Is Captain America Supposed to Make Scared White Men Less Scared?

[There are small spoilers.]

One of the things I've done since Leeds is catch up a little with friends I haven't seen for a month or more. So the other day, a few of us went to see Captain America. As a superhero film, I have to say, it was one of the better ones I've seen -- at least for a Marvel-based film. It was exciting, the script and acting were really good, the casting was great... and it was surprisingly not jingoistic. I think it escaped it by being mostly set during the Second World War, and by having a villain who was a breakaway from Hitler's special arcane & tech forces unit. I loved the odd sort of nostalgia, and the way that Captain America was clearly part of the war effort, but in a 'real guy embodying an emblem' sort of way.

There were really weird moments, though. Weird because, while the evocations of the period often felt real (inasmuch as comics can evoke historical feelings), there was just stuff that was wrong. Once Cap is in Europe, united with the 107th, he's got a multicultural band of brothers. I realize that there are lots of things in the film that aren't real, duh -- secret powers of the Aesir? References to Raiders of the Lost Ark? But when I saw the African-American GI, my initial thought was, "but aren't you supposed to be in a segregated unit? or a cook?" And when the Asian (presumably Japanese) guy says,"Hey, I'm from Fresno!" How could I not think, "Dude, then you'd be in Manzanar or the 442nd!" Better writers on race in America have already commented on this, and how it helps to erase the Civil Rights Movement, so I'm not going there. Yet?

Then last night, I was watching Luther, a BBC crime drama with the amazing Idris Elba. It's good, gritty, and dark. And one of the episodes I watched concerned a white guy who may or may not have been racially motivated. There was a scene where the killer, a skinny white man who was clearly into RPG stuff, went into a shop run by a South Asian man. He blatantly stuffed his bag from the shelves, watching the shopkeeper watch him and do nothing. And it made me think of all the astoundingly offensive and insane commentary surrounding Breivik, the mass murderer in Norway (short roundup here, because I will not link to assholes at Fox), whose ideas of jihad-by-migration have also been defended (although not linked to Breivik there at all) on an academic listserv I read and in fact more directly on that scholar's own blog. No, I'm not linking there, either. This came at a time where yet again, a bunch of misogynist comments were made, and then dismissed by senior male scholars when women complained about them.

The one thing that comes to mind over and over again is how scared and threatened a very large segment of the population must be. Where does this phenomenon of the scared white guy come from? Because that's what it is, isn't it? Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and all the people who buy into their fear and hatred, and want to channel it back into attacking women and people of other races (and I don't really believe Islamophobia is as much about religion as it is about race -- Sharia law supports a lot of the sorts of positions Michelle Bachman does, after all...) -- how does that work? How is it that, when we look at who truly has power in Western society, we can see that it's mostly plutocratic power, and those who hold it are primarily white and primarily male. Actually, that should be reversed. Male and white. Male is still the biggest conveyer of privilege. In the West, white and straight and Christian are also up there. And yes, there are going to be trade-offs, and within certain communities, the balance will be different. A senior colleague and friend pointed out to me that one of the people who irritates me most on the list serv because he seems so entirely unable to recognize his male privilege, or even his academic privilege, probably can't see it that way because his self-perception is based on being a Jew and being held back by those with white privilege.

But back to the fear: why is it that we live in a world where there is a perception that power is a zero-sum game, and if it is shared, i.e., if we actually live in a world where people of color, people of other religions, people with other sexualities -- and, by the way, women -- share in the running of that world, it means something bad for white guys who think of themselves as Christian? And why is it that the people who fear (because I think we need to include the partners and families of these scared white men -- there are lots of women in the Tea Party, after all) cannot see that they have far more in common with the rest of us folks who live from paycheck to paycheck in multicultural land than they do with the people running things and asking us to pay the bills?

I expect in some ways it all comes down to entitlement, and not the good sort provided by the NHS, or Social Security. If you're used to privilege, and that privilege seems threatened, then all you have to fall back on is a feeling of entitlement. And if power is not a zero-sum game, then privilege kind of is. At least, once privilege -- something that is grounded only by means of historically having power without thinking about where it comes from -- is challenged, then people have to compete for the same jobs, places at university, etc. In fact, a level playing field doesn't feel all that level when it means you don't have the up-hill advantage. When you've never had to share, even giving away a small portion can feel like a huge loss. Being accustomed to privilege, especially the unrecognized kind, leads to feelings of entitlement that don't hold water for me. And I guess entitlement means not having to be scared, or think about one's own responsibilities to others. So a world in which a token African-American or Nisei soldier helps to show that, hey, we've always got along together just fine is a world that says, "see? you don't have to think about reality or question your privilege." It's a world where you don't have to be scared white men.

