I’ve been thinking recently about the relationship between my historical interests and my personal life. It’s a question that most historians get at some point in their careers, I suppose, and one that some must get quite often. Historians reading this blog will probably be familiar with some variant of the “Ah, you do [insert [...]
This weekend, I’ll return to the annual Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference hosted by the Augustinian Institute at Villanova University. I was last there in 2007, on a panel on Renaissance historia sacra with Kate Elliott van Liere and Howard Louthan. This time I’ll be joining Kate and Katrina Olds for a panel on “Visions [...]
Following on my last post about Good News on Teaching, a bit of bad news: Tuesday’s New York Times included an article (now one of the “most emailed”) about the impact of current students’ sense of entitlement on their professors’ ability to give them honest grades pegged to something more than basic compliance with course [...]
As someone with a strong interest in applying recent scholarship on teaching and learning in the classroom, I was heartened by this article from today’s New York Times. Note the appearance of Eric Mazur, a Harvard physicist who has collaborated with Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, where I’ve also worked as a [...]
Though I’m a historian primarily of early modern Spain, I pay close attention to modern Spanish politics, as well, and hope that I’ll have the chance in the not-too-distant future to teach a broad course on modern Spanish history from Fernando and Isabel to Zapatero. As someone interested in questions of Spanish identity and nationhood, [...]
Normally, I try to keep this newsfeed relatively academic, but sometimes one has to make an exception for Wallace & Gromit … Happy Holidays!
This will be a busy spring for me, as on top of the usual teaching and research schedule I’ll be giving several papers. A quick note about the two on which I’ve been working most recently:
In early March, I’ll be in Oslo, Norway for a conference, organized by Halvor Moxnes, on “Holy Land as Homeland.” [...]
Today’s New York Times reports on the results of a study using genetic testing to determine how many Jews and Muslims converted to Catholicism in the 15th and 16th centuries:
The genetic signatures of people in Spain and Portugal provide new and explicit evidence of the mass conversions of Sephardic Jews and Muslims to Catholicism in [...]
A quick notice for those readers in the Boston area: unfortunately, I’ve had to postpone my Pietro Martire talk until Monday, 15 December (same time and place) due to illness. I hope still to see many of you there!