90 Second Narratives

“Many long-term friendships change over time with the seasons of life. This was certainly true in the case of Frederick II, King of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
Frederick the Great: King of Prussia by Tim Blanning (Random House, 2016)

“I want to tell you about the friendship between two women, nearly two centuries ago, that’s had a very long tail in Mexican history. On February first, 1840, shortly after arriving in Mexico City, Fanny Calderón de la Barca – the Scottish wife of the new Spanish ambassador – met doña María Ignacia Rodríguez de Velasco…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Silvia Marina Arrom. 

For further reading:
La Guera Rodriguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine by Silvia Marina Arrom (University of California Press, 2021)

“‘The true scholar,’ the 18th-century North African Sufi master Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani told his disciples, ‘is the one who gives form to what is clear, and clarifies what is ambiguous, and this from the strength of his knowledge, the breadth of his understanding, the soundness of his spiritual vision (naẓr) and his verification (taḥqīq)’…” 

So begins today’s story from Dr. Zachary Wright.

For further reading:
Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World by Zachary Valentine Wright (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)

“Historians point to the year 1648 as a watershed moment in the development of religious tolerance in Europe. In that year, the Peace of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Year’s War—one of Europe’s grimmest chapters of religiously-inflected violence…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
Michael Warren Murphy, “‘No Beggars amongst Them’: Primitive Accumulation, Settler Colonialism, and the Dispossession of Narragansett Indian Land,” Humanity & Society 42 (2018).

John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, New York: Penguin Books, 2012.

“Historians like to say, everything has a history. Recently, the history of animals, has seen some development. The history of dogs, living closely beside humans for millennia as guards, workers, hunting aids and companions, illustrates a relationship with nature over time and sheds light on how our species has understood our role on our planet as owners, custodians, or exploiters of the natural world, and it includes ambiguous friendships…” 

So begins today’s story from Dr. Claudia Kreklau.

For further reading:
Parry, Tyler D., and Charlton W. Yingling. “Slave Hounds and Abolition in the Americas.” Past & Present 246 (2020): 69–108.

A.W.H. Bates, (ed.), Anti-Vivisection and the Profession of Medicine in Britain: A Social History, The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017. 

This special episode combines all the stories from Season 8…

“A Black Woman’s Spiritual Journey to the City” – Dr. J. T. Roane, Assistant Professor of African & African American Studies at Arizona State University

“Cotton: Connecting the Atlantic World” – Dr. Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University

“Soju: A Liquor’s Global Journey” – Dr. Hyunhee Park, Associate Professor of History at the City University of New York, John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center

“The Columbian Exchange” – Dr. Sky Michael Johnston, Associated Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) Mainz

“Hotel Owners and the Shape of Japanese Transpacific Migration” – Dr. Yukari Takai, Research Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research at York University and Visiting Research Scholar at the International Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan

“Chinese Migration and the Shaping of Costa Rica” – Dr. Benjamín Narváez, Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Morris

“A US Consul on the Road to a Coup” – Dr. Abby Mullen, Term Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and Host/Executive Producer of the Consolation Prize podcast

“Using Astrology to Plan Journeys” – Dr. Sky Michael Johnston

“The ‘Conflict Thesis’: A Resilient Idea’s Journey” – Dr. James C. Ungureanu, Humanities Teacher at Trinity Classical Academy in Santa Clarita, California

"What factors do you take into consideration before going on a journey? Do you have any sense of when is a good time for a journey? Or, a good time for a specific type of journey? In sixteenth-century Germany, people had a way of systematizing the good and bad times for many of life’s activities, including travel…"

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
Der Bawren Practica oder Wetterbüchlein

“When historians of science and religion write about the ‘conflict thesis,’ what are they talking about?”

So begins today’s story from Dr. James C. Ungureanu. 

For further reading:
Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict by James C. Ungureanu (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

“At the turn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Japanese migrants left their island nation, landed in Hawai’i, only to depart for Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, or Victoria…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Yukari Takai.

For further reading:
Yukari Takai, “Recrafting Marriage in Meiji Hawai’i, 1885-1913,” Gender & History, 31, 3 (2019), 646-664.

“One of the most famous, and consequential, journeys in the history of humanity was Christopher Columbus’ fateful journey across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby (1972) 

Episode transcript:
https://skymichaeljohnston.com/90secnarratives/