Man in the know?

Read this Aljazeera op-ed on The triviality of US Mideast policy, all the way to the end, and then note the author's nationality and professional background. No points for guessing he's an American. His old job, however...

Egypt as...

Egypt and the Arab Middle East as Eastern Europe, 1989?Egypt as Iran, 19...

Another good idea from Japan: Yukigassen

From the Weather Network:When Canadians think about the ultimate winter sport, games like hockey come to mind. But in Japan, some people think of an organized snowball fight.This is not your typical backyard snowball face-off. The snowballs aren't just perfect. There are 540 of them....

Two introductions to the current situation in Egypt

There is a very clear and straightforward analysis of the Egyptian situation by Juan Cole over at his blog Informed Comment.  Note this excerpt:Why has the Egyptian state lost its legitimacy? Max Weber distinguished between power and authority. Power flows from the barrel...

The Internet as a force for freedom?

Maybe not!A knowledgeable and thought-provoking interview at RFE/...

A valet who didn't play by the rules

My research on deeds of arms and the law of arms has tended to emphasize that legitimate war was supposed to be the monopoly of "men at arms,"  i.e. gentlemen, squires, knights and lords of higher rank, the kind of people who had adequate horses and armor.  A scenario written...

Fourth Annual Coptic Studies Symposium: Ottawa, February 26, 2011

I don't know if anyone who reads this blog will be interested, but just in case here's a message from Prof Greatrex.  Note that this mostly about old-time Copts (late antiquity). I would like to draw your attention to the Fourth Annual Coptic Studies Symposium: Coptic Heritage – Dynamics and Diversity, organized by the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies (CSCS), which...

The reality of re-enactment --- jousting

The Independent reports on the official investigation of a modern jouster's death. These passages struck me: A man died during a jousting re-enactment because of failures to ensure a correct helmet was worn and failures to ensure his shield was appropriately assembled,...

Dr. Mark Crane on scholasticism vs. humanism; another colleague shows his stuff

I don't think I can send out copies, as with the link to the Murton podcast just below, but let it be known that Mark Crane has also been busy, producing this article:Mark Crane, "A Scholastic Response to Biblical Humanism:  Noel Beda against Lefevre d'Etaples and Erasmus (1526),"  Humanistica Lovaniensia 59 (2010): 55-...

Dr. James Murton speaks on Environmental History -- podcast

A colleague shows his stuff: Canadian Environmental History Podcast Episode 19 AvailableFrom: Sean Kheraj <skheraj@MTROYAL.CA>In 1954, Canadian historian James Maurice Stockford Careless published aninfluential article in the Canadian Historical Review, titled “Frontierism,Metropolitanism, and Canadian History” which offered a new approach forunderstanding the course of Canadian...

A review of Deeds of Arms in The Medieval Review

Muhlberger, Steven. Deeds of Arms: Formal Combats in the LateFourteenth Century. Highland Village, Texas: The ChivalryBookshelf, 2005. Pp xiii, 247. ISBN: 1-891448-44-7. Reviewed by Donald J. Kagay      Albany State University      dkagay1@netzero.netLike it or not, one of the major factors in maintaining the importanceof medieval studies to the...

1968

It looks like I will miss this.  But then, I actually remember 1968...

"Farewell my country that never was"

  Ali Belail, a southern northern Sudanese, gives his explanation of why the country is splitting.MY COUNTRY Sudan has failed. It is sad but it is not shocking. The failure was always inevitable but you had to be a southerner to know that. It is hard to resist the urge to...

Christine de Pisan and formal deeds of arms

She wrote about them, just as she wrote about military reform.  Will McLean directs us to her chivalric accounts.Image:  The Book of the Duke of True Lovers, at Google Boo...

Official announcement for HIST 3805--due date for second essay!

On Wednesday the class voted solidly for the post-Study Week date of March 2nd. If you were really hoping for the earlier date, well, early papers will be accept...

New blog for HIST 3805

Course teaching assistant Matthew Laur has started a new blog for discussion of the three books you will be writing on this term. The blog is called History Nerd and can be found at http://givecaesarhisdue.tumblr.com/. Go have a lo...

Tunisia's revolution

Juan Cole comments on The First Middle Eastern Revolution since 1979:Tunisian President Zine al-Abidin Bin Ali has fled the country before the advancing crowds pouring in to the capital’s center. A French eye-witness said of the masses thronging Bourguiba Avenue that “it was black...

Football fans of London

I know people who will enjoy this map of London showing what districts support which teams.  Click on the map for a better view, and comment aw...

Everything you know is wrong

Thanks to WJBD Radio's site, via Explorator, we hear news of a, uh, counter-intuitive discovery: An Iuka man who believes the lost Tomb of Alexander the Great may be located in Romine Township in extreme southeast Marion County encouraged the county board's Community Relations...

A new era?

Brazil and China strike a huge energy deal and...Doug Saunders in the Globe and Mail comments:Brazil saw the swearing-in of a new president, Dilma Rousseff, who is best known for being a former guerrilla rebel against Brazil’s military dictatorship. That was all in the past – a time when the politics and economics of Brazil, and most non-wealthy countries, were entirely defined...

Hilary Earl of Nipissing University's History Department wins the Hans Rosenberg Book Prize

Hilary Earl's book The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-58: Atrocity, Law, and History has been awarded the prestigious Hans Rosenberg Book Prize for the best book in 2009 by the Conference Group for Central European History.The award committee had the following things to say about her book:Hilary Earl has written an original and masterful account of what was described at...

William Morris' Order of Chivalry

An on-line edition of William Morris' 1893 Order of Chivalry can be found here. We have an outfit called Sovereign Press Canada, down the road from me in Barrie, Ontario to thank for this reproduction. It contains Caxton's translation of Ramon Lull's Book of the Order of Chivalry,...

The debate over Islamic law in Pakistan

Juan Cole hosts an excellent discussion by Aadil Wainwright about the issues at stake in the blasphemy issue, which led to the recent assassination of an important provincial governor.  An excerpt:The assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer has laid bare a crucial debate within the Pakistani public over the nature of Islam and the place of Islamic law in national...

The hysterics bash Batman's Parisian partner

A friend sent a link to this story about hostile reviews of the new comic character, the Batman de Paris, Nightrunner. It seems that Nightrunner is a Muslim kid of Algerian background, and some people find this inherently wrong. Andy Khouri at comicsalliance.com takes this attitude...

Students: you can do this too

 From the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Writing Group of Two.An excerpt:I've written in this space before about the usefulness of a "writing date." You buy a kind of accountability when you're with someone and you're both supposed to be working.... Last summer I got an astonishing amount of writing done, as did Nancy and Jeff; we all suffered together, over endless...

German fibula, c. 1000 A.D.

From Genevra Kornbluth's amazing photography collecti...

Agora (2009)

This is a seriously good movie.I haven't heard much unmixed praise for this film, not a lot of commentary at all, and I think it deserves better. So here are my observations.You should know that the story concerns the 4th century Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia. As a woman philosopher...

Favorite posts, 2010

Just click he...