Facing History, an educational organization preparing teachers to teach history in public schools, has two positions open in its Chicago office.
Program Associate (M.A. degree preferred): full-time job
Development Assistant (B.A. degree required): full-time job
To apply, see the Facing History website.
Facing History
200 E. Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60601
Northern Illinois University students with appropriate experience may be interested in these positions.
My monograph, Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France, has been reviewed in American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the discipline of History in the United States.
The review is by Ronald G. Asch, Professor of History at Universität Freiburg, and appears in American Historical Review 117 (February 2012): 278-279.
The AHR review is available via JSTOR through most major library databases.
Johnson, an art-studio owner from the District, had come to St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg with her lesbian partner. The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo had learned of their relationship just before the service.
“He put his hand over the body of Christ and looked at me and said, ‘I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the church, that is a sin,’ ” she recalled Tuesday.
Barbara Johnson
To deny someone a role in his or her mother’s funeral for whatever reason is shocking and cruel. Such a denial being employed on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation is blatantly discriminatory.
The specific form of denial used in this episode has a long history, however.
Denying Communion to a Christian challenges the status of that believer’s soul, effectively accusing the person of living in sin, which threatens his or her salvation. Christian religious authorities have used the tactic of denying access to the Eucharist (body and blood of Christ) for centuries, although it is somewhat rare to hear of it in today’s world.
The issues of who (if anyone) has the authority to deny Communion and under what circumstances has been debated by Christian theologians. Denial of Communion may be perceived as an act of discrimination or even as an aggressive attack on a believer. Religious authorities and organization have long been empowered to discriminate against believers and to expel lay people who fail to meet their standards.
Historians of early modern Europe are familiar with evidence of Catholic authorities denying Communion to believers. In the Latin Christian Church, the Pope periodically used excommunication to bar individuals, or even entire communities, from Communion. Protestant churches have used very similar tactics from the early days of the Protestant Reformation. Lutheran communities outlawed Masses for the Dead and insisted that believers conform to a new liturgy for the Eucharist. Calvinist churches in Geneva and Scotland excluded sinners from the Lord’s Supper, as they referred to Communion as a commemorative act. The Council of Trent clarified and standardized the Catholic liturgy of the Mass, as well as techniques for dealing with “defects” in the celebration of the Eucharist. Some early modern historians see these tactics as part of a much broader pattern of “social disciplining” during the period of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations.
Sixteenth-century Reformers intensely debated the proper meaning and form of celebrating the Eucharist. Such debates were not merely intellectualized theological debates, since ordinary Christian priests and believers had to negotiate how to perform Communion rituals in their local communities. The sharp differences over this central Christian act were instrumental in producing the European Wars of Religion.
This historical context suggests that acts of denying Communion should be perceived as acts of religious intolerance and symbolic violence.
For more information on the historical development of Communion during the period of the Reformations, see: Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Northern Illinois University students in HIST 414 European Wars of Religion, 1520-1660 will be interested in the Washington Post article.
Update: the Washington Post has published another article updating this story.
The French Wars of Religion are featured in a new special issue of Past & Present, which reexamines Natalie Zemon Davis’s concept of “rites of violence” 40 years after her landmark article. The issue is entitled “Ritual and Violence: Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France,” ed. Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, Past & Present, supplement 7 (2012).
The supplement’s table of contents:
Preface, 7
Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer
1. Introduction
Writing ‘The Rites of Violence’ and Afterward, 8
Natalie Zemon Davis
2. Rites and Ritual
Rites of Repair: Restoring Community in the French Religious Wars, 30
Barbara B. Diefendorf
Religious Violence in Sixteenth-Century France: Moving Beyond Pollution and
Purification, 52
Mack P. Holt
Peace, Ritual, and Sexual Violence during the Religious Wars, 75
Penny Roberts
3. Rights and Agency
Massacres during the French Wars of Religion, 100
Allan A. Tulchin
The Rights of Violence, 127
Stuart Carroll
Prophets in Arms? Ministers in War, Ministers on War: France, 1562–74, 163
Philip Benedict
4. Rites and Representation
Rites of Torture in Reformation Geneva, 197
Sara Beam
From Christ-like King to Antichristian Tyrant: A First Crisis of the Monarchical
Image at the Time of Francis I, 220
Denis Crouzet (Translated by Philippa Woodcock)
Painting Power: Antoine Caron’s Massacres of the Triumvirate, 241
Neil Cox and Mark Greengrass
5. Afterword, 275
Graeme Murdock and Andrew Spicer
The first meeting of the Mediterranean World Workshop will be held on Thursday 1 March at O’Leary’s in DeKalb at 5:15.
