Should history be more scientific?

Me, I've always been a "history is one of the humanities" type, except maybe when I was in junior high school, dreaming of Hari Seldon. But this report from Newsbiscuit may compel me to change my mind. The experimental design is pretty impressive:St George decanonised after 20...

A night sky near Marjah in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

From the Big Pictu...

Nipissing University historian goes to the US Supreme Court

...again! (At least his arguments did.)Back in 2008, Nathan Kozuskanich, Nipissing University's Early American historian, was cited in supporting material submitted to the United States Supreme Court in regards to a case called "Heller" involving the Second Amendment to the Constitution,...

Best summary of the results of the Iraq war so far

One of the McClatchy bloggers -- an Iraqi reporter for the best American wire service -- looks for celebrations of Sovereignty Day (formal end of the Coalition occupation) , can't find them, and realizes why:Then I called the Baghdad Municipality office – They must know if an event...

Coming up in a hard school, 1247

An entry in Matthew Paris's English History shows that even king's brothers might have to earn respect from other knights the hard way:Of a tournament held at Newbury.On Ash-Wednesday, a grand tournament was held at Newbury amongst the knights of England, to try their knightly prowess...

History of language: higher education can be fun

Stephen Chrisomalis is a fun and spirited guy, as I can attest from personal contact. Read this account of in-class research on the history of the word "chairperson" and see if you don't agree that it sounds like practically the Platonic ideal of an undergraduate course-meeting:Last week I was running a very similar lecture to the one I always, on language and gender, where we...

Matthew Paris: obsessed?

A while back I noted that Matthew Paris, the 13th century English chronicler, seemed to be hung up on the words oppressions, extortions, and papal legate. And having now quickly gone through volume 2 of the 19th century edition of his English History, I now suggest that what he...

The Toronto morality play

Players:the Black Bloc, whoever they are; motives, radicalize the rubes, have some fun at Toronto's expense.the current federal government with an assist from Ontario's cabinet; motive, to make Stephen Harper look tough and as an upholder of order against chaos, unlike all those...

The abbey of St. Albans before the Reformation

From a site devoted to Matthew Paris's home -- one of the bigger monasteries in Engla...

Dean Bavington's Managed Annihilation is out!

Details here and he...

Boy, do I feel dumb! Afghan railways

I like to think of myself as smart and well-informed, more interested in world history and comparative history than other people, and sensitive to the little details that change the big picture.I guess I have to revise that self-image. I just found out today, thanks to Eugene Robinson...

Juan Cole on the prospects of American success in Afghanistan

Lessons of Petraeus’ Iraq for Petraeus’ Afghanistan is a detailed and sensible discussion. It is particularly useful for its summary of the Iraq war and the current situation there.Image: Iraqis protesting the lack of electricity in the sweltering summ...

Imperial rule, then and now

Juan Cole, the Middle East scholar and political commentator, wrote in his blog today an article entitled "McChrystal Drama is Sideshow; Can Obama define a realistic Goal?" If you have been paying attention to Afghanistan policy, you can write a summary of the post from the title.More...

Speaking of early history...

...I have recently been introduced to Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog: The outlandish, the anomalous and the curious from the last five thousand years.It looks like it will be fun. If you're curious look at the latest post, World’s last Latin speakers in Africa?Here is an excerpt:Beachcombing guesses that the latest Latin speakers were those on the outskirts of the collapsing...

Carnivalesque returns, and brings us Antioch

Carnivalesque, the carnival of early history blogs, is back -- over at Cranky Professor. And the first of its links takes us to Zenobia: Empress of the East, whose author Judith Weingarten, a fan of all things associated with the Eastern Empire, left in May to travel to Hatay (or...

Discouraging reflections on Canada's war in Afghanistan

When I was a teenager I lived in the United States. Over in Vietnam, there was a war going on and Americans were fighting in it. For much of the time, however, it was hard to believe that there was a war going on.Now it is equally hard to believe that Canada is at war in Afghanistan,...

A Torontonian explains why he is supporting Cote d'Ivoire in the World Cup

"My ex-girlfriend lived there for a few months."Neither Canada nor Trinidad (his personal heritage choice) is in it, you see.Thanks to CBC Radio news for that on...

A recent look at Kyrgyzstan

I have been getting a fair number of hits on my existing posts on Kyrgyzstan, presumably from people looking for up-to-date news and commentary on the crisis there. I have to admit that I have been paying no attention to this situation at all. However, the people at The Big Picture...

Medieval Blue

I won't steal Jeff's find, just direct you to ...

Say no more, say no more

...

What to do?

What do I do when I find an extensive, insufficiently credited passage of my Overview of Late Antiquity, available freely on the web since 1996, has been incorporated verbatim into someone else's printed bo...

A kind review from Phil Paine

Phil has written a short review of my book Deeds of Arms. I reprint it here largely because it contains one beautiful passage I wish I'd written, and which I will want to refer to in the future:(Steven Muhlberger) Deeds of Arms ― Formal Combats in the Late Fourteenth CenturySteve has outdone himself with this parvum opus. It's an exemplary work of focused history, with everything...

