d r a f t More information on Martin Luther biographer Richard Marius, whom I knew at UT-Knoxville and mentioned in passing in my Nov. 11 post on Martin Luther's concept of the indwelling of Christ. I'm rereading his 1973 biography Luther and wrote: One of my professors at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Richard … Continue reading Richard Marius: Notes & quotes
Historians, including Ken Burns, cite historical parallels between today, the slavery crisis of the 1850s and the anti-Semitism of the 1930s
d r a f t More quotes for my Swedes in Roger Williams’ Garden project — Two disturbing historical parallels in print this week, both suggesting that America faces a more difficult crisis -- more accurately a series of cascading crises -- now than it did in the runup to the Civil War. It's hard to know … Continue reading Historians, including Ken Burns, cite historical parallels between today, the slavery crisis of the 1850s and the anti-Semitism of the 1930s
Research notes: Cite for Rushdie’s creolization quote; right-wing dog whistle du jour featuring assault on Rushdie
Two very different items popped up last night when I did a Google search on keywords Salman Rushdie and creolization. They are: A 2001 article on "Creolization and the Lessons of a Watergoddess in the Black Atlantic" by Alex van Stipriaan that cites a Rushdie quote: "Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit … Continue reading Research notes: Cite for Rushdie’s creolization quote; right-wing dog whistle du jour featuring assault on Rushdie
Sounding the alarm on CNN in Trump’s America: ‘Two inimical factions’ split along ‘racial and religious lines’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS2trMvo4aM Most of the time, CNN's weekend anchor Jim Acosta makes me break out in hives. I saw enough of his brand of performative journalism to last me a lifetime a long time ago, when the bigfoot TV reporters from Chicago would descend on the Illinois Statehouse at the end of the legislative session. But … Continue reading Sounding the alarm on CNN in Trump’s America: ‘Two inimical factions’ split along ‘racial and religious lines’
Archipelagos? Can a French postcolonial novelist’s creole metaphor help us head off a new Civil War?
Battle of Fort Sanders, Knoxville, Nov. 29, 1863. Wikimedia Commons) “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” ― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun "[...] le monde entier s’archipélise et se créolise." Édouard Glissant Traité du Tout-Monde My inner child was an English major, but before that he majored in history. In fact, he got … Continue reading Archipelagos? Can a French postcolonial novelist’s creole metaphor help us head off a new Civil War?
Creolization: Jingoism v. jambalaya in France (with excerpts from my historical papers on the subject)
France 24, Feb. 15, 2022 Voilà! Turns out an obscure academic term I use in my historical writing got to be a political talking point in this year's French elections. The word is "creolization" (créolisation in French), and it's used by cultural anthropologists to describe the cultural blending in creole societies like those of the … Continue reading Creolization: Jingoism v. jambalaya in France (with excerpts from my historical papers on the subject)
Research notes: Salman Rushdie, post-colonial theory, creolization and me
Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rushdie.JPG A grab bag of short takes ... I also have a chaotic and unedited collection of "Notes and Quotes" -- my term for research notes -- on the postcolonialist author Salman Rushdie, who was recently stabbed by an Iranian-American youth, and some of the themes raised by his fiction -- and … Continue reading Research notes: Salman Rushdie, post-colonial theory, creolization and me
‘Conviviality at the Crossroads’: Open-source studies from Malmö on creolization, hybridity, etc.
Link here to open-source copy on Springer Nature Switzerland AG website Woo hoo! I found a new book. It's available online under a Creative Commons license, and finding it was like Christmas in July -- with Easter, St. Paddy's and the annual Jordbruksdagarna (ag days) festival at Bishop Hill, Illinois, all rolled into one. Forgive … Continue reading ‘Conviviality at the Crossroads’: Open-source studies from Malmö on creolization, hybridity, etc.
Historians say Alito’s ‘law office history’ cherry-picks the historical record, creates bad history and worse law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLMp-1NdzR8 Cold open, Saturday Night Live, May 7, 2022 “It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it," urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room.That is no excuse," returned Mr. Brownlow. "You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty … Continue reading Historians say Alito’s ‘law office history’ cherry-picks the historical record, creates bad history and worse law
Of the Trumpification of the Supreme Court, red-state abortion laws and a Civil War battlefield in Knoxville
Kurtz & Allison lithograph, 1891 (retouched Adam Cuerdon. Wikimedia Commons) For several years as a grad student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, I lived on the site of a Civil War battlefield. My apartment was in a Victorian mansion that had been cut up into private-sector off-campus student housing (and has now been retrofitted … Continue reading Of the Trumpification of the Supreme Court, red-state abortion laws and a Civil War battlefield in Knoxville
Ordinary Time 
