Biographies Full of Females

Last updated on: February 2, 2017 at 12:19 am By johnturner

Who’s significant? As Chris Gehrz discussed in a recent post, his students — and most publishers — think that a “biography is a book written about a significant individuals.” Most of those individuals happen to be men in positions of political power. Presidents, kings, businessmen, and a few religious leaders thrown into the mix. This problem exists, but somewhat differently, within the subfield of Mormon history. Because Latter-day Saints believe in modern-day prophets, Joseph Smith and his successors loom very... Read more

A Report from the Women’s March on Washington

Last updated on: January 31, 2017 at 11:54 am By Chris Gehrz

Guest blogger Mandy McMichael reflects on her participation in the Women's March on Washington in light of a course she taught on the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama Read more

“…Not Hitler, But Still Kinda Like Hitler”

Last updated on: January 31, 2017 at 1:51 am By Chris Gehrz

Should historians consider analogies between Donald Trump and fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler? While the differences are significant, the similarities are growing difficult to ignore. Read more

Birth and Eating as Resistance Movements

Last updated on: February 5, 2017 at 8:50 pm By Agnes Howard

Should Christians have any particular care about food and eating? Should Christians have any particular care about how women give birth? Those paired questions may not seem natural to treat together. Barbara Katz Rothman, though not addressing a religious angle, joins concerns about food and childbirth in her wittily titled new book, A Bun in the Oven. The very title seems to predetermine her audience–a book about food and babies must aim for female readership, no?–but at once tweaks expectations. As... Read more

Mixing and Merging Languages

Last updated on: January 30, 2017 at 7:47 am By Philip Jenkins

One thing that makes me feel very much at home in Texas is the way people talk Spanish. To explain, I did not grow up in a Spanish speaking area, but the way Latino people navigate between languages reminds me so precisely of the sort-of bilingual environment in which I spent my childhood. Thinking about that world has taught me a lot about how people through history have operated in in such societies. If I describe that Welsh context, you... Read more

Praying for the Best and Preparing for the Worst

Last updated on: February 5, 2017 at 8:51 pm By Kristin Du Mez

Today we welcome Jonathan Couser to the Anxious Bench. Jonathan received an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and a PhD in Medieval History from the University of Notre Dame. He teaches history at Plymouth State University and Granite State College in New Hampshire. The first week of Donald Trump’s presidency has provided ample grist to the mill of political argument, online and otherwise. As we all know, the campaign was unprecedented. Confounding the pundits, he proved impervious to landmine after landmine that... Read more

Because Christian Women Should Fight Against Misogyny too….

Last updated on: April 30, 2019 at 8:38 pm By Beth Allison Barr

Imagine a world rife with misogyny and governed by patriarchy. A world where women are identified primarily by their sexual status (virgins, wives, widows, prostitutes)….where rapists mostly go free….where women go to church more frequently than men, yet are mostly banned from leadership roles….where women earn less pay than men for the same work in the same occupations…… No, I actually am not talking about our modern world (despite the parallels). I am talking about the world of fifteenth-century Europe.... Read more

On Faith, Resistance, and Self-Sacrifice

Last updated on: January 23, 2017 at 10:18 pm By Chris Gehrz

Chris tells the story of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance, with an eye to some troubling developments in American democracy. Read more

The Graduate Course, and Other Mythical Beasts

Last updated on: January 21, 2017 at 10:20 pm By Philip Jenkins

I’m just preparing a graduate course that I am scheduled to teach next year. Through the years, I have taught a great many graduate courses of various kinds, but I have never explicitly addressed a basic question: what actually is a graduate course, what should it do, and how does it differ from undergraduate offerings? If you are a professor involved in teaching such courses, you might find these remarks too obvious to be mentioning, but I think the background... Read more

I Do Not Owe “Total Allegiance” to America

Last updated on: January 21, 2017 at 11:00 am By Chris Gehrz

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump exhorted "total allegiance" to the U.S.A. That's not a commitment Christians (or students of 20th century history) should make. Read more