Historically Thinking

This week on Historically Thinking I'm pleased to once again offer a conversation with Joseph A. Amato. You've hopefully listened to him before speaking about local history and family history. This time we discuss his latest book Everyday Life: How the Ordinary Became Extraordinary. 

As you can expect from Amato, this is a rich and thoughtful book, as much philosophy as history. What Amato does, as you'll find out, is examine how the things that we think are just boringly normal and obvious are in fact rich and strange. There is no such thing as a normal human being; or a normal life; or a normal day. In fact, all of the things we take to be normal were once strange.

Dr. Amato is a Professor Emeritus of History at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. A "maverick historian of the first order”, Amato was a principal founder of the Society of Local and Regional History, and has authored numerous books on his region and locality–even though his training is in medieval and early modern Europe. But he also has written histories of suffering, dust, walking, and surfaces, and to this list he will soon add a history of everyday life. He is a historian with probably a deeper philosophical and literary sensibility than most other historians think is quite right–he has even knowingly committed poetry.

 

This week on Historically Thinking I’m pleased to once again offer a conversation with Joseph A. Amato. You’ve hopefully listened to him before speaking about local history and family history. This time we discuss his latest book Everyday Life: How the Ordinary Became Extraordinary.  As you can expect from Amato, this is a rich and thoughtful […]

Once upon a time, long ago, in a mysterious land far, far away, there was a Princess. But she was not only a Princess. She was also a historian. Just about everyone around her would have preferred that she had remained just a Princess.

Anna Komnene was a princess, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I. Well-educated in her youth, she was a witness to the great events of her father’s reign, including the events of what we now call the First Crusade. in her later years she became a historian, writing the story of her father’s life and reign. This she did in the seclusion of a monastery, which she had entered after her husband’s death—a husband which contemporaries alleged she had plotted to place on the throne, overthrowing her own brother, and a monastery which seems to have been more like a condo.

With me to discuss this fascinating woman as part of our continuing series on important historians and their histories is Leonora Neville. She is the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her most recent book is Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian, published by Oxford University Press this September.

Once upon a time, long ago, in a mysterious land far, far away, there was a Princess. But she was not only a Princess. She was also a historian. Just about everyone around her would have preferred that she had remained just a Princess. Anna Komnene was a princess, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios […]

Today we present a conversation Al Zambone had with Jason Steinhauer, a public historian and Program Specialist at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Jason is also a provocateur and intellectual entrepreneur, who for the last two years has been agitating for the creation of a field he has dubbed “history communication”. […]

Today we present a conversation Al Zambone had with Jason Steinhauer, a public historian and Program Specialist at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Jason is also a provocateur and intellectual entrepreneur, who for the last two years has been agitating for the creation of a field he has dubbed "history communication".

What is this "history communication", you ask? What inspired the idea? What's it for? Why bother? And what separates it from history as it is currently done? Well, give a listen, and you'll find out all that, and more.

It's good to be back!

For Further Investigation

The webpage of Jason Steinhauer

History Communicators on YouTube

 History Communicators: all you need to know about the concept

National Council on Public History

Syllabus: Introduction to History Communication

Clio: the history app

 

I've just begun the autumn term, and my students are about to play a game–to play a game based upon the Second Crusade, to be precise. So I thought that this was the time to pull out a previous conversation which is dedicated to discovering how games can be part of any pedagogy, but particularly teaching history.

Talking with me in this conversation is Kellian Adams. She's the Founder and Mastermind of Green Door Labs, which creates "educational game design on demand!" We discuss why games are both composed of both arbitrary rules and a lot of reality, how that combination makes them a lot like life, and why Kellian hates, hates, hates the word "gamification." (We promise never to use it in conversation, ever again. Honest.)

Anyway, we're hoping that this re-podcast (???) makes you jump for joy.

For Further Reading

The Blog of Green Door Labs

 

I’ve just begun the autumn term, and my students are about to play a game–to play a game based upon the Second Crusade, to be precise. So I thought that this was the time to pull out a previous conversation which is dedicated to discovering how games can be part of any pedagogy, but particularly […]

Usually when we pull something from the Archive and replay it, there are a couple of reasons behind it. One is that the irresistible force of an academic schedule has run into the immovable rock of podcasting. The other is that, attempting to make the resulting violent explosion into a useful propulsive force, we then […]

Usually when we pull something from the Archive and replay it, there are a couple of reasons behind it. One is that the irresistible force of an academic schedule has run into the immovable rock of podcasting. The other is that, attempting to make the resulting violent explosion into a useful propulsive force, we then replay something that not as many people listened to as we think should have done.

But while this time the first reason is valid, the second is not. Dan Chambliss' conversation has been wildly popular, and is fairly recent. But it seemed good to run it again right after Tim Clydesdale's conversation. In this way newcomers to the podcast, and regular listeners, can hear two of the best contemporary observers of the college campus give helpful and nearly costless suggestions on What Could Be Done to Make Things Better.

In their book How College Works, Daniel F. Chambliss and Christopher Takacs subject their own school—Hamilton College in upstate New York—to a thorough sociological evaluation to find out actually makes a college community function and thrive. What they found sometimes confirms prejudice and yet baffles it; approves of common sense observations but also undermines them. All in all, How College Works is a fascinating read for anyone who works at a college, wants to go to college, or wants their child to go to college. Daniel F. Chambliss is the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and he's my guest today on Historically Thinking.