by Jenna Hunt. My Museum Studies masters’ thesis focused on museums of communism, and as part of my research I traveled to Central and Eastern Europe and analyzed several museums as case studies. One of these was the Perm-36 Gulag Museum, located on the western edge of the Ural Mountains. I arrived in the city …
Continue reading The Politics of Memory in Russia
by William Van Vugt. Everyone knows about Rosie the Riveter, the iconic woman immortalized in the famous Norman Rockwell painting. She's taking a lunch break, her muscular arm holding a sandwich, her heavy steam-powered riveter resting on her lap, and her foot resting on a copy of Mein Kampf. You didn't mess with Rosie, who …
Continue reading Lucy the Luthier
by Rachel Watson (Excerpt from an article on October 12, 2015 on Calvin's News & Stories.) Tucked safely away in a climate-controlled space in Calvin College’s Meeter Center is a medieval devotional manuscript the college has owned since 1912. It recently became an object of deeper interest to Frans van Liere, professor of history and …
Continue reading Professor Dives Deep Into History of Rare Manuscript
by Eric M. Washington. On September 8, 2015 Joaquin Andujar died. The vast majority of the readers of this blog have no idea who this man was. When I learned of his death, it reminded me of why I study what I study and of whom I study. Joaquin Andujar was a former Major League …
Continue reading “Youneverknow:” My Journey into Afro-Latino History and Culture
by Amanda Armour Greenhoe (Excerpt from an article in the Fall 2015 edition of Spark) You’re surfing the internet when you find an article on the Italian Grand Prix, a tale of fast cars at dangerously fast speeds. This story of the race’s 1928 running, written in 2015 with the advantages of hindsight and historical context, …
Continue reading History in Action
by Frans van Liere. “A furore normannorum, libera nos domine.”[1] The Lindisfarne Gospels is one of the most beautifully illuminated Gospel books today in the possession of the British Library. It attests to the flourishing Christian culture that once was the hallmark of the monastic communities in Northern England in the seventh century. The intellectual …
Continue reading The New Barbarism