The Mediterranean World Workshop is a new group of professors and graduate students interested in Mediterranean history from antiquity to today. This group is being formed based on common research and teaching interests in Mediterranean studies within the Department of History at Northern Illinois University. Damián Fernandez studies Iberia and the Mediterranean in late antiquity and teaches courses on the Roman Empire. Valerie Garver, a Carolingianist, has teaching interests in the expansion of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval Mediterranean. Brian Sandberg does research on the French Mediterranean and teaches on the early modern Mediterranean world. Ismael Montana studies the trans-Saharan slave trade, North African culture, and the modern Mediterranean.
Our aim is to meet 2 or 3 times per semester to discuss recent work in Mediterranean history, including unpublished works by workshop members.
We will begin by discussing two recent articles on Mediterranean history:
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, “The Mediterranean and ‘the New Thalassology,'” American Historical Review 111 (June 2006): 722-740.
Walter Scheidel and S. Friesen, “The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009): 61-91.
Both of these articles are available through NIU Library databases.
We hope that you will be able to join us for the first meeting of the Mediterranean World Workshop.
best,
Damián Fernández and Brian Sandberg, co-organizers
The new film, Act of Valor, depicts Navy SEALs in action against smugglers and terrorists. The film openly touts its active-duty SEALs who act as the protagonists in the film, alongside plenty of military hardware and vehicles. The filmmakers reportedly shot scenes of actual SEALs drills and training exercises. The film highlights the cozy relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon, leading many analysts to question whether the film is merely entertainment or outright propaganda.
An article in the Washington Post investigates the motives of the filmmakers and examines the production of the film. The important role of the SEALs in current anti-terrorist operations makes this discussion timely.
Northern Illinois University Students in HIST 390 History and Film: War in Film will be interested in this article.
The so-called “Global War on Terror”—once omnipresent on cable news networks—seems to have receded from view. Is the war over? How do we think about the past 11 years of warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond?
Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University, now offers a “brief history” of the “war on terror” in a piece on History News Network.
Bacevich divides the American-led “war on terror” into three phases, defined by their strategic rationales and their leading proponents:
1. Liberation (Rumsfeld era)
2. Pacification (Petraeus era)
3. Assassination (Vickers era)
Bacevich briefly traces the developments of the “war on terror” through each of these phases, arguing that strategic shifts have led to changes in the waging of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, but a failure to really question the aims of war.
Bacevich concludes by probing the potential effects of the “war on terror” strategies on American society:
“Operationally, a war launched by the conventionally minded has progressively fallen under the purview of those who inhabit what Dick Cheney once called ‘the dark side,’ with implications that few seem willing to explore. Strategically, a war informed at the outset by utopian expectations continues today with no concretely stated expectations whatsoever, the forward momentum of events displacing serious consideration of purpose. Politically, a war that once occupied center stage in national politics has now slipped to the periphery, the American people moving on to other concerns and entertainments, with legal and moral questions raised by the war left dangling in midair. Is this progress?”
Historical films are in the running for Oscars at the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony. Each year, films portraying historical subjects figure significantly in the Oscar nominations, but there seem to be an exceptionally large number of historical films this year.
Bruce Chadwick, a scholar of film history at Rutgers University, writes about this year’s crop of historical films on History News Network.
Northern Illinois University students in HIST 390 History and Film will be interested in this article.
The Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana announces a one-week summer workshop in global security.
Targeted at rising sophomores or advanced undergraduates, the workshop aims (1) to inform students about key security issues; (2) to develop a self-sustaining network of students with competence and interest in security studies; and (3) to introduce students to careers in security policy-making in private and pubic sectors.
Students completing the workshop will be awarded a Certificate in International Security Studies. Please see http://acdis.illinois.edu/students/summer-workshop-global-sec.html for further details.
Professor Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University has become one of the strongest critical voices in military history and strategic studies today. Bacevich is known for his work on American militarism and his criticism of United States military strategy in the Iraq War and the Afghan War.
Bacevich’s recent work reassesses the history of U.S. military policy and strategy during the twentieth century. He has written a series of essays relating to his current book for a number of different news publications.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published Bacevich’s latest essay, on the concept of the “American Century” and its continuing influence.
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