Historically Thinking

It's the New Year, and Historically Thinking is back from an extended Christmas-New Year's Break.

With Al Zambone this week is Rachel Laudan, author of the fascinating Cuisine and Empire. Once a historian of science and technology, living and teaching in Hawaii made her a historian of food.

In her book she describes the development and decline of cuisines throughout world history over 20,000 years, and how shifts in “culinary philosophy”—how humans have thought about what they eat—led to the creation of new cuisines. It's a rich collection of history and insights into how not only past generations but we ourselves choose to live our lives and tell our history to ourselves. Along the way she has some gentle admonitions to gluten-free advocates, paleo-dieters, Michael Pollan, and those of us who have considered having "Eat Local" tattooed on our forearms. She and Al also discuss how "normal people" might begin to not only collect their family's recipes, but "do" food history.

Guten apetit!

For Further Reading

Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History

Her eponymous website: see particularly "Getting Started in Food History"

Further books and articles by Rachel

If we had the reverb and the talent, we’d introduce this week’s podcast like one of those guys touting a monster truck event on “SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY.” Because this week we’re talking about Big History–and calling it Big is actually kind of an understatement. That’s because practitioners of Big History, like today’s guest Craig Benjamin, begin […]

If we had the reverb and the talent, we'd introduce this week's podcast like one of those guys touting a monster truck event on "SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY." Because this week we're talking about Big History–and calling it Big is actually kind of an understatement.

That's because practitioners of Big History, like today's guest Craig Benjamin, begin a history survey not with Mesopotamia, or ancient China, or even homo sapiens squeaking past homo neanderthalis. No, they begin with the Big Bang...which happened quite some time before there were any humans around to enjoy the show. Big History says that, to understand human history--and humanity--it's first necessary to begin appreciating the size and complexity of the entire universe. In doing that, the argument goes, we will begin to improve ourselves morally and spiritually; or, failing that, we'll have a really fantastic general education course. Please note that these are two very different outcomes.

With us to talk about these outcomes, and to give a lightning fast overview of Big History "from the Big Bang to you" is Craig Benjamin. He is associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan Craig is president (for just one-and-a-half more weeks, he tells me) of the World History Society; he's also a charter member of the International Big History Association. In fact, he's probably the second person ever to teach a course on Big History. As you'll hear, he's a great person to have a chat with; hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

For Further Investigation

The Big History Project: if you take the tests, you'll get a sticker.

David Christian presents the history of the world in 18 minutes

A definitive Big History Course, taught by Dr. David Christian

Or how about these for a Christmas gift or two?

Big History: Between Nothing and Everything

 

 

In this Archival Edition of Historically Thinking, we replay an episode that we think deserves another listen. After all, it’s just about time for every would-be college undergraduate to get their application packets into the mail–if they haven’t already applied for early admission–or study for their third taking of the SAT. Another reason for this blast […]

In this Archival Edition of Historically Thinking, we replay an episode that we think deserves another listen. After all, it's just about time for every would-be college undergraduate to get their application packets into the mail–if they haven't already applied for early admission–or study for their third taking of the SAT.

Another reason for this blast from the past is that the National Survey of Student Engagement released its annual results twenty days ago, and we'd be remiss if we didn't tip our cyber hat to our favorite higher education survey. You say you don't know what NSSE is? That's why you should listen.

The guest today is Mark Salisbury, Assistant Dean and Director of Assessment and Institutional Research at Augustana College. He and Al Zambone work backwards from where graduates of Augustana go and do–as opposed to what they imagined they would go and do–and how that ought to influence what prospective undergraduates should think about when they evaluate colleges.

Of all our podcasts, we'd have to say that this is the one with the most news that you can use. Enjoy!

For Further Investigation

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

David Chambliss and Christopher G. Takacs, How College Works

Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School

Andrew Ferguson, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Son into College

NSSE: The National Survey of Student Engagement

Forbes Magazine: America's Top Colleges–a survey of colleges based on undergraduate outcomes, including levels of student debt, employment, satisfaction, and graduation rates.

For the last few years there have been an increasing number of job ads by colleges and universities looking for professors who specialize in public history. Yet, curiously enough, public history is a discipline of history that comparatively few members of the public actually know about. And, often, even those people who are looking to […]

For the last few years there have been an increasing number of job ads by colleges and universities looking for professors who specialize in public history. Yet, curiously enough, public history is a discipline of history that comparatively few members of the public actually know about. And, often, even those people who are looking to employ someone who knows public history have a hard time explaining what public history actually means.

With Al Zambone this week to define and explain public history is Thomas Cauvin. He is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which happens to be right in the middle of Cajun Country. He has been involved in many public history initiatives, including travelling and online exhibitions, and crowdsourcing projects. In 2016 Routledge will publish his Public History: A Textbook of Practice. A citizen of France, he earned his PHD in Italy, and has taught in France, Italy, Ireland, and now the United States. Have a listen, cher; it'll be a true bon temps.

For Further Investigation

-Cauvin, Thomas. Public History. A Textbook of Practice, London/New York: Routledge, (forthcoming 2016).

-The Museum on the Move

-History@Work

-Evans, Jennifer. “What is Public History”, Public History Resource Center, 2000, http://www.publichistory.org/what_is/definition.html (accessed June 2014)

-Meringolo, Denise. Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts, 2012.

-Nick Sacco, Exploring the Past: the blog of a public historian

It’s Thanksgiving Eve! Which means that at Historically Thinking it’s time to think about what the history of Thanksgiving is, and what it can tell us about thinking historically. Our guest today is Tracy McKenzie, professor of history at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Prior to coming to Wheaton he taught history for twenty-two years at the […]

It's Thanksgiving Eve! Which means that at Historically Thinking it's time to think about what the history of Thanksgiving is, and what it can tell us about thinking historically.

Our guest today is Tracy McKenzie, professor of history at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Prior to coming to Wheaton he taught history for twenty-two years at the University of Washington, where he was the Donald W. Logan Endowed Chair in American History.

His research focuses on the American Civil War era and its effects on the economy and society of the Upper South. This has resulted in several books, including One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and  Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2006), which won the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award for best non-fiction work on the Civil War.

So, what does this have to do with Thanksgiving? For one, McKenzie's most recent work is The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us about Loving God and Learning from History (InterVarsity Press, 2013). Why a Civil War-era historian should be so interested in Thanksgiving is a riddle that we will explore in our conversation. For two, the story of Thanksgiving and how it came to be celebrated in American culture is also a study of historical thinking, and McKenzie provides one of the most interesting, accessible introductions to thinking historically that we've encountered.

So as you're traveling over the river and through the woods, have a listen to our conversation. You'll find out a lot about evidence; why historical revisionism is a really good thing; the difference between thanksgivings and Thanksgiving; and why football has from the beginning been part of the Thanksgiving celebration. Safe travels!

After thirty-odd Historically Thinking conversations, we thought it was about time to have a conversation about…thinking historically. (We’ll do just about anything for show ideas.) Think of this as a sort of editorial manifesto; the ideas behind the ideas; the spinal column that connects the varied conversations of this podcast. There are few better to discuss history and […]