Of course, lots of us already live in a world where you don't have to be scared white men. It's full of interesting people with different ideas about life and nature and how the world works, and conversations that include bits of different languages, and really, a lot better food. And you know? the doors aren't always wide open, because sometimes assholes with guns show up. But if you are willing to live here with the rest of us, it's a pretty nice place.

NaBloPoMo 2010 -12 -- migraines

NaBloPoMo 2010 -12 -- migraines

This is not my typical post. It's not about teaching or history or anything else like that. It is instead all about me. I'm blogging it because honestly, when you only have your own body to compare with, it's hard to know what is normal. So I suppose I might be some freak of nature and you will all run screaming the next time you see me. But probably not.

This odd thing happened to me at the therapist's the other day. She suggested that my brain sounded like it had some form of ADHD, but then retracted that when I pointed out that I can totally concentrate, sometimes almost obsessively, on one thing for literally hours on end, once I'm stuck in. This is so true that I can actually forget to drink or eat. But most of the time, my brain is spinning. I can feel myself trying to shove things aside till I'm in something like 'the zone.' I am not so much able to live in the moment, because there is always so much happening. My students have been known to tease me because I can be writing on the board and talking and, mid-sentence, tell a student to stop texting or sim, and then go back to the same idea. Or I can be mid-sentence and have an image flashing through my mind that takes me horribly off course, and sometime after a digression into why they should all see Casablanca or read the Bible, wend my way back to the topic we were discussing. It's less like being a butterfly than having a magpie in control... "Ooh! Shiny!" or like the dog in Up: "Squirrel!"

What does this have to do with migraines?

Well, I have them. They come in many flavors: the kind with kalleidoscopic vision and bright colors; the kind that feels like someone took a rubber mallet and hit the side of my head; the kind that feels like my head's in a vise... any or all of these can be accompanied by extreme pain and nausea, although fortunately as I get older, it's more nausea and nagging pain that drugs can dull to where it's bearable.

But there's another thing to my migraines. When I get them, I become incredibly sensitive. I've noticed it before, obviously -- these things have been plaguing me for 20 years. But this morning, as I lay in bed, not able to work because I couldn't see and sort of wanted to throw up, I realized that my migraines are like exaggerated versions of what my brain is always doing. Migraine brain is freaky, because so many things are going on, and it's like I can see them close up. My eyes are closed, but there are still the flashy lights of the aura. There are so many things happening -- there's the garbage truck coming down the street, and the signal at the next block has changed because someone is grinding his gears moving from first to second, the little cat is purring, and the big cat's fur is rustling on the pillowcase next to my head while he purrs in a different key. I can feel not only the sheets against my skin, but evey place that my skin touches my skin feels like it's almost burning, or electrified. Meanwhile, I'm noticing and trying to focus, but that only serves to make one thing louder -- everything else is going on. And of course I'm thinking thinky things, about writing this blog post and what I need to do at the office and whether I'll make it to my gym class and how loud everything is. At the same time, I feel entirely disconnected. That may be the sumatriptan, though :-)

I have no idea what migraines are like for anybody else, but for me, they are all about sensory overload. The pain and the nausea are in some ways merely secondary discomforts. I monitor the pain because they tell migraine sufferers to do so, just in case this time it's an aneurysm or stroke. The hard part is the being so conscious of everything -- and then the exhaustion later, both from the pain and, as I realized today, all of that processing.

And I think I know why I feel like I needed to write this down. I wonder if whatever it is that makes my brain susceptible to migraines is related to why I often feel assaulted by noise that other people might not notice, or why I sometimes have a hard time compartmentalizing and focusing. hmmmm. Anybody else out there have migraines and recognize any of this?

Economy Ramblings

Economy ramblings

I've been thinking about the economy, as are many people. And I have to admit that my spending, when spending large, tends to be global. I spend money on travel, and my biggest expenditures that aren't on things like vet bills and car maintenance are for visiting family and research. Leeds will cost a bundle ...

Fortunately, I fritter money away at the local pub, too.

But anyway, I've been thinking about houses. It looks like I'll be staying here for a while -- at least till I get a second book well under way (and that means getting the first one out the door). (and let's touch wood on that -- the last round of approvals still has to go through).

But as my TIAA-CREF takes huge, sucking dives, I am thinking that it might not be the worst thing to buy a house. Preferably detached. I'm only in the 'thinking about it' stage. And even now, prices are probably too high for a middle-aged single woman to buy what she might like ...

But anyway, I was thinking about the housing boom. And Prop 13. Yeah -- the one in California that has been such a long-term success in terms of state revenue.

