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Cliopatria

  • Dec 16, 2005

    Awards Update

    by Cliopatria

    Nominations are open at Wampum for The Koufax Awards, which are dominated by Lefty blogs. Among history bloggers, Juan Cole's Informed Comment has owned the"Best Expert Blog" category there for two years, but there are also 14 other categories in which history bloggers are eligible. So, go, nominate!
    In other competitions, voting has just ended in Wizbang's
  • Dec 15, 2005

    Proxmire

    by Cliopatria

    The AP reports that former Wisconsin senator William Proxmire, who had been ill for some time, died early this morning.

    We correctly think of Wisconsin as among the more liberal states in the country--it sends two interesting Democrats (Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl) to the Senate, and has a Dem governor (Jim Doyle). Yet when Proxmire was first elected to the Senate in 1957 (in a special election to replace Joe McCarth

  • Dec 14, 2005

    Afri-Wiki?

    by Cliopatria

    I recently posted about some rather atypical academic behavior -- constructively engaging a problem rather than just griping about it. In this case, the issue was the accuracy of Africa-related material in the Wikipedia.

    The discussion at H-Africa has now moved beyond the initial (and still very smart) call for Africanists and their students to write material for the Wikipedia, and has developed into a discussion by some tech-sa
  • Dec 14, 2005

    Historians in Revolt!

    by Cliopatria

    Reacting to the the French National Assembly's dabbling in history and colonial memory, prominent French historians released this statement:

    "... The historian is not a slave to current events. The historian does not dump contemporary ideological schemes on the past and does not introduce to past events today's sensibilities. ...

    [Full sta
  • Dec 14, 2005

    An Open Letter to Governor Haley Barbour

    by Cliopatria

    I have sent this op-ed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
    AN OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR

    Dear Governor Barbour,

    At about 11:30 p.m. on 26 December 2001, the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force conducted a drug raid on the duplex apartments of Jamie Smith and Cory Maye at Prentiss, Mississippi. When a significant amount of marijuana was found in Smith's apartment, he was arrested without incid
  • Dec 14, 2005

    More Noted Things

    by Cliopatria

    Emanuele Ottolenghi,"Europe's ‘Good Jews'," Commentary, n.d., is sharply critical of those European Jews who have recently claimed that, in order to be true to Judaism, they must repudiate Zionism. [On a minor point, former Labour member of Commons, Oona King, is one of the Jews Ottolenghi criticizes, but he gets her parentage wrong. Her father, Preston T. King,
  • Dec 13, 2005

    CELEBRATE WINTER AND THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS AT THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

    by Cliopatria

    New York -- To celebrate the winter season, the New-York Historical Society is presenting “Winter Wonderland,” an exhibition of holiday and winter-themed art and artifacts from the permanent collection on display through January, 2006. The exhibition features the handsome bureau desk on which Moore is said to have written the poem, as well as a copy of the poem in his own handwriting. Moore’s work inspired Robert Weir’s charming 1837 painting of St. Nicholas, also featured in the exhibition.
  • Dec 13, 2005

    Things Noted Here and There

    by Cliopatria

    Rodney Stark,"How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science," CHE, 2 December. I'm probably more sympathetic to Stark's basic argument than several of my colleagues, but don't get me started on sociologists trying to do history on a grand scale.
    Update: In comments, Manan Ahmed, Jonathan Reynolds, and Brian Ulrich give Professor Stark the old one-two-three punches.

    Cliopatria's co

  • Dec 13, 2005

    Wiki-Solutions and Teaching

    by Cliopatria

    Over on H-Africa there is yet another discussion of the Wikipedia going on.

    Notably, however, this one isn't a grump-fest about the (well established) failings of the Wikipedia. Rather, it is an unusually constructive discussion about how Africanists can help improve the Africa-related material available and thus utilize the popularity of the Wikipedia to help get accurate African in
  • Dec 13, 2005

    The end of innocence: Picturing her: images of girlhood, an exhibition on at the McCord museum

    by Cliopatria

    In the painting, a girl sits on a rope swing in a woodland clearing, ankles crossed primly. She's wearing a straw hat, clutching the ropes, eyes focused on the viewer. She may be outdoors and on a swing, but there's an aura of stillness about her.

    Created in 1889, James MacDonald Barnsley's watercolour Young Girl on a Swing reflects the Victorian lens through which girls were viewed, says Concordia University art historian Loren Lerner. Constrained by the society in which they lived
  • Dec 13, 2005

    Library of Congress exhibits papers of Benjamin Franklin on the occasion of what would be his 300th birthday

    by Cliopatria

    A young French damsel seems to be polishing Ben Franklin's bald pate with a feather duster in the hand-colored lithograph depicting his reception at the Court of France in 1778.

    But it's not a feather duster, says Gerard W. Gawalt, manuscript historian and curator of the exhibition, Ben Franklin: In His Own Words, which opens today at the Library of Congress.

    "It's supposed to be a laurel wreath," he says.

    The lithograph is among 75 items from th
  • Dec 12, 2005

    AHC #2 and counting

    by Cliopatria

    亜史祭二 Asian History Carnival #2 is up at Munnin, and Konrad has done a very nice job, with everything from lost tribes (and losing"tribes") to colonial Korea and ketchup. The running discussion of the continuum of discourses, from blogging to newsletters to journals, and the way they can reinforce each other and deepen our scholarly activities adds a lovely layer of
  • Dec 12, 2005

    The Jewel in the Meter Stick

    by Cliopatria

    If Niall Ferguson redeemed British imperialism (a debatable point), did he redeem all imperialism?

    France’s National Assembly as been debating a bill (loi du 23 février) to create a curriculum on France’s imperial legacy. The proposal, part of an effort to reconcile with Algeria, when UMP deputy Christian Vanneste insisted on an amendment (article 4)
  • Dec 12, 2005

    The Dispositions Crisis

    by Cliopatria

    Just out from the Chronicle is the first comprehensive article on the misuse of"dispositions" in teacher-training programs. (The concept has been used to screen out ideologically unacceptable prospective public school teachers on the basis of their bad"dispositions.") Two important revelations, both from NCATE president Arthur Wise. First, Wise concedes that in 2002, the organi
  • Dec 12, 2005

    Alexander Speaks Out

    by Cliopatria

    Today's Chronicle has coverage of Lamar Alexander's Friday appearance before the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

    The Tennessee senator contended that the academy's lack of intellectual diversity is hampering efforts for sustainable public funding."When I go to talk to people about funding for higher education," he noted,"the single

  • Dec 12, 2005

    Analogy as Prediction

    by Cliopatria

    Can someone explain, seriously, to this non-Americanist [in oh-so-many ways] what is George W. Bush's intent in continuously comparing Iraqis to America's founders? Is the intention to highlight America's role as the failed imperial power? Or that there is a civil war coming soon in Iraq?