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
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
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
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
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
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
Chris tells the story of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance, with an eye to some troubling developments in American democracy. Read more
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
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
“Answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?” (Ebenezer Scrooge, to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) I have been discussing some of the Megatrends that had transformed the US since the mid-1970s. (By the way, the word Megatrends dates from 1982). Most would have been very surprising indeed to Americans of the 1970s. I have written in the past about the failures... Read more
In February 1850, Mormon settlers began a brief but bloody campaign against several bands of Ute Indians in Utah Valley. On February 13, the Mormons captured a group of Indians, promising them their lives and safety. They lied. “[W]e shall deal with them in the most summary manner as soon as another day favors us with its light,” militia commander Daniel H. Wells informed Young. The next morning, the soldiers disarmed and shot the male Indians. Jared Farmer has an... Read more
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