Whatever.

Mostly, though, I was wondering: did the unreasonably low property tax rates in California (and in those places that have followed California's lead) contribute to the ridiculous prices for houses and the mortgage bust? That is, if taxes had been higher, might there have been less speculation by buyers and by lenders?

It just seems to me that, had the taxes been higher, California might not be in quite the trouble it's in right now, and (if property taxes are figured into the income checks for mortgages -- I can't remember) there might not have been quite so much crazy borrowing and crazy lending.


Strangely, I'm not so worried about the economy per se, although I'm worried about my retirement and am slightly concerned about my job, although SLAC seems to be in pretty decent shape and fills a niche in our area, and they seem to approve of me, and I'm the only person who does what I do. So not really worried yet. And I did hear someone on NPR today say that he'd rather think of the economy right now as in re-set mode, rather than a depression -- and that actually sounds about right to me. Those boom years boggled my mind, because I never felt I had money to spend on the kind of things people were buying. Why on earth would I want to spend a year's income on a car? Do I need to spend $100 a month on cable?

So I'm thinking a lot of industries will suffer. I'm really pissed off that money going to auto makers isn't tied to re-tooling plants and building smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Hell, if the result is that we'd end up with long-run savings and a cleaner planet? I'm fine with subsidizing that.

And why are we not funding more public transit? There are tons of white- and bluecollar jobs involved with building more train and light rail systems. Where I live, lots of people commute over an hour to work to the nearest big city. Why not spend the money on public transport? And maybe it would even be ok to encourage more markets and shops immediately near that transport, so that people don't need to drive to the store so much, either...

And sidewalks! And encouraging developers to develop communities that encourage walking and have shopping available ...?

I could see that kind of rescue package.

In the meantime, my credit card company is talking about raising my interest rate to 18%. How is that going to stimulate the economy?

I'm confused.

Sunday RBOC

Sunday RBOC

• I love Pandora radio. I have all kinds of custom stations set up, and one of these days will do some combining. This morning, it's Steeleye Span radio. I will say they sometimes pull some weird-ass stuff on the ABBA station, though.
  
• I'm more in control of some classes than I thought, and less on top of others. Guess what I'm doing today? Actually, I feel less awful about my class almost in my specialty. I didn't have anything assigned for this week, in part because I was kind of waiting to see how they were going to do -- most of the class are people who were in exactly-my-specialty seminar last year, and they excelled only in pissing me right off with their excellence in slackerdom. They are going to need a swift kick in their collective butt this time, I think. (there will be a post on this, I think -- the energy drain that is the seminar of laziness)
  
• Apropos of the first point, I really do like Richard Thompson
  
• I am loving all the news coverage (and Daily Show coverage, too) that shows that, traditionally, VP candidates do get asked tough questions about their qualifications. I just wish that more of the commentators would point out that NOT asking Palin the same sorts of questions is sexist.
  
• Sometime over the summer, I was the victim of a theft. I am rather upset about it. Fortunately, it's all replaceable. But it'll make a dent in my wallet. And it makes me trust my neighbors less.
  
• A good breakfast can be made by sauteeing a bit of onion, garlic, cumin seeds, ground coriander, turmeric, mustard seeds, a dried chilli, and a bit of paprika together (start the onions first, add the rest when they are softened), then adding rice from last night till it's all warmed through and coated with the spices, then adding a beaten egg to the pan, having pulled the rice to one side so the egg can cook by itself a bit. Stir together and cook till the egg is done. Oh, and it needs salt.
  
• I could do with about two more weeks of weather like this -- damp at night, clear and warm during the day.
  
• The election cycle is reminding me that I have tapered off on my blog reading way too much. I should get onto that.
  
• I should make a to-do list and post that.
  
• Ishould go to the office and work now. Byeeee!

And more on Sartorial splendour

And more on sartorial splendour

This has been yet another week of busy, so I've missed some good blogging. Today I was at New Kid's, and found a typically sensible and strong essay, this time on the latest Thomas Hart Benton essay in the CHE. In it, Benton talks about the effects of dressing less casually (or as he thinks of it, more formally) on his interactions with students. New Kid responds to part of his essay with a:

Well, DUH! And I also wanted to say, Any woman professor could have told you that. Well, okay, maybe almost any is more accurate. Because while I know there are lots of women out there who teach (brilliantly and successfully) in very casual clothes, I have also had the same conversation with lots and lots of women faculty - the conversation in which we agree that in order to project a certain authority in the classroom, we dress formally for teaching.*

And those of us who feel this way have reached this conclusion long before our first post-tenure year.

Because we've HAD to figure it out - because students respond very differently to men and women teachers.

