Thursday, June 30, 2005

History Carnival XI

Welcome to the Eleventh History Carnival! We have a great selection of links this time around; thanks to all those who submitted or nominated the links that made this possible.

You have several reading options.

(1) You can read right through. You know you want to do it.

(2) You can focus on a special section. (UPDATE#2: Thanks to Richard for pointing out the obvious error in my name anchors, which goes to show how long it's been since I've used any. The section links should be more amenable now.)
Special Thanks
Main Attractions
Host's Discussion Pick
Procession of the Cliopatriarchs
Special Panel
Fun and Phantasmagoria

(3) You can read the posts marked , which are special picks, the (in my view) absolute must-reads for today's busy History Carnival crowd.

(4) If you are having trouble with the images, or just dislike images, I am posting a version of this Carnival at Houyhnhnm Land that will contain fewer images.

Because of the size of the Carnival, I arbitrarily capped the number of entries at 35. Unfortunately, this means that not all submitted and nominated links could be included. If yours weren't, apologies; something had to be done to make the list manageable. Posts that received multiple nominations (there were several) received an automatic place in the Carnival, once it was determined that they met the basic History Carnival criteria; after that I selected on the basis of my best judgment, aiming for a diverse but content-rich selection.

Special Thanks Section

Special thanks to James Davila of "Paleojudaica", Bora Zivkovic of "Science and Politics", and John MacKay of "archy" for their early submissions. Since they made my job much easier, it seems fitting to start with them.

1. At Paleojudaica, Jim Davila discusses a number of wild errors at the Egyptian State Information's "Jerusalem in History" website:
Speaking of Historical Revisionism

2. At Science and Politics, Coturnix reviews Jared Diamond's Collapse, correcting some of the more serious misinterpretations of the book's argument:
Books: "Collapse" by Jared Diamond

3. At archy, John discusses the important role of alcohol in civilization:
Friday night thoughts on booze
 

Main Attractions Section

4. Alun tells us about the illicit antiquities market:
You too can help fund Islamic terrorists with a few pretty antiquities
You should also check out Alun's discussions of Stonehenge:
Stonehenge astronomy

5. At Chapati Mystery, dacoit discusses some puzzling issues involved in historical narration by looking at Pakistan's first Governor-General, Muhammad Ali Jinnah:
Our Sahib

6. At Dissoi Blogoi, Michael Pakaluk discusses the method of history of philosophy:
Is There a Special Method in the History of Philosophy?

7. At Early Modern Notes, Sharon discusses the kinds and symptoms of the historian's illness:
Archive Fever

8. At The Elfin Ethicist, Wilson attempts to lay the foundations for a Christian view of history, in a series called "Glow-worm on a Grass Blade":
Glow-worm on a Grass Blade, I: Humility
This is the first part of a five-part series. You can read the other parts of the series by following the links at the bottom of the posts, or by clicking on the following:
Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five

9. At Frog in a Well - China, Alan Baumler looks at some of the questions about what makes a nation:
Does China Exist?

10. At Horizon, Alan Allport looks at Thucydides's distinction between true and alleged causes:
Some Damn Fool Thing in the Balkans: Thoughts on the Origins of the Peloponnesian War

11. At Is That Legal? Eric Muller discusses the internment of Japanese Americans by looking at two Boy Scouts who attended a Boy Scout Jamboree sixty-two years ago:
Two Scouts

12. At Liberty & Power, Kenneth R. Gregg introduces us to "Red Emma" (1869-1940):
Emma Goldman

13. At Mode for Caleb, Caleb draws a lesson from Dorothy Day's first experience in an American prison:
Is this progress? Part I

14. At Ralph the Sacred River, Ed Cook looks at some issues relevant to the reporting of the oral word:
Rasheed Wallace and the Synoptic Problem

15. At Rites of Passage, Athena discusses quackery and the Afrocentric approach to Egypt:
Reasons behind Quackery, Great Zimbabwe and the Lost City

16. At Spinning Clio, Marc discusses French Canadians in the American Civil War era:
Immigrants and War: French Canadians in the Civil War Era I
This is the first part of a four-part series, adapting the traditional style of a research paper to blog format. You can read the other parts of the series by following the links at the bottom of the posts, or by clicking on the following:
Part Two Part Three Part Four

17. At World History Blog, Miland discusses a flawed argument used by Hawaiian separatists:
Hawaiian Independence?
 

Host's Discussion Pick Section

For this carnival, I've decided to highlight a post that raises issues that I'd like to see discussed more in the blogosphere.

