Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Here’s a very brief Twitter discussion with Julia Baird. She wrote a lovely piece for the NYTimes the other day about Queen Victoria (I blogged here). Twitter is a medium that encourages quick hits, but this is just not correct. Mindboggling debate over whether an ancient papyrus proved Jesus had a wife. http://t.co/Wi9b0hVt6m — Dame …
I’m interested in the wines of the Holy Land, for, um, scholarly reasons. Here’s some news. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli settlers on Friday destroyed over 300 newly planted grape vines in al-Khader village south of Bethlehem, locals said.Landowner Mohammad Ibrahim Sbeih told Ma’an that he saw settlers from the illegal Sde Boaz settlement on his …
Last May, I began an essay on gender norms and my daughter this way: When the rocket scientist Yvonne Brill died in March, The New York Times celebrated her as the maker of a “mean beef stroganoff” and “the world’s best mother.” When my 4-year-old daughter, Ellie, a wildly creative and interesting girl, finished a …
I am perpetually fascinated by the way that “medieval” is code for barbaric, backwards, savage, and the like. The phrase “get medieval” seems to have originated (or at least moved into widespread use) as a result of Pulp Fiction, in which Ving Rhames’ character, after being freed by Bruce Willis’ character, tells his rapist that …
Updates below including a comment that the whole concentration camp thing is just “water under the bridge. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in Minneapolis, a group of people held a Nazi-themed dinner at a German restaurant in Northeast Minneapolis. It turns out that they were German-themed WW2 re-enactors. A member of the group, Jon …
As many of you know, I am not just a father, husband, professor, columnist, and blogger – I’m also a musician. I play in two Irish pub bands: The Tooles and Mulligan Stew. As a result, the last few days have been busy, with more shows to come. Last summer, I played the Iowa Irish …
Happy Thanksgiving. As my children came home from school with paper pilgrims’ hats and “Indian” headbands with feathers, I winced, I groaned, and I kept silent. They are 4 and 6. It’s not time yet. But here’s a serious question, asking as both historian and parent, in lieu of a longer post on this busy …
Today I am flying to Virginia to give a talk at Virginia Tech. This talk is on my core research into medieval Venetian cultural history, a subject I mostly keep away from the blog (as I use it to write about other things). But here’s one thing I’m going to say this evening to what …
Recently, among the various smart journalists that I follow, there has been a lot of debate about to what one should compare the current American far-right movements. During the shutdown, journalists talked a lot about the Civil War, for example. As a historian, I’m always interested to see how people invoke history to explain contemporary …
My daughter has been inundated with Columbus this year, and apparently someone dressed as Columbus came to visit her school. I’m sure my son has gotten plenty too. I’ve been pondering how to de-mythologize Columbus to kids without resorting to hyperbole, facts not in evidence, retroactively imposing modern standards on him, or otherwise creating an …