New Kid rightly points out the gender issues of professional dress, and the comment thread is packed with good and thoughtful points on gender, dress, and authority in the classroom. I realised I had such a lot to say about these things -- not particularly in the most organised way, because really, I need to drag my ass to the gym and get a ton of work done today. So apologies for the lack of careful crafting.

I teach on a campus where there are no real dress standards. I like that. I'd like to think it doesn't really make a difference what I wear, but you know, it does. Our undergraduate population comes largely from a demographic where the only people who go by 'Dr' are men. Pretty much every freshman male automatically calls female faculty 'Miss' or 'Mrs.' (hardly ever that nasty feminist 'Ms'), and the male faculty 'Dr' or 'Professor'. Why yes, this is one of the first teaching moments in any of my classes! Of course, the fact that the most influential people on our coaching staff continually refer to us (especially women faculty who don't seem to understand that we need to support our athletes by letting them slide) by our social titles doesn't help. I have to say, I find it pretty amusing that a couple of my colleagues (male and female) have received nasty emails from these folks addressed to 'Mr' or 'Mrs', yet signed, 'Coach' or 'X, Athletic Director'.

I know, I've moved quickly from student perceptions to peer perceptions. The thing is, for me, I know I can get away with teaching in jeans, if I really want to. That is, I can walk into a classroom and teach in jeans, and my authority is not all that diminished. I'm questionably fortunate in that my students frequently find me intimidating. One brand new student actually told me s/he needed to speak to me because s/he loved my class but also dreaded having to show up and participate in class discussions run by a particular barbarian chieftain who showed up in Rome in 451. I've had colleagues tell me I'm intimidating, too -- especially male colleagues. I've been accused (or complimented) for 'communicating like a man' and 'having big brass ones'. Whatever it is, and really, I think what people find intimidating is that I question them. I ask students to defend their assertions, and expect them to be able to back up what they say. And, like any good bull terrier (which I've just realised I may physically resemble in shape of nose -- if I were using bird allusions, it really would be aquiline -- and constant smile, even when going for the throat), I tend not to drop a subject in class until I've got my point across. Ok, I sometimes do go off on wild tangents, but I always come back. So maybe a bull terrier with some Golden Retriever or Irish Setter. What do I know? I'm a cat person. So ... I can maintain my classroom authority in blue jeans.

But ... I hardly ever wear jeans of any colour in the classroom. I have some nice cords that I'll wear with nice pullovers or jackets, and I don't wear suits, because that's not our campus culture -- at least not in our College. But I try to look grown up, professional, and put-together. I take myself more seriously when I show up looking tidy and with my hair and face done, and so do my students. With them, it balances the fact that I run a very relaxed classroom. It also makes it easier to enforce my 'no pajamas and slippers in class' rule. But you know, as I read New Kid's essay, I realised that my dress issues are really less about my students than they are about my peers, and far, far less about my peers in the College than they are about my peers in the professional Schools, administrators, and middle-management types. Those are the places where image is most important.

My College at SLAC is, and has been, the poor stepchild for almost its whole existence. We are seen as serving the needs of the Schools, by providing the core curriculum so that their students can go on to earn Degrees That Mean Something. To be fair, there has been a push to change that for about 10 years, but the fact that College faculty do the vast majority of teaching in terms of both personal loads (4-4 or 4-3, as opposed to 3-2 or 2-2) and the range and number of courses taught. Since I joined SLAC, publication requirements have been added, because our brethren (there are few sistren) in the Schools believe that we must raise our scholarly profile. The faculty of the Schools wear suits and ties. Casual dress for them is neatly pressed khakis, button-down shirts, and ties. They polish their shoes. I now sit on a couple of campus-wide committees. Meetings often fall on my non-teaching days. The guys in facilities have mentioned that they know when I'm teaching by what I'm wearing. They call me by my first name (as they do most of the College faculty they like), and they treat some of us as equals in a 'we're all here together to make this place work' way -- which I think is how it should be. This semester, they aren't so sure. Why? Because I'm dressing for my peers.

I mentioned that I'm on a couple campus-wide committees, right? I'm the only College rep, and often the only woman. I'm frequently the junior person (in rank, not age -- or I'd be really screwed). And I am frequently ignored. Despite the fact that I am on one committee precisely because I have more expertise in the business side of something we are dealing with, and as much or more expertise in the academic side, my contributions are (usually) politely listened to, and then dismissed. Part of this is the top-down nature of SLAC, I think, but it has only recently occurred to me that I am loaded with perceived disadvantages. I know -- it took me a year to figure this out? D'uh! I also have a feeling that I'm on these committees because of the bull terrier thing. Superdean, who has his own bull mastiff (or possibly bull in a china shop) qualities, trusts me not to do what lots of my College peers do in the same situation, i.e., just give up and stop going to the meetings. Me? I guess I'll be pulling out my old industry clothes and dressing like people in the Schools. I don't know how much it will help, but hey, I'm thinking that in this case, clothes are a medium, and the medium is the message.

