Debate Over Guns on College Campuses

A growing area of the gun control debate concerns the presence of guns on college campuses. Many colleges and universities have long had bans on the possession of guns on their campuses, but pro-gun political action groups would like to change that.

Pro-gun groups claim that allowing faculty and/or students to carry concealed handguns would improve campus safety and save lives. Gun control groups dispute this, claiming that colleges and universities are safer without guns on their campuses.

A mass shooting on 14 February 2008 on my campus at Northern Illinois University suggests the limitations of arms in protecting professors and students. When a former graduate student burst into a classroom and began shooting, there was no time for a reaction from professor and students. NIU Police, who were armed, responded immediately to the sound of gunfire, arriving within minutes.  But, the gunman had already completed his shooting spree and had shot himself.

The New York Times reports on the push by gun advocates to allow guns on campus.

Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Grants in Early Modern Iberian History

The CORPI Project (Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics, and Interaction: Early Modern Iberia and Beyond) is currently recruiting doctoral and post-doctoral research fellows for 2013-14.

The application deadline is 31 May 2013.

The Project
This project is concerned with questions of religious change and specifically of the change brought about by forced mass conversion in late medieval/early modern Iberia. It will study adversarial relationships reconceived as dependencies, against a complex backdrop of dramatic religious change.

It departs from two convictions: Firstly, that new Converts constituted complex groups, in dialogue both among themselves and with Old Christians, and were open to the transmission and translation of ideas, images, and religious emotions. It will bring under close analysis the existence in sixteenth-century Iberia of cross-currents common to different religious groups, areas of local religiosity in which different religions overlapped, and vague or hybrid sorts of religiosity which indicate the blurring of clear ascriptions, categories, and borders including confusion, doubt, unbelief. Secondly, that the desire to eradicate difference within the majority society was always combined with the fear of infiltration and contamination, and that the disappearance of differences exacerbated the search for allegedly essential characteristics in those with Jewish and Muslim ancestors, who were generally seen by Christians as crypto-Jews or crypto-Muslims.

The project is at the same time concerned with the impact that forced conversion had on intellectual life (including the substitution of memory and re-invention of the past), and with the emergence of shifting identities and new religious attitudes. It will recalibrate the traumatic transition that led to the birth of the Inquisition and a mono-confessional Spain, and will convey the incredulous reaction of those who had to live through it, establishing what they read and what solutions they proposed.

Both aspects of overlapping and redefinition will be viewed in connection with the increasingly intense polemical engagement that was taking place in Europe, and against the backdrop of the movements of proselytization, migration, and religious conflict stimulated by the Reformation and by the Ottoman invasions. This broader framework needs to be taken into account in order properly to assess the nature of many phenomena in late-medieval/early modern Iberian intellectual and social history, and which have been exclusively attributed to the existence of Jewish and Muslim minorities in the Peninsula.

The broad framework includes the Iberian works of Islamic thought and anti-Christian polemic that were translated into European languages (Latin or vernacular), and used as a tool with which dissident elements reinforced a radical critique of Christianity and the Christian world. In the seventeenth century Islam was once more the vehicle for criticizing an intolerant Christianity, and in this process the Moriscos and their writings played a role that this project will explore.

The multi-faceted analysis of these phenomena will involve unearthing new archival material, most notably Inquisition trials, as well as numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts (both manuscripts and early modern editions) ranging from new translations of the Qur’an and other Jewish and Islamic classics (in Arabic and Hebrew) to a rich polemical literature (disputes, controversies, apologies, polemical hagiographies), as well as theological treatises on new converts, both in Latin and Spanish.

CALL: Post-doctoral Researchers
Two Post-doctoral positions for a two-year period extendable to five years. Candidates must have a doctorate in Medieval or Early Modern History or/and Arabic and Islamic or Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish or Latin is necessary. The candidate must work on a topic of research included in the general themes and objectives of the project. He/she will carry out his own project, but also participate in teamwork. He/she will contribute to the research activities of CORPI (such as conferences and seminars) supervise PhD students and be included in all aspects of the project. Working languages will be Spanish and English.

Requisites:
. Official transcript or equivalent of the title that enables the candidate to apply for the fellowship (doctorate). It will be needed only when the candidate selected will begin his/her contract.
. CV
. Research project.
. Sample of work, such as published articles or book chapters or unpublished chapter of PhD thesis.
. References. Only names and emails of the proposed referees are needed.

Post-docs. will receive, in the first two year period, 26.733,28 euros divided in 14 payments of 1.909, 52 euros. If the contract is renewed for another three years, the increase in salary will be substantial.
The call is open from 15 April 2013 to 31 May 2013. Interviews will take place at the end of June or first days of July. The positions will start from October 2013.
Applications must be sent to corpi@cchs.csic.es

CALL: Doctoral Reseachers
Four five years PhD positions. Candidates must have a Master Degree in Medieval or Early Modern History or/and Arabic and Islamic or Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish or Latin is necessary. The candidate must work on a topic of research included in the general themes and objectives of the project. Working languages will be Spanish and English.

