For HIST 3805 students -- the Middle East and US policy at New Year 2011

Two informed summaries.From the Economist, America and the Middle East:Several reasons lie behind America’s loss of potency. Some reflect changes within the Middle East. Allies such as Israel and Turkey long followed American wishes reflexively because they felt imperilled and dependent on American largesse. They have now grown too strong for that. With its thriving economy,...

Rosie the Riveter and Geraldine Doyle

An excellent piece from the Washington Post on the facts behind the famous poster and the cello-player behind the ima...

Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007)

Every culture has its historical moments that matter a great deal to its members. The moments can be mythological: in the English-speaking world, millions care about the legend of Robin Hood and whether it reflects a historical reality.  It is hard to go broke making a movie...

Actually cutting and pasting

Grad student Tanya Roth, no stranger to the tools of the computer age, sometimes takes out the scissors and starts hacking away:My grad school colleagues know me as someone who uses a number of digital processes for the dissertation project. ...Maybe that’s why my advisor seemed...

It's a Wonderful Life

A terrifying appreciati...

Excerpt from the Abstract: Outrance and Plaisance

Abstract: Outrance and Plaisance (an excerpt) Will McLean “Outrance and Plaisance” in Journal of Medieval Military History 8 (2010): 155-170Modern writers on medieval deeds of arms often use the term à outrance to describe combats fought “using the normal weapons of war” and à...

Christmas in Egypt (not exactly "Christmas in Killarney")

  Juan Cole has the story:Some 500,000 Christmas trees were sold this year in Egypt, an extremely mysterious statistic. The country’s Orthodox Coptic Church celebrates Christmas on January 7, considers the day distinctly less important than Easter, and does not have a tradition of Christmas trees or Santa Claus. The roughly 8 million Copts are the largest national community...

This blog's top 5 posts, according to Blogger stats

The legend of SaladinNot quite Christmas, but wolves anywayMore from KyrgyzstanMemories of Catal HuyukBlue sunset?They are all there not for my deathless prose, but for the pictures, none of which originate with me. (The wolves, alas, are no longer accessible, except by searching...

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's (coming) BACK!

"Christ's endangered language," Aramaic. (It may be more accurate to say it's fighting a rearguard action at Oxford.)It is the language that Christ spoke, but is regarded as "endangered" with ever fewer scattered groups of native speakers.But in Oxford, Aramaic has been flourishing again, with a course in the ancient language drawing people from as far afield as Liverpool and London....

In a more Christmas-y vein

From Rebecca Solnit, at TomDispatch.com, unusual insight:Capitalism is only kept going by this army of anti-capitalists, who constantly exert their powers to clean up after it, and at least partially compensate for its destructiveness. Behind the system we all know, in other words, is a shadow system of kindness, the other invisible hand. Much of its work now lies in simply...

Nuts

From the New York Times, earlier this week:U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakis...

History -- and everything academic -- is useless

So says Charlie Brooker in the Guardian, talking about British tuition increases. He's staking out the "tough love" position. An excerpt:Take history. There's already far too much of it. In fact, mankind is generating a "past mountain", which grows 24 hours in size every single day. No one can be expected to keep all of that in their head. There simply isn't room....

Word

On speaking Klingon, or for that matter redoing A Christmas Carol in that language:"Outsiders think it's weird," says Lawrence Schoen, founder and director of the K[lingon] L[anguage] I[nstitute]. "But it's no different than walking into a sports bar where everyone knows the score of the third game of the 1982 World Serie...

Something worth celebrating

Thanks to xkcd.c...

Will McLean, "Outrance and Plaisance"

Will McLean has written an important article on "Outrance and Plaisance," two terms often misused to describe late medieval deeds of arms as "to the death" or "not."   It appears in this year's volume of the Journal of Medieval Military History which is, alas, a bit pricey if you have to buy it yourself.   Maybe Will will provide a short abstract at some po...

It's drama

Julian Assange, rightly or wrongly accused of sexual crimes against Swedish women, appears after being bailed out of a British jail flanked by a stunning blonde.  Just a coincidence, I am su...

Dr. Beachcombing classifies historical mysteries

The inestimable Dr. Beachcombing, while mulling on the (un)reality of Atlantis, comes up with a happy classification scheme:Now with some historical mysteries we have an established reality and luscious legends sprouting up like nettles all around. For example, Princess Diana (to get all British), Charlemagne or, thinking of yesterday’s post, ‘tulipomania’. Beachcombing will call...

Democracy Denied by Charles Kurzman: my review appears

I just recently received my contributor's copy of the Journal of World History, vol. 21, no. 3 (September, 2010).  It is a special issue of the journal devoted to articles on cosmopolitanism. My contribution is a review of an excellent 2008 book by Charles Kurzman, Democracy Denied, 1905-15:  Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy.   Here's an excerpt.Kurzman...

Crepuscular rays over the Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake

Astronomy Picture of the Day, nat...

The rich get richer

One observer's explanation of how it has work...

Sunday morning, and Explorator comes to my mailbox...

...full of archaeological goodies.  Thanks, David Meadows!One of the nice things about this e-mail news compilation is that it supplies me with links to the little stories.For instance, I don't get excited about the power, wealth and claims to divinity of Greco-Egyptian queens,...

Napoleon's Egypt -- a significant quote

For students in history 3805, wrestling with the paper on Juan Cole's Napoleon's Egypt, And how to relate Egyptian attitudes to French ones, here's a quotation from pages 174-5:The French employed public celebrations and spectacle both to commemorate Republican values and to instill a sense of unity with regard to revolutionary victories. Such "festivals reminded participants that...

Charny on retreating and surrendering -- my attempt to understand him

An excerpt from work in progress:Scenarios involving retreating or surrendering or both appear in a conservative estimate in eleven of Charny's questions on war. It is clear from several of them that anything resembling running away might be interpreted as blameworthy. Question W30 says :There is a battle …in which many men-at-arms of the defeated party depart and go away. ...

Links I used for today's lecture in HIST 3805, "Scholars and Sufis"

Some of the recent material I used.  In the case of YouTube pages, the comments are often very instructive.Scholars and legalismThe Order for Hijab in the Holy Qur'an  -- a modern guide.Road to Hijab themuslimwoman.com urges readers to love hijab.Blog entry on wearing hijab in Cairo, 2008 -- a visitor observes recent practices and attitudes in Egypt's capital.Sufis and...

From NASA and the Big Picture -- LL Pegasi

Click the pic! A whole calendar's worth he...