Periodization Long and Punchy

Periodization -- the Long and Punch-drunk Version

It's a new quarter, and we're all going to be answering a lot of the same old questions. Since I started teaching, I've learned that we can't really assume much about our students or what they know coming in the door. There are some things that seem hugely, forehead-slappingly obvious, that just aren't. One of them is chronology. Some things happen before others. Time works that way, and it's really helpful. Another is geography. Some things happen in different places. Sometimes at the same time, and sometimes at different times. And then there is the problem of teaching that there are causes and effects, but that we cannot assume that correlation = similar causality. There are sources to be read, and questions we want our students to ask of the sources. Those questions seem obvious to us, but we did actually learn them once upon a time, although it's a strong bet that this really was by a kind of osmosis, since our teachers often assumed we knew how to question a source and most of us historians seem bent on asking those questions by nature. All of these subjects deserve their own essays. Instead, though, I'm going to talk about something else: Periodization. What follows is a bit glib and should be taken with a few well-placed grains of salt -- Remember, I stopped being an Early Modernist in 1985 and this week has made me a bit punchy!

It shouldn't be all that difficult, but I sometimes find Periodization one of the hardest things to articulate. As far as I can tell, this is for two reasons: the word 'period' sounds chronological -- that's the easier part, and; historians don't seem to agree on what makes a period a period-- a bit tougher. Add to that the fact that we tend to teach in a way that seems chronological, but often isn't, and sometimes students get confused. It's not surprising. I've discussed before my own confusion as to where Late Antiquity ends and Early Medieval begins -- Merovingianists are now Late Antiquarians, but we Carolingianists are still apparently Early MA -- despite the fact that it's damned hard to do Carolingian without taking into account the bloody Merovingians! But that's a question for a different version of
Since Rebecca's hosting an Early Modern Carnival, I'm going to ask, "what the hell is Early Modern when it's at home?"

The answer is simply (perhaps too simply?) Early Modern is the slightly blurry chronological period that allows us to separate the Renaissance, Reformation, Reconquista, various dynastic struggles and amorphous creatures like the Voyages of Exploration/Discovery and the Price Revolution into a block of time that fits between the Medieval and the Modern. Early Modern is neither fish nor fowl. It isn't really modern until very late -- at least the 17th c. for a lot of things. But it's not very medieval, either -- at least not after about the middle of the 15th c. So how do we teach it? How about: Early Modern -- a period characterized by a whole bunch of different movements that happen all over Europe, sometimes overlapping each other and in no one order? Face it: the Early Modern period is great for showing that History has many different acceptable narratives!

The first question is, I suppose, "When did the Middle Ages end?" It's a classic question and one that the students don't like so much. Because, well, the answer is usually, "It depends." It used to be easier. The Middle Ages stopped when the Renaissance started. So ... the Renaissance is Early Modern, right? Any damned medievalist will stop you right there, bub. Because, you see, we must question the whole idea of "the" Renaissance, at least a little bit. It's not that the Renaissance didn't happen, but we'd like our students to realize that there was a Northumbrian Renaissance. And a Carolingian Renaissance. And, possibly, an Ottonian Renaissance. And a Renaissance of the 12th c. And only then, after those other Renaissances, crusades that had gone on since at least 1095 (although an Iberianist might certainly argue that point and put it earlier), amazing achievements in architecture, the rise of the first European universities -- things that happened well before Sr. Francesco Petrarch started talking about how his plague-infested world was so much more advanced than those bad ol' "Dark Ages" -- was there this amazing thing that started in Italy. Suddenly, the world and man's intellectual life were reborn in a new way that was still essentially Christian, but focused more on Man and his place in human society, so we generally call it Humanism. This was the result of some interesting rediscoveries of Greek and some Latin texts, made possible in part through the Crusades -- medieval -- and increased trade -- Renaissance? Medieval? Coupled with the fact that Italy didn't look so much like the rest of Europe in terms of political organization, since much of Italy was made up of city-states that were often run by rich people with no royal blood in their veins, Humanism in Italy was often more narowly focused on state-building and the running of states. So the Humanism of "The" Renaissance in Italy is often referred to as Civic Humanism. Please do not confuse this with that thing you may have heard of called Secular Humanism. Or just plain Humanism. God is still in his Heaven, and Darwin does not yet exist.

