Historically Thinking

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 how to think historically than Lendol Calder, colleague in Augustana's department of history, and a recognized authority in the scholarship of teaching and learning. A Carnegie Scholar, and the 2010 Illinois Professor of the Year, Calder shares these insights with history teachers around the country. Today, we're delighted to have him share them with us. Enjoy!

For Further Reading

Lendol Calder, "But What is Our Story?" (teachinghistory.org)

Sam Wineburg, "Reading Abraham Lincoln: An expert/expert study in the interpretation of historical texts."

Cognitive Science, Volume 22, Issue 3, Pages 319-346.

----Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of the Teaching of the Past (Temple University Press, 2011.

Sam Wineburg, Daisy Martin, and Chauncey Monte-Sano, Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms Paperback (Teachers College Press, 2012).

It’s Fall Break at Augustana College, the WAUG studio, and for Historically Thinking. So we’re heading back into the digital archive, and pulling out a summer podcast that–to be quite honest–not enough of you listened to you. And dang it, we’re determined that this time you will. So here’s Peter Stearns one more time to explain everything […]

It's Fall Break at Augustana College, the WAUG studio, and for Historically Thinking. So we're heading back into the digital archive, and pulling out a summer podcast that–to be quite honest–not enough of you listened to you. And dang it, we're determined that this time you will. So here's Peter Stearns one more time to explain everything about World History to you.

Peter Stearns is an eminent historian and academician. Now a Professor at George Mason University, he has served as GMU's Provost. Prior to coming to George Mason, he was a member of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon, and the Dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at that institution. While at Carnegie Mellon he founded the Journal of Social History, for which he has served as editor for decades. He has also written or edited over one-hundred books. In the process, he has moved from social history, to being one of the key innovators of the field of world history. We can't think of anyone better able to teach us about this subject.

We hope you enjoy the podcast. If you do, please write a review on iTunes! And do join the Historically Thinking group on Facebook.

For Further Investigation*

Patrick Manning, Navigating World History 

"The single best introduction to the field..."

Edmund Burke II, David Christian, and Ross Dunn, World History: A Compact History of Humankind for Teachers and Students

"A good overview.."

Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg, Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives

"A useful general work..."

Lawrence Besserman, ed., The Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives

David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

THE introduction to Big History–the subject of a future podcast.

Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times

Greg Dening, Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Times, Cultures, and Self

Two "good resources on cross-cultural interactions..."

Patrick Manning, Migration in World History

Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present

A good resource not only on trade but on "world-system analysis"

Robbie Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of Developing Global Consciousness

The World History Association

World History Matters

*All of these resources and their descriptions come from Peter Stearns in his World History: The Basics

In a continuing series on great historical thinkers, we turn this week to Jacob Burckhardt. In Episode XX, Marco Cabrera-Geserick referred to Burckhardt as the founder of the discipline of cultural history. But who was Burckhardt? And how did he “found” a historical discipline? Burckhardt was born in and died in the Swiss city of Basel, […]

In a continuing series on great historical thinkers, we turn this week to Jacob Burckhardt. In a previous episode, Marco Cabrera-Geserick referred to Burckhardt as the founder of the discipline of cultural history. But who was Burckhardt? And how did he "found" a historical discipline?

Burckhardt was born in and died in the Swiss city of Basel, and spent nearly half a century as a professor at that city’s ancient university. A student of Leopold von Ranke, a man generally regarded as the progenitor of the modern discipline of history, Burckhardt chose his own path. As a proud Swiss, he in time rejected the spirit of German nationalism that characterized his lifetime; as a professional, he chose to remain in the now sleepy city of Basel rather than take a prestigious position in one of the great German universities; as a scholar he chose to develop his own way of seeing the past. (That's him in the photo above, walking by the Basel cathedral on the way to class.)

