Life's Rich Carnival

Life's Rich Carnival

Hello all -- I am frantically dogpaddling through the next couple of weeks, trying to catch up from the conference weekend and a funeral weekend immediately following, finish up the term and get books ordered for SLAC, and get ready for the big move ... So, not so much on the blogging front for a bit, I'm thinking.

Except: Student, Please! The paper was due today. Your peer review was supposed to have been done when I was at K'zoo. No, you cannot get a friend to review it today before you turn in the final draft, just because you didn't have your rough draft done on time. You didn't do it? Not my problem. Also? Please review the criteria for online discussion before telling me your grade last week was too low. You made four comments. The minimum requirement is three substantive comments over the week, or at least one per thread. There were three threads, and one of your comments was a question asking for clarification and another was, "I agree." And you are complaining about a 70? Hmph. And yes, I am a grumpy medievalist. The Child may have bought me roses, but she ate my chocolate.

History Carnivals!

History Carnival 31 ia up at Airminded, the first, I think, from the Antipodes.

Brandon at Siris will be hosting the ancient/medieval Carnivalesque on about May 21. More details later, but you can use the Blog Carnival submission form to nominate good posts on ancient and medieval topics posted since the last edition (13 March).

Two Questions

But before I go, two pedagogical questions:

First, presuming that you use laws/law codes as primary sources, how do you address the assumption that, if a law exists, it must be in response to something? My most recent example is the assumption that Augustus promulgated his edict tolerating the Jews because they were "obviously the victims of persecution." Normally, they see it in terms of bestiality laws, but since we're doing the Lex Salica this week, I'm sure it'll come up again.

Second, anyone have any favourite textbooks for 20th c. Europe for an upper division class?

Thanks in advance!