Now, while "The" Renaissance was going on in Italy, and everything in art, music, and other intellectual pursuits was changing dramatically, the rest of Europe was still in the Middle Ages, right? The plague, which is generally considered a Late Medieval Thing, raged on. It didn't actually bypass Italy, mind you. But it happened in the Middle Ages there, too. Because "the" Renaissance was too shiny and new for nasty things that looked just a wee bit apocalyptic. In fact, lots of things needed to be shiny and new, like the Pope and papal (PAY-pul, an adjective meaning 'having to do with popes') palaces. There had been some problems with popes in the Middle Ages. They had become so ... secular. They acted like they were equal to kings. They even told kings what to do. The fact that bishops in general had a very long tradition of being the most stable secular authorities in a given area we must ignore for the time being -- it goes back to Late Antiquity. We can also ignore the fact that lot of bishops (don't forget, the pope is the Bishop of Rome) were for a very long time (again, going back to Late Antiquity) members of the most powerful families around. They were brothers and cousins and uncles of kings ... at least, they were till some folks in one of those little medieval renaissances started saying that maybe education was also a big factor, and some not-so-well-born, but smart and reasonably pious types started horning in on the good episcopal (that's 'having to do with bishops,' not in the sense of the Anglican or Episcopal Church -- you may need to explain this, too) offices. But by the last quarter of the 14th c. (that's the Middle Ages in Europe, excluding areas of Italy where people are being smart and artistic, and avoiding the plague like the plague), the Pope had been living in Avignon, which is in France.

Now, you might ask, "what does this have to do with Periodization? I thought you were going to explain Periodization, ADM!" I'm getting there. You see, people weren't too happy about the pope situation. Oddly enough, many people thought that a French pope living in France was probably not as effective as if the pope were actually a resident Bishop of Rome. Not to mention the fact that he just might have had French interests at heart. France was at the time at war with England and occasionally other states. Mostly England. For a Hundred Years' War. It's a Medieval thing. But "The" Renaissance was happening in Italy. And that's not Medieval. Add to that the fact that there were people who are genuinely concerned that popes should be good moral leaders, and also the fact that some of this Renaissance book learning had made its way slowly northwards, and you get the basis for our next important period that isn't Medieval. It's the Northern Renaissance.

The Northern Renaissance is in many ways related to "the" Renaissance that happened in Italy beginning about a hundred years earlier. Some historians lump them together, some don't. What they have in common is very important, though, in that Humanism is arguably the most important characteristic in terms of thought. But Humanism in the Low Countries and parts of the Holy Roman Empire that are mostly now in Germany (with luck, there will be maps at this point. And you can tell the Voltaire joke, if you must) wasn't based so much on man and the state. Northern Humanists used that rediscovery of learning, combined with some very sincere worries about the way the Church was heading, to try to get back to what it really meant to be a Christian. Because of this, the Humanists of the Northern Renaissance are often called Christian Humanists. They are very, very concerned with a reform of Christian thought and the Church. About the Church -- I know we're now in the Renaissance in Italy and a very different Renaissance in the Low Countries, but, just as in the Middle Ages, if you live in Western Europe (but not Spain), you are a Christian of the Roman Catholic variety. You just call yourself a Christian. Unless, of course, you are Jewish, in which case, it's best not to draw too much attention to yourself. It's not till we get to the next period -- the Reformation -- that we can start talking about varieties of Christianity in Western Europe.

So to recap -- There's the Middle Ages, which can claim several renaissances. Then one day, after the Middle Ages in things intellectual and artistic, 'the' Renaissance happens in Italy. It spreads over about a hundred years and changes form dramatically and hits the Low Countries and Germany, with occasional side trips to England. We haven't talked about the Renaissance in England and France. That's because England is having a Reformation when everybody else is still having a Renaissance, and then England has a Renaissance AND a Reformation when other places are having a Counter- or Catholic Reformation. But we talk about these things one after another, so that students will think of them as periods. This is, if you hadn't noticed, akin to teaching Greece and then Rome, so that our students often forget that Alexander came to power well after the foundation of Rome and even a good few years after those nasty Gauls gave the Romans a walloping. Because, you know, Greece comes before Rome.

