jliedl.ca

Another great opportunity for historians to weigh in on a fun popular culture field: consider submitting a proposal to contribute to Star Trek and History, another forthcoming book in the Pop Culture and history series published by Wiley & Sons. To quote from the webpage linked above:

The primary focus of the collection is on the characters and stories of the first Star Trek series (and its movies), but essays that discuss the use of history in the later Star Trek series (Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise) are also welcome. Essays should avoid focusing on a close reading of one single episode, but instead should examine a particular theme across a number of episodes, movies, or even across several Star Trek series, analyzing how the use of history in the series has changed since the 1960s.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
* The Cold War in Star Trek
* Star Trek and the Vietnam War
* Race and gender in Star Trek, discussed against the backdrop of the period when the series was first made (and how the depiction of race, gender, and sexuality developed over the various series and movies)
* Star Trek’s depictions of earlier historical periods (e.g., the American Old West, Nazi Germany, etc.)
* How is history imagined, researched, and taught in the Star Trek universe?
* Making sure that history comes out “right”: the repeated attempts of characters to safeguard, or intervene in, the “right” timeline
* Star Trek’s understanding of the history of science and technology
* The UFP vs. the United Nations: Star Trek’s understanding of governance and legal systems Read more »

We are seeking proposals for essays to be included in an edited collection with the working title of “The Hobbit and History,” to be published by Wiley in 2012 as a volume in its Pop Culture and History series. We’re looking for essays that elaborate the historical context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and related works, examining individual characters or aspects of Middle-Earth against a historical backdrop, or analyzing how popular historical understandings inform the material. The collection is aimed at a broader audience than is the case for many scholarly collections, and seeks to make visible for readers the underlying use of historical events and culture in “The Hobbit”. We welcome work from historians or those in cognate disciplines, including gender studies, medieval studies or cultural studies.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Bilbo and the ideals of English country gentlemen’s respectability


• essays that examine the material culture and pastimes of the Shire


• Smaug and European dragon folklore


• Beorn and the history of berserkers


• a comparison of the arms and armor of Middle-Earth with medieval Europe


• Uncertain successions and Bard’s kingship


• Elrond and ideas of noble hospitality


• historical comparisons for the Battle of Five Armies


• Thorin’s company and medieval warbands


• from Merlin to Gandalf: counselors in myth and history


• essays on dwarves or elves in lore and in Middle-Earth


• the troubadour tradition of songs, poetry and stories in Bilbo’s world


• essays exploring the history and folklore relating to goblins, trolls and other creatures of Middle-Earth

Please email a 500-word proposal, a one-page c.v., and contact information to Janice Liedl at jliedl [AT] laurentian.ca by September 15, 2010.

My estimable colleague Andrew Smith has blogged very thoughtfully on the ways that historians can illuminate the true value of the census in Canadian society, both through our study of the past applications of this data and our promotion of statistical literacy in future generations of voters and politicians.

I commented there but I will reiterate here that it’s sad how stoutly math-phobic many history students seem to be. By equating mathematics and statistics with something they can’t and don’t really want to learn, too many people leave themselves open to be manipulated about history and their current world by those who count on that essential ignorance!

Staging the Henrician Court, led by esteemed early modern scholars Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker, is a great site for those interested in the early modern court or theatre. The site features a performance of John Heywood’s Play of the Wether at Hampton Court, itself, a regular site for such productions into the Stuart period.

What’s even better is that you can enter into the debate over the play, its staging, context and interpretation right there in the forum. A fascinating and exemplary site for early modernists!

Via the American Historical Association’s blog, I became aware of UVic’s Unsolved Canadian Mysteries website.

Almost immediately, I noticed that they had a microsite asking Where is Vinland?, keeping open the hopes many hold for alternative locations of that fabled site beside the well-established settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in places such as Newport, RI and Dighton, MA, New Brunswick and Cape Cod.

