Departments

;

Cliopatria

  • Jan 8, 2005

    Here and There, In Absentia

    by Cliopatria

    Chris Sullentrop of Slate does a well-deserved critique of Alberto Gonzalez’s performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It certainly wasn’t a good news day for the administration: how can providing government funds to a sympathetic columnist for the purposes of promoting his commentary about government programs not produce a major scandal?

  • Jan 7, 2005

    A Valuable Baseball

    by Cliopatria

    Just when you think pro athletes can't get any more selfish: from today's Boston Globe, the Red Sox backup first baseman, Doug Mientkiewicz, is refusing club requests that he return the baseball that was part of the final out in the 2004 World Series. (The ball was tossed to him to make the final out.) The Red Sox want to place the ball on display, along with other souvenirs of their
  • Jan 7, 2005

    AHA Day One: books and jobs

    by Cliopatria

    I split my time on the first day of the conference between blogs and books. After working my way through about half of the book room, I ran into Rebunk/Big Tent bloggers Tom Bruscino and Stephen Tootle, and ended up having dinner with them and a half-dozen other friends and acquaintances of theirs. As so often happens when bloggers get together, we didn't actually talk about blogging much; mostly we talked about hiring, interviews, historians we know and admire (which does include a few blogg

  • Jan 7, 2005

    Here and There, In Absentia

    by Cliopatria

    Great column in today's Washington Post offering a"profile in courage" to Colorado Republican Joel Hefley--chair of the Ethics Committee and among the few Repubs to take on Tom DeLay.

    As the bodies of 7000 more of its victims were discovered in Indonesia, a list of the 12 most inane public comments related to the tsunam

  • Jan 7, 2005

    Insurgents

    by Cliopatria

    They seemed lost and desperate. They lost control of their major strongholds. They scattered when attacked. It was said that they continued to fight only because they didn't know they had lost. Many were willing to give up life itself in the cause of ousting the occupying power.

    The insurgents of Iraq? No. This is the way David Hackett Fischer describes the American Patriots in December of 1776 on the eve of Washington's great triumph at Trenton in the new book, Washington's C
  • Jan 6, 2005

    When I Hate to Apologize ...

    by Cliopatria

    Once, when I was a teenager, a young lady and I were parked out in front of her house fairly late into the night. We were doing what a young man and a young lady sometimes do at the end of a pleasant evening together. Apparently, we were so pre-occupied that we missed it when her mother flashed the porch light off and on several times and several times again. But we came up for air when her mother came out to the car and knocked on the window. Fast end to long night. My mother made me call the y
  • Jan 6, 2005

    Books Coming Out in 2005

    by Cliopatria

    David Mehegan, writing n the Boston Globe about some of the important history books scheduled to appear this coming year:


    In nonfiction, the Founding Fathers continue to inspire new books, the biggest of which will undoubtedly be "1776," McCullough's first book since the blockbuster "John Adams." Beginning with the winter siege of Boston and ending with the battle of Trenton on Christmas Day, the book focuses on the characters and events of the most fatefu
  • Jan 6, 2005

    A Popular History of the United States ...

    by Cliopatria

    In comments below, Van Hayhow asks for recommendations of a popular history of the United States. As I said, I wouldn't recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Larry Schweikart's and Michael Allen's A Patriot's History of the United States. I've used and liked Carl Degler's Out of Our Pas
  • Jan 6, 2005

    Pre-Conference Thoughts from Seattle

    by Cliopatria

    Reading over the conference program on the plane, I was struck by a few thoughts:
    • There are a lot of panels on religion. If you include the affiliated sessions on church and religious history, there is a really substantial and active scholarship on American religious history. Not much on Islam or Judaism (though there's at least one panel which includes papers on both which looks interesting) though there is one must-see (for me: I'm teaching 20c China this semester) panel on Chinese Musl
  • Jan 6, 2005

    Here and There, In Absentia

    by Cliopatria

    My colleague Ralph Luker is much more widely read on the web than I am, but as he and most of the Cliopatriarchs are in Seattle for the AHA, a pale substitute for his daily briefing:

    --The day's biggest political news comes from California, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for the state to move to a non-partisan redictricting format, though by a panel of judges rather than a commission. As he poi

  • Jan 5, 2005

    Hiring Criteria

    by Cliopatria

    Could someone explain the following to me in reference to this job posting:

    1. Can you selectively hire on the basis of religion?
    2. As a candidate, how does one write an essay on the relationship between Christianity and History? I keep imagining it as an essay assignment in an intro class.

    And, please don't think that my question is facitious. I really want to know how one can"not discrim
  • Jan 5, 2005

    Norming the grades

    by Cliopatria

    I'm home from England (thanks, Ralph, for the link), where I spent some time talking with my brother (a lecturer in English Lit at Exeter) about the differences between American and English universities.

    One difference that struck me as remarkable was the lack of autonomy my brother and his colleagues have over grading. In order to make sure that there is a uniform (or near uniform) standard of grading, my brother and his colleagues read samples of each other's students' papers. T
  • Jan 5, 2005

    Noted Here and There ...

    by Cliopatria

    In 1934 and 1935, Shotaro Shimomura (1883-1944), a Japanese businessman and photographer, toured the world and took beautiful photographs. You can see them on-line here.

    You may not think that there's a natural alliance in the United States between evangelicals and intellectuals. Harvard Law Professor William Stuntz does and he writes about it in"Faculty Clubs and Church Pews

  • Jan 5, 2005

    Visual Deaths: Freas and Eisner

    by Cliopatria

    Two men who shaped our visual environments have passed away. Will Eisner and Frank Kelly Freas. If you don't recognize either of those names, you are a passive victim of your graphical environment, because you almost certainly have been exposed to and most probably affected by their work. For starters, check out their home websites:

  • Jan 5, 2005

    A violation of privacy?

    by Cliopatria

    A friend of mine, thrown into the academic job market whirlwind, has reported to me an experience that strikes me as outrageous. My friend applied for a post at a certain university (I will not name the institution, but it is located in Middletown, Connecticut). My friend did not get the job. To its credit, rather than ignoring the application or issuing a belated rejection notice, as is too often the case, the department in question sent an e-mail form letter turning my friend down. However, li
  • Jan 4, 2005

    For the AHA Bound

    by Cliopatria

    For those of you heading to Seattle, good luck, fare thee well, have fun. I especially want to wish the best for Tom and Steve, the married (note: not to one another; Tootle could not stand the smell), grown up, responsible two-thirds of Rebunk, both of whom will be looking to slay the conference interview dragon.
  • Jan 4, 2005

    More from Columbia

    by Cliopatria

    Jacob Gershman, higher education reporter for the New York Sun, continues to be one step ahead of the rest of the New York media on the Columbia MEALAC Department’s continuing scandal. In this morning’s paper, Gershman reveals how former MEALAC chairman Hamid Dabashi responds to criticism, and also raises troubling questions about the degree of student intimidation that has been tolerated in MEALAC classrooms.

    It turns out that three yea