But I digress. So, people were unhappy with the Church. Christian Humanists called for Reform. Some were willing to break from the Church run by the Pope and take Christianity back to its roots. Others, like Henry VIII of England (or more likely his Humanist advisor, Sir Thomas More) defended the Church -- at least until Renaissance politics got in the way. Or were they just politics? I hope by now that the students are starting to understand that 'the' Renaissance is best seen as something other than a chronological period. But to the politics. And now, we have to go back to the late Middle Ages. While Italy was developing strong (and not so strong) city-states, and France and England were fighting each other for years, other people were also slowly amassing what power and territory they could. The Dukes of Burgundy were doing so, for example. And in Spain, the Muslims who had been pretty much in charge since the 8th c. were losing hold, and various Spanish Christian petty rulers were starting to take back land from the Muslims (and occasionally, each other). And in the late 15th c., while England was in the middle of the Wars of the Roses, a civil war due in part to the Hundred Years' War (Here is where you might want to demonstrate which rose is which by pointing to the crests of Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United -- also good for English geography -- end with a picture of the Tudor rose), Spain was in the middle of the Reconquista. Ferdinand and Isabella had joined their kingdoms together, while maintaining their own independent rules and, under the banner of Santiago Matamoros (St James the Muslim-killer, whose name was recently invoked during the discussion of the European Constitution), with the help of the Spanish Inquisition set about kicking out all Muslims and Jews who were not actually killed. Or converted. Or converted then executed, just to make sure. This is a good place to mention the Ladino-speaking Jewish population of Turkey, which was at the time of the Reconquista and the ensuing diaspora, ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Given that Spain never underwent the crisis of conscience and rejection of Church corruption that much of the rest of Europe experienced, there is no Reformation in Spain. In fact, we might even argue that Spain is where this whole Renaissance-Reformation thing breaks down. But Spain also helps to explain the Reformation everywhere else, and so we must discuss Spain. And Portugal, actually. Because Early Modern is Portugal at its peak. Portugal (and you may in fact have to point it out on a map, unless you have a bunch of Luis Figo fans in class) is, in fact, a World Power. No, really. Stop laughing, you in the back.

You see, while 'the' Renaissance was this (arguably) huge break from the past in terms of art and intellectual endeavors, it (and the Reformation) was also going on at a time of Discovery. Or exploration by Europeans. Because the places they discovered were all pretty much inhabited. Often they were inhabited by people with fairly extensive empires, complex social systems and governments, and access to some fairly major trade networks. The trade networks aren't all that new, either, although the people controlling them have changed over the years. But to Spain and Portugal ... Portugal, then Spain, start sending out boats to see what they can see, partially to bypass existing trade routes and get more stuff. The Portuguese started to try to head east via Africa, which they found to be far bigger than they thought. They knew it was there and all. It's not really that surprising, as Africa is ginormous and, well, um ... Gibralter is in pretty close proximity to Spain, and pretty much everybody in Europe has known it was there since people in Europe started to write about such things. But mostly, people did not know that Africa was ginormous and full of stuff people wanted. Some of the stuff was slaves, but early on, slaves aren't that important. Nowhere to use them. By hugging the coast of Africa, the Portuguese thought they could end up in the Indies. They were right. You should not have to explain anything about the Spanish search for the Indies. Columbus is something people know about. It may be the only thing your students know walking in the door. What they don't know is that the Pope divided all of these new-found places between Portugal and Spain. What they also don't know is that the question of whether the already-resident peoples of the Americas had souls was debated at a church council. It's also a good idea to discuss what exactly was discovered -- those complex societies and all? Yeah. Oh -- and precious metals, which were brought back in impressive amounts. And like that, we've moved from Discovery/Exploration to ... the Price Revolution -- a period of massive inflation and the rise of mercantile economies that, as it happens, had very little to do with the influx of gold and silver from the new world! Go figure.

To re-cap again: while 'the' Renaissance was happening, Reformation had also broken out. Spain had been reconquered and everybody left was serenely Catholic. There are also wars here and there on the continent. The civil war in England was over, but the king, who was a member of a fairly new dynasty, didn't want another one. He therefore thought it a good idea to defend the pope, who had granted a dispensation for him to marry his older brother's widow, who happened to be a Spanish princess. Yes, she was a princess from that same Spain where the Reformation didn't need to happen because of the Reconquista, that same Spain that was carving out a ton of territory in the not-really-very-new world and bringing home lots of silver and gold, which tended to make everybody pretty jealous, although even then people made rude jokes about the Spanish, who were not so much ruled by Spaniards any more, ever since the Habsburgs, who were originally German by way of the Dukes of Burgundy, married into the Spanish royal house (you must now tell them about Juana la Loca; jokes about pop-eyes and huge jaws optional, as Velasquez pretty much says it all; you can try to tell them there are still Habsburgs, but the whole 'Otto von Habsburg forcibly ejects that dangerous and hateful lunatic Ian Paisley from the European Parliament' episode? Forget it. Lead balloon.). BUT THEN ...those same Habsburgs bought ... er ...bribed ...er ...were elected Holy Roman Emperors. As such, they were very interested in Reformation -- except when it was to their advantage not to be.