Eben Horsford would be sad to see there’s no acknowledgment of his preferred site, Norumbega (present-day Boston). James W. Curran would protest their overlooking of his preference in the Great Lakes around Sault Ste. Marie. And my own childhood summers spent near the Kensington Runestone makes me wonder why those spots didn’t get a mention, too (why else do you think they called them the “Minnesota Vikings”?). And where’s the Heavener Runestone?

Honestly, if you’re going to bring up the Dighton Rock and the Newport Tower, you might as well let all the wild theories in since you’ve set the bar pretty low in terms of current historical and archaeological scholarship.

Despite that, this a great little site that lightly touches on the written and archaeological sources as well as featuring a number of biographies of people mentioned in the sagas as well as a parallel set of pages on L’Anse Aux Meadows (I have a friend who has contributed a lot to the recreation, there, through his work in historical ironcraft). But I love how, even with this strong archaeological link, people just can’t let go of alternative sites and their beloved Vikings.

My chapter on “The Battle for History in Battlestar Galactica is now in print as the capstone piece in Space and Time: Essays on Visions of History in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television edited by David C. Wright and Allan W. Austin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press: 2010) (Amazon.com).

I wrote this in 2007 and it’s held up pretty well despite not having a chance to work in any of the major revelations from the last run of episodes (season 4.5). Here’s an excerpt from the opening:

The Cylons consider themselves the rightful heirs and interpreters of the Colonials’ prophetic texts that speak of cycles of destruction, rebirth, and renewal. “Humanitiy’s children are returning home today,” coldly noted the Cylon known as Number Six, while she approvingly witnessed the destruction of most of Colonial humanity. This statement establishes the tone for the new Battlestar Galactica as well as the series’ dynamic. The Cylon rebellion may have brought them liberty, but, as with many other colonized peoples, that freedom has brought them no peace with their past.

My students’ labour and my own, that is. Today I spent almost fourteen hours editing and entering data into a Google docs spreadsheet that auto-populates a timeline (via a cool gadget) with biographical and analytic entries about early medieval figures. It was a bit of a battle to both figure out the technology and the teaching techniques (next time I have students do a similar project, we’ll definitely spend more time on “how to write for a reference work”). I also marked each of these short assigments so I’m on the home stretch for the class although many other assignments still remain to be graded.

There were a few other bobbles along the way. The webpage is kludgy and since I couldn’t use all of the SIMILE gadgets directly, I don’t have quite the layout or interoperability I’d hoped for. I still have to take the last few remaining hard-copy entries and input those, myself. But for now? I’m pretty pleased at what we’ve got.

Please, take a look at what they’ve done: Early Medieval Biographical Timeline.

Now that the pop culture collection is out (go buy a copy, you know you want to read all about Twilight and History!), I’m sharing some notes that didn’t make it into the final version of the chapter on Carlisle, patriarch of the ethical Cullen vampire clan. Be warned: this gets very dirty, very quickly: sewer dirt, but only of the virtual variety! Read more »

So, there’s a documents meme going around in the pre-modern blogosphere. Cool stuff! (Hat tip to Notorious Ph.D. for starting this all off, too, with her excellent posts on archival research.)

Here’s an example of the better sort of manuscripts I read for research. Pause for a moment to admire this perfectly clear hand with every letter carefully lettered to maximize clarity. It’s a lovely document that’s literally one of the most readable pieces I’ve ever run across in the course of my research. Go ahead, click on it to enlarge it and give it a read-through!

So I share it as my “good” contribution to the document meme. I’m going to try and prepare a sample of some of the “bad” and even, if I can manage it, the “ugly” of early modern handwriting. When you move from official documents intended for presentation or preservation down to notes and memoranda, the standards of legibility seem to go right out the window, I’m afraid.

I can’t be too smug about those bad texts, however. since if anyone ever pulls out my teaching file folders stuffed full of papers cluttered with Post-It notes pulled out of class texts at the end of a term, they’ll be wishing I strove for even the worst of early modern standards of legibility!

The latest edition of Carnivalesque, stuffed chock-full of early modern wonders, is up at The Quack Doctor including a number of posts on topics related to early modern midwifery and the visual arts. Enjoy!