Requisites:
. Official transcript or equivalent of the title that enables the candidate to apply for the fellowship: Spanish “licenciatura”, Master degree or equivalent in your country. It will be needed only when the candidate selected will begin his/her contract.
. Candidates which do not have a Master will have to finish one (60 credits) in the first year of the grant
.CV
. PhD project statement.
. Sample of work, such as published articles or book chapters or unpublished work, such as Master thesis.
. References. Only names and emails of the proposed referees are needed.

PhD positions will receive 22.128, 96 per year in 14 payments of 1. 580,64 euros.
The call is open from 15 April 2013 to 31 May 2013. Interviews will take place at the end of June or first days of July. The positions will start from October 2013.
Applications must be sent to corpi@cchs.csic.es

Archives and Gun Tracking

Historians use archives extensively in their research and are increasingly using digitized archives and other digital humanities resources.

It is surprising, then, to discover that the United States government is still using low-tech archival methods to keep track of firearms purchases and track down guns that have been used in crimes.

There is no federal database of firearms purchases, so connecting firearms with criminals is apparently a painstaking task, involving sifting by hand through mountains of paper records.

NPR reports on the methods used by federal officials who search for records of guns used in crimes.

Researchers and students working on digital archives and information techniques will be interested in this story.

Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons in New York

Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons paintings have been transformed  into massive sculptures and are on display in New York. Philip Haas, a filmmaker and artist, has created a series of sculptures based on Arcimboldo’s paintings.

According to NPR, “this weekend, the New York Botanical Garden opened a new exhibit featuring Haas’ giant, 15-foot-high fiberglass sculptures based on Arcimboldo’s “Four Seasons” — winter, spring, summer and fall personified as people, crafted of foods, trees and other natural elements.”

Students in HIST 420 The Renaissance will find this story curious, having discussed Renaissance food, markets, and paintings in detail.

Teaching in English in France

A newly proposed law in France would encourage English-language instruction at universities in France.

According to the Washington Post, “Higher Education Minister Genevieve Fioraso this week introduced a bill that would allow French universities to teach more courses in English, even when English is not the subject. The goal, she explained, is to attract more students from such countries as China, Brazil and India, where English is widely taught but French is reserved largely for literature lovers.”

France has long utilized cultural patronage and official organizations such as the Alliance Française to promote French language abroad, while ensuring that educational institutions within France utilize French as their language of instruction.

The proposed law has outraged many professors and educational leaders. Jacques Attali, a cultural critic and former advisor to President Mitterand, has criticized the proposed law. Attali is quoted as arguing: “Not only would such a reform be contrary to the Constitution (which provides in its Article 2 ‘the language of the Republic is French’), but you cannot image an idea that is stupider, more counterproductive, more dangerous and more contrary to the interest of France.”

The Washington Post reports on the proposed law. France 24 reports on the backlash to the proposed law.

Santa Muerte and Violence in Mexico

The Vatican has launched a campaign to eradicate the cult of “Santa Muerte” (Saint Death) from Mexican Catholicism.

Vatican officials have “condemned Saint Death as an ‘infernal’ and ‘blasphemous’ figure worshiped by Mexican narcos,” according to R. Andrew Chesnut, a professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Over the past month, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, has denounced the mushrooming cult of the skeleton saint on four separate occasions.”

The cult of Santa Muerte raises intriguing questions about the role of religion in the atrocious violence of the drug wars in contemporary Mexico.

Chesnut argues that “theological concerns, religious competition, unprecedented Latin American influence at the Vatican, and media coverage have converged and laid the foundation for the Vatican’s condemnation of the cult of Santa Muerte as the poster child of Latin America’s ‘culture of death.’”

R. Andrew Chesnut’s article about Santa Muerte appears in the Huffington Post. He has also published a book entitled, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (2012).

Thanks to my colleague Kristin Huffine, a historian of Latin American history, for bringing this story to my attention.

NIU students in HIST 740 Religious Politics and Sectarian Violence will be interested in this story.

Early Modern Historian’s Memoir

John H. Elliott, a noted historian of early modern Spain and its empire, has published a memoir of his career as a historian. His memoir is entitled History in the Making (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).

Eliott is known above all for his landmark study of the seventeenth-century Spanish minister Olivares, who was architect of Spanish military policy during the Thirty Years’ War.

Elliott has long served on the editorial board of the influential historical journal, Past and Present, which is published in the United Kingdom.

A extended review of Elliott’s memoir appears in the Weekly Standard.