What does this have to do with England? Everything. It especially has to do with the English Reformation, which is a bit later than the ones in Germany and Switzerland, because if you remember, the King of England is a defender of the Church. And he's married to a Spanish princess. And not long before England's civil war, England had spent about a hundred years fighting with France. They were still not very good friends. But here is where a map becomes your best friend. Look at who has what on the map. Students can see why England would prize a Spanish alliance. Almost as much as they would a healthy male heir who would continue the dynasty and keep England from being plunged into another bloody war. It's a matter of some concern, because while the queen is a Spanish princess and all, she isn't a great breeder. (please do not show the most recent version of Henry VIII and his wives with Ray Winstone as Henry. Just don't go there. Not even for Sean Bean). The English King, Henry VIII, who is a composer of Renaissance music, by the way, broke off the English Church from Rome in order to divorce his Spanish wife and marry a nice English girl who would give him babies. Mark my words, it'll all end in tears. Some people would say that this was the start of the English Reformation. It is true, there was Reform under Henry. Kind of. The Church stopped being the biggest single landowner in England after the monasteries are dissolved, frequently in blood. And there were a few small doctrinal changes. But it would take at least four changes of ruler and as many purges before England really settled into its Anglicanism. More or less. Not counting Puritans and Dissenters and Crypto-Catholics. And the Civil War, which was very different from the Wars of the Roses, because it was about Principles, like whether rulers should be Absolute and have the right to dissolve Parliament on a whim, not dynastic change. Mostly. I say mostly because it didn't entirely work. That happens (arguably) with the Glorious Revolution in 1688, a time really close to the end of Early Modern. So, basically, the Early Modern period in England is characterised by constant struggles over religion and government which leave England with a constitution that looks surprisingly ... Modern. The rest of Europe gets there about a hundred years later.

Meanwhile, the Reformation has left people on the wrong side of Christianity all over Europe. Just because the Reformation resulted in different interpretations of Christianity did not mean people had a choice. Well, they did. It's just that the choice was often, "believe in the kind of Christianity we believe in, or die (or move, if you are lucky)." Not surprisingly, some people wanted to leave. Also, remember that Spain and Portugal had started bringing back all kinds of good stuff from their new possessions? Well, other European countries wanted stuff, too. It was easy for the Reformed countries that had navies, e.g., England and the Netherlands. If you weren't Catholic, that papal decree that divided the rest of the world between Spain and Portugal could be ignored. If you were French, you were just not going to be left out. Also, there were pesky Protestants (the people who protested the problems in the church and wanted reform) whom you could send away to new places where they would be your subjects but not cause so many problems. So while people are reforming Christianity in Europe, the voyages of exploration had become voyages of taking over new places. In some cases, like the Americas, this worked. In others, it didn't work so well. Japan and China, for example, didn't really think foreign occupation was a good idea. So the Spanish and Portuguese did their next best -- they converted as many people as they could. It had worked reasonably well in the Americas. It didn't work as well in China or Japan. But then, the tactics and audience were different. In the Americas, there were great empires with complex bureaucracies. But those empires were relatively new and the military technology was not nearly of the kind one might need to combat the Europeans. Also, European diseases wreaked havoc on non-resistant populations. In Asia, well, people were ... civilized. That is, the Europeans saw the residents of the Americas and Africa (although not much is going on in Africa at this time, except for a few outposts) as savages. Since savages don't know better, it's theoretically acceptable to enslave them and force them to become Christians. The Japanese and Chinese? Big armies and stuff people wanted. And they wrote. And they'd been around a long time. And they really didn't much care for what the Europeans had to offer, except in the case of certain daimyo who took advantage of the fact that conversion meant access to guns. This is where, if your students learned all about the 'F-word', you can boggle their minds by showing that it kinda does exist in Tokugawa Japan.

But back to converting people. Most of this conversion is being done by one religious order, the Jesuits (aka the Society of Jesus), although there are occasionally Dominicans involved. Why are people being converted? To save their souls. This happened everywhere that the Spanish and Portuguese went. But as the Reformation took hold in much of Northern Europe, Catholic efforts to make up for lost souls redoubled. Not only were there attempts to reform Catholicism within Europe, but it made sense to try to make sure that non-Christians would become the right kind of Christians. Whether one sees these efforts as a reaction to the Reformation or a genuine attempt at reform from within the Church determines the name -- Counterreformation or Catholic Reformation. There's no good reason it can't be both, depending on the circumstances.

So where does this all end? That's a tough question. Because while England was getting rid of its Absolute Monarchs and ending the Catholic threat forever, the rest of