18. At The Little Professor, Miriam Burstein raises questions about how one introduces historical issues into the literary classroom:
Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts
(cross-posted at Cliopatria)

19. The thoughts in Miriam's post are also discussed by Scott Eric Kaufman at Acephalous:
How Literature Registers, Reflects, Represents or Otherwise Transmogrifies Dull Dry History: A Query
(cross-posted at The Valve)

I'm interested in this issue in part because a similar set of questions arises in history of philosophy. Indeed, I suspect these issues are common. The precise form of the problem will vary from discipline to discipline, but will have broad similarities. When I discuss Berkeley's Siris, for instance, as I always try to do when I discuss Berkeley, I always face the issues that come from dealing with a text that in some sense requires a very multidisciplinary approach. It's a philosophical text in the tradition of early modern Christian Platonism, and needs to be discussed to correct a number of very common misperceptions about Berkeley's views. But how? Siris is a complicated work that starts with a speculative discussion about the medical properties of tar-water. To understand why the later, more philosophical, discussion is formulated the way it is, one needs some notion of the background: early eighteenth medicine and chemistry. That takes us back into a very different medical context than exists today; and it's pre-Lavoisier so the chemical approach is utterly foreign to anything anyone's already learned in school. And ultimately I won't be able to devote more than half a lecture, if that, to the subject. Since the whole point is to correct misapprehensions that are far too common, I don't want to introduce new ones by the way I introduce this historical background; but since I'm not seriously going to be able to devote more than half a lecture to it, there's not going to be much more than a sketch available to them anyway. That's just one complicated example, but these kinds of cases raise all sorts of issues about what priority one gives this historical background (in survey courses I deliberately give it a higher priority than most, but that still leaves the question of exactly how high to rank it), about the way in which this historical background is delivered, about what one can expect the students to be able to take in, etc. So I'm very interested in the form these questions take elsewhere, and would like to see more discussion of it.
 

Clioprocession Section

Some interesting nominations and submissions from the Queen of History Weblogs (and perhaps, un día de estos, in the far-off days beyond the Revolution, the undisputed Queen of History), Cliopatria. Let the Clioprocession begin!

20. Ralph Luker reflects on Billy Graham's final crusade and the civil rights movement:
A letter to Billy Graham....

21. Robert KC Johnson considers the factors involved in the decline of Congressional centrism:
Changing Congress

22. Greg James Robinson tells the complicated story of how same-sex marriage became the most public Gay/Lesbian issue:
Same-Sex Marriage: A Victory for Conservatives?

23. Nathanael Robinson discusses the sad decline of the grands magasins:
"La Samar"
(cross-posted at The Rhine River)

24. Rob MacDougall looks at some of the lists of the 'Greatests' that are going around:
The Greatest American Hero

25. Manan Ahmed looks at how a brave woman's refusal to keep silent has begun to crystallize a movement for women's rights in Pakistan:
The Rosa Parks Effect
(cross-posted at Chapati Mystery)
 

Special Panel Section

The topic of our special panel is The Post-Genocidal State.

26. At The Head Heeb, Jonathan Edelstein begins a discussion on the comparative study of post-genocidal countries:
On the commonalities of post-genocidal states

27. Bill Wallo continues the discussion at Wallo World in post belonging to a series on the complexity of the problem of preventing genocide:
Of Guns and Post-genocidal States

28. In his Livejournal, Randy MacDonald looks at how Turkey fits into Edelstein's criteria:
What's with Turkey and the Armenian Genocide?

29. And Edelstein looks at the issues again in light of the discussion:
Post-genocidal states revisited

Thus ends our special panel; thanks to Jonathan Edelstein and Sharon Howard for calling these posts to my attention. You are welcome to continue the discussion at the above weblogs or on your own weblog.

Fun and Phantasmagoria Section

30. At Ancarett's Abode, ancarett looks at the "Lorem Ipsum" dummy text that is so commonly used in showing off design templates, with several fun relevant links:
Fun for Dummies

31. At Cnytr, Lauren discusses the iconography of the Dominican, Saint Peter Martyr (with lots of links to images):
St. Peter Martyr vrs. Heresy -- shh!

32. At Digital Medievalist, Lisa Spangenberg points us to a new discovery in Lower Saxony:
A New Bog Body: "The Girl of the Uchter Moor"

33. At Japundit, Ampontan tells us about the revival of women's sumo:
When Girls Do It

34. At Philobiblon, Natalie Bennett gives us an interesting story told by Emily Hahn:
Miss Stuart anyone?

35. At Respectful Insolence, Orac looks at the issues involved in that most troublesome of historical analogies:
I fought the Hitler zombie, and the Hitler zombie won...maybe
He follows up with more (less serious) reflections on the Hitler zombie in:
And on the seventh day the Hitler zombie rested (I hope)
We certainly need to laugh sometimes at how clumsy we are in using historical analogies -- the Hitler zombie being the worst case. A thought for further research: If the Hitler zombie feeds on politicians' brains, how does it manage to find enough food to keep going? [UPDATE: And Orac has a plausible answer here.]


Thank you for attending this History Carnival!

History Carnival Button The next History Carnival (15 July) will be hosted by Caleb McDaniel at Mode for Caleb. Send your submissions to:

calebmcd[at]gmail[dot]com


Carnivalesque ButtonCarnivalesque, the happening place for pre-modern history, will be hosted by Jonathan Dresner at Cliopatria on July 5. You still have time to send your submissions to:

dresner[at]hawaii[dot]edu


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