Fellini's Roma (1972)

I haven't seen a lot of Fellini movies, and I certainly missed this one when it first came out. It may be just as well -- I don't know if I would have appreciated it back then. A couple of nights ago, on the other hand, I found it mesmerizing, something I had to watch and enjoyed watching just as a fascinating object. Such movies had more appeal to me than when I was younger.One...

This appeals to my World History "bump"

... to use some out-of-date ("historical") slang! (Think phrenology.)The other day I stumbled across an anthropological blog called Savage Minds, which included this story by Rex (Alex Golub) that combines globalization, ecological policy and business, democracy and possibly indigenous...

Reflections on Iran, one year after

A year after the stolen election and the rise of the Green movement in Iran, Foreign Policy has a collection of articles by Iranian-American journalists: Misreading Tehran: Leading Iranian-American writers revisit a year of dreams and discouragement....

A clip from Teodora, imperatrice di Bisanzio (1954)

The legends of the Empress Theodora were pretty extreme back in the 6th century, back when she was alive. But you can always count on a modern filmmaker to add more:Here's another short piece:The actor playing Theodora was Wilma Aris; I don't know who played Justinian, but he looked the part.Thanks to Paul Halsall for the t...

The great battle continues in Egypt

Ever since Muslim armies took control of Egypt, the relationship between Muslim governors and Christians has been a source of controversy. As Aljazeera English points out in this video report, the practical answer to such problems -- pretty typical of most empires at most times -- that the conquered people should be allowed to maintain their own customs under their own (religious)...

A nod to China

I generally don't say much about China, since I don't teach China save occasionally in World History. Shame on me.I felt I could not overlook this Daily Kos diary about the reaction to a wave of suicides in Foxconn's very, very large electronics factory in Shenzhen (see image showing...

Martian war machines

At this link you will find a very scary piece of video, sent to me by my Czech friend, Filip Marek. Someone has mangled it, and the beginning is missing, but it appears to be a legitimate Channel 4 documentary out of Britain. And what is documented in this is pretty scary: the use of remote-controlled drone aircraft, whose controllers are enlisted personnel with basic computer...

The difficulties of adapting a religious tradition

Over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole has an interesting take on the recent proposal by a few Saudi clerics that "breast-milk feeding should be used as a way of establishing kinship between men and women, which would then allow the two to be in each others’ presence when the woman is alone and unveiled," which would be helpful, for instance, if a man and a woman worked in the same...

Any of my grad students out there?

I will be teaching a seminar in Nipissing University's Masters program in history this year. I believe that it is called HIST 5216, Topics in European History, but what it really will be is a seminar nicknamed "Medieval Historians." I do not expect that any of my students who come into this course knowing a lot about medieval historians or even the Middle Ages.If by any chance,...

What profs should expect from graduate students, and vice versa

Dame Eleanor Hull is the pseudonym of an American professor of medieval literature. She also writes a blog about academic experience. This month she's been thinking about what she can expect from her graduate students, whom she sees as a mixed bag in regards to talent and preparation....

A fascinating article on the current bullfighting controversy in Spain

In the Guardi...

Medieval Fantasy as Performance: the Society for Creative Anachronism and the Current Middle Ages, by Michael A. Cramer

Michael Cramer is a theater scholar, an active dramatist, and a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. I know him reasonably well and am not shy about promoting my friends when they publish, but I can honestly say that this is a very interesting book that will...

Selective scripturalism

Both Brad DeLong and the blog Making Light directed me to this post at Slacktivist, which makes a specific political point, but is worth thinking about in a more general sense, too.A few times a week I get an e-mail or a drive-by comment from someone very upset that I'm defending...

Françoise Noël wins a prize!

Dr. Françoise Noel, longtime member of the History Department at Nipissing University, has recently been awarded the Ontario Historical Society's Fred Landon Award, for the best book on regional history in the past three years. the book is Family and Community...

Medieval Afghanistan?

Matthew Gabriele is a thoughtful history professor who occasionally posts some of those thoughts over at Modern Medieval. This week he's got something good to say on the abuse of comparative history:Is Afghanistan medieval? No.Yet, people keep asking this question.Yesterday (June...

Full of awe

...

Speaking of total system failure...

Dan Froomkin:Despite more than three weeks of accumulating scientific evidence that gargantuan plumes of oil lurk beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico -- presenting an imminent threat to sea life and a possibly decades-long threat to the nation's coastlines -- NOAA Director Jane Lubchenco on Wednesday refused to contradict BP CEO Tony Hayward's statement over the weekend...

Total system failure?

Michael Bérubé: Hockey is the only source of good news in the entire world. ... Really, I was going to try to write something this week about how the financial collapse of 2008 and the Gulf disaster of 2010 are such enormous, systemic failures—so clearly the result of deeply dysfunctional institutions in which both the primary players and the “regulators” were rotten to the...