Helping us to understand this remarkable man is Dr. Thomas Albert Howard. Tal Howard is the recently appointed Professor of History and the Humanities, and holder of the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Ethics at Valparaiso University, Indiana. He has authored and edited numerous books, including Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W.M.L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth Century Historical Consciousness (Cambridge, 2000) and Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford, 2006).

For Further Investigation

Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

--Reflections on History, translated by Gottfried Dietze (1979)

--The Age of Constantine the Great, translated by Moses Hadas (1983)

--Judgments on History and Historians (1999)

--The Letters of Jacob Burckhardt (2001)

Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago, 2000)

It’s a spooky Halloween episode, about a strange and wonderful place that’s full of terrifying noises, strange smells, dark and cavernous rooms–yet also, for the historians and the historically minded, an episode full of treats and mind candy. Why? Because this week we’re going into the archives. Sometimes an archives can be a scary place, […]

It's a spooky Halloween episode, about a strange and wonderful place that's full of terrifying noises, strange smells, dark and cavernous rooms–yet also, for the historians and the historically minded, an episode full of treats and mind candy. Why? Because this week we're going into the archives.

Sometimes an archives can be a scary place, full of the strange and unknown. There are lockers to put your stuff into; you have to sign in, maybe hand over your driver's license or passport; you can't use your favorite pen; a No. 2 pencil, which you haven't touched since the SAT, is required. Archivists, who are trained preserve the past, themselves can be...intimidating, to historians, who are trained to examine it.

Some of them (very few of them, to be honest), don't really like anyone touching the old stuff. They figure that they are there to protect the old stuff. But if you're a historian, touching old stuff is your job, particularly if it has print on it. For someone showing up to research family history, the archival liturgy can be mystifying.

With us today to demystify the entire experience of the archives is Samantha Crisp, Special Collections Librarian at Thomas Tredway Library at Augustana College. She's the nicest, friendliest archivist in the business (surely there can't be anyone nicer or friendlier; it's an impossibility). In our conversation today, a historian and an archivist talk through their approaches to the past and its evidence. It's also chockfull of news you can use. For example, what can you do with all the old stuff in the attic? (HINT: Get it out of the attic!) Enjoy! And happy Halloween!

For Further Investigation

Special Collections at the  Thomas Tredway Library, Augustana College

David W. Carmichael, Organizing Archival Records: A Practical Arrangement and Description for Small Archives

Lois Hamill, Archives for the Lay Person: A Guide to Managing Cultural Collections

Antoinette Burton and Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History

Arlette Farge, The Lure of the Archives

In just two years it will be the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, traditionally marked by that day when an Augustinian monk and university professor named Martin Luther proposed 95 topics for academic debate at the University of Wittenberg. But what was the Protestant Reformation, really? Did it begin in 1517? How long did it last? Was there one reformation, or many? What were its consequences? And which of its consequences are overstated?

Our guest today to help us think through these questions is Ron Rittgers. He is the Erich Markel Chair of German Reformation Studies, and Professor of History and Theology at Valparaiso University, and the author of two books on the Protestant Reformation: The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany, and The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, the last of which appeared in 2013 as a volume in the series Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.

For Further Investigation

Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, second edition

Hans Hillerbrand, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols.

Hans Hillerbrand, The Division of Christendom: Christianity in the Sixteenth Century

Hans Hillerbrand, The Historical Dictionary of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations, second edition.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History

Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe

Ron Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys

Ron Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany

James D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450-1650: Doctrine, Politics, and Community, second edition.

In just two years it will be the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, traditionally marked by that day when an Augustinian monk and university professor named Martin Luther proposed 95 topics for academic debate at the University of Wittenberg. But what was the Protestant Reformation, really? Did it begin in 1517? How long did […]

Al Zambone has a cold. It’s been going on, it seems, for a year; and the fact that it’s really closer to three weeks isn’t much consolation.  This has played merry havoc with the recording schedule of Historically Thinking, because no one wants to listen to sobewome whob talbs lak dis because of a sinus infection. So […]