by Will Katerberg. The liberal arts and their fate are a central issue in higher education today. Pundits and politicians, and some parents, students, and graduates, are questioning the value of a university degree, some of them saying that students and taxpayers should not waste money on “useless” areas of study. Students seem to be …
Continue reading The Liberal Arts—Present, Past, and Future
by Jim Bratt. This post originally appeared in The Twelve: Reformed Done Daily on January 15, 2016. Although Martin Luther King’s birthday was actually yesterday, the United States will mark the occasion next Monday. Once more we’ll hear the familiar quotations rehearsed in respectful tones. We’ll see footage from the “I have a dream!” speech on the …
Continue reading Let Us Now Quote Famous Men
In the days after the terrible news of attacks in Paris and Beirut, members of the history department looked at each other and asked "What can we do?" As we are inundated with stories of terror, violence, and hatred around the world, we struggle as individuals and as communities with how to respond. As historians, …
Continue reading ISIS, Terrorism and Refugees: A Teach In
Happy new year from the Calvin College History Department! We started this blog two years ago, in January 2014. In our second year of Historical Horizons, we've focused more frequently on current events, both on campus, in our nation, and around the world. Many of our most popular posts were those offering a historical perspective on …
Continue reading Historical Horizons: 2015 in Blog Posts
by Doug Howard. During this Advent season we’ve all been grieving the violence in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, San Bernardino, Colorado Springs, Mali… the list seems endless, some from our American free access to guns, some from acts of terrorism committed by Muslims. Some are both. We’ve heard Donald Trump scream about barring Muslims from the …
Continue reading Light and Hope
I sometimes use this image of “Geronimo in a Cadillac” in my history courses. It appears to be a relic from a racist time gone by. But it’s more than that. The photograph was taken in 1905 at the "Oklahoma's Gala Day" exhibition hosted by the Miller brothers' 101 Ranch, located southwest of Ponca City, …
Continue reading What’s in a Picture?
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