This coming Monday, August 1, marks the medieval feast of Lammas, Loaf-mass, the year’s first harvest festival, and that coincides with one of the great feasts of the ancient Irish calendar, Lughnasa. This also brings me to a curious anniversary, which tells us a little bit about medieval history, and a great deal about the making of modern day mythologies. I’ll be writing several columns on this general topic, which overlaps nicely with Beth Barr’s recent posts at this very... Read more
by Katelyn Guichelaar and Kristin Du Mez The national party conventions of the past two weeks have offered us political theatrics, stolen words, and soaring rhetoric. They also provide us with a moment to reflect on the paths each candidate has taken to secure their party’s nomination. More specifically, to consider the words they have employed to peddle their contrasting visions for the nation’s future. Here we do so using the tools of corpus linguistics, the study of spoken or... Read more
I swam with dolphins last week. It wasn’t planned–they just appeared, a mom and her calf, swimming on our beach early in the morning. The water was clear as glass. It was so clear and so smooth , in fact, that the large dark shadows of their bodies below the surface appeared almost as visible as their fins gliding through the waves. It was several days into our vacation, so my kids had become accustomed to the beach. My daughter was... Read more
In the first two posts in this series, I’ve suggested that historical movies — and TV shows, for that matter — might best be judged by asking four questions: Are they entertaining? (understanding that there are multiple meanings to the verb “entertain”) Are they truthful? (but in terms of “verisimilitude” more than “accuracy”) Are the makers genuinely interested in the past on its own terms? (or, for example, are they just using it as a dimension of the set) Do they inspire further historical study, or even... Read more
I have been writing on the global demographic revolution marked by collapsing fertility rates and shrinking family sizes. In particular, I have focused on the religious implications of these changes. For a variety of reasons, lower fertility shows a close correlation to secularization, and the rapid decline of organized religion. Some social issues in particular are valuable bellwethers for these changes. Roughly, if you tell me a society’s total fertility rate (TFR) I can make some plausible predictions about its... Read more
I have been posting about declining fertility rates around the world, specifically about their impact on religiosity and secularization. Beyond that, those rates also serve as excellent indicators of trends in gender roles and relationships, and a wide range of social and cultural themes. Tell me a country’s total fertility rate (TFR) and I will tell you a lot about many other aspects of its society, and its religious life. This is in no sense a Christian-Muslim divide. Intriguingly, some... Read more
Should historians be taking sides in the 2016 election? Does our discipline give us any special insight into a candidacy like Donald Trump's? Read more
Many historians have observed that early Americans lived in a culture drenched in scripture. Through the nineteenth century, Americans’ oral and written speech dripped with biblical allusions that we might miss if we are not familiar with the language of the King James Bible. We might also note that whereas Old Testament narratives and texts resonated deeply with colonial Americans, the New Testament assumed greater weight in the nineteenth century. My colleague Lincoln Mullen has made public a recent project of his... Read more
White evangelicals have become such an entrenched bloc in the Republican Party that four out of every five of them plan to vote for Trump. Read more
Two more questions to ask of historical films: Are its makers actually interested in the past on its own terms? Are they provoking historical thinking? Read more
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