, Alan Enwiyah, was killed during her abduction. Riverbe
  • Jan 17, 2006

    The Kennedy Court

    by Cliopatria

    My colleague, Oscar Chamberlain, correctly notes below that today's Supreme Court decision on Oregon's assisted suicide law gives the lie to any argument for consistency by the Court's conservatives on issues associated with federalism.

    The decision was significant for another reason, however: it reminds us that even though Samuel Alito's likely elevation will create a block of four conservatives unlike anything seen on the Court since the

  • Jan 17, 2006

    Reality Bites

    by Cliopatria

    Victor Davis Hanson is afraid. He is frightened, first, by"Islamic fascists" who wish to destroy the values of Western Civilization; and second, by his certainty that we are nearly alone in a fight for our lives, abandoned by an international community bent on appeasement. In an anguished Letter to the Europeans this month, Hanson tells the people of that continent that they have"dismantled [their] armed forces," an act that fo
  • Jan 17, 2006

    Shadows and Fog: An Example

    by Cliopatria

    This story, written by an Associated Press reporter who accompanied American soldiers on a raid against the home of a suspected terrorist cell leader in Mosul, illustrates a half-dozen different themes that I have tried, or will try, to get at it in my series of posts on the state of the war. It's a five-minute read, and well worth the time.
  • Jan 16, 2006

    Bachelet's Victory

    by Cliopatria

    I thought the Washington Post did a particularly good job of covering the Chilean election--in sharp contrast to much of the US media.

    I just watched a segment of Lou Dobbs, in which he took time from his usual denunciations of illegal immigrants long enough to describe Michelle Bachelet's triumph as the latest in a string of leftist victories in Latin America--followed up by a map of th

  • Jan 16, 2006

    Whatever happened to the imagination?

    by Cliopatria

    [X-posted from The Little Professor.]

    As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or p

  • Jan 16, 2006

    Googling Kantorowicz; Considering Irving

    by Cliopatria

    I did a little googling on Kantorowicz in response to Hugo's discussion of Norman Cantor. It was going to be a comment, but it got out of hand. It's not research, exactly, but it was interesting.

    I found this which seems to suggest that Cantor was using the term"Nazi" ideologically, rather than literally, but we don't today generally distinguish between belief-holders and party-card-hol

  • Jan 16, 2006

    Things Noted Here and There

    by Cliopatria

    Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig,"Web of Lies? Historical Knowledge on the Internet," First Monday, December 2005. Cohen and Rosenzweig argue that internet-found information is more likely to be correct than not; and Cohen's H-Bot is more candid about the likelihood of its yielding a correct answer than most of us. Thanks to Jeremy Boggs for the tip.

    Juan Cole,"

  • Jan 16, 2006

    The Historian as Soldier: Shadows and Fog (2)

    by Cliopatria

    Chris Bray, a member of HNN blog, Cliopatria, is a graduate student in history at UCLA, now on duty in Kuwait with the US Army. This blog entry is one in a series recording his reflections on his experiences. Click here to read the introduction to this series. Click here to read part one.

    Last September, American and Iraqi troops swept through the northern Iraqi city of T
  • Jan 16, 2006

    Institutionalizing Bias

    by Cliopatria

    I'm participating in a winter-term project at Williams, where the EphBlog is analyzing the college's new"diversity" initiative. A good hint of the initiative's direction comes in the identity of the sole consultant brought aboard to discuss"faculty issues." Evelyn Hu-DeHart was chair of the ethnic studies department at Colorado when Ward Churchill was hired, has
  • Jan 14, 2006

    Three Notes

    by Cliopatria

    The Organization of American Historians and the National Council on Public History will hold their conventions jointly at the Hilton Washington in Washington, D. C., on 19-22 April. The program for the conventions is online.

    The new volume of the online Journal of Southern Religion is up. It features work by Edward Blum, Fitzhugh Brundage, Allison Dorsey, Paul Harvey, Charles Lippy, A

  • Jan 14, 2006

    Time Out

    by Cliopatria

    I'm not planning to post in the"Shadows and Fog" series over the weekend, in part because the army office where I work is deluged with visitors who are keeping us busy. I'll post again on Monday morning. In the meantime, this is a link (in PDF format) to a remarkable article by British Army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster that was recently published in a U.S. Army journal, Military Review. My
  • Jan 14, 2006

    The Historian as Soldier: Shadows and Fog (1)

    by Cliopatria

    Chris Bray, a member of HNN blog, Cliopatria, is a graduate student in history at UCLA, now on duty in Kuwait with the US Army. This blog entry is one in a series recording his reflections on his experiences. Click here to read the introduction to this series. At the bottom of this post:"Notes and Caveats."

    In the first weeks of the American occupation of Iraq, two reporters from the Washington Post joined a U.S. Army patrol as

  • Jan 13, 2006

    How Did Pluto Get Its Name?

    by Cliopatria

    Venetia Phair isn't a name that immediately springs to mind when you mention astronomy.

    But the retired teacher from Epsom in Surrey has left an indelible signature on our map of the Solar System.

    Now 87 years of age, Venetia Phair (née Burney) is the only person in the world who can claim to have named a planet.

    In 1930, at just 11 years of age, Mrs Phair suggested the title Pluto for the newly discovered ninth planet. ...

    The name proposed
  • Jan 12, 2006

    The New, New Old*

    by Cliopatria

    I'd almost trade in my four earned degrees to be an upper class student at Swarthmore this semester. Have a look at Tim Burke's syllabus for his"History of the Future, Spring 2006." It's hard to imagine a more interesting course.

    If you haven't checked Cliopatria's History Blogroll lately, you may not know that it continues to grow. It includes about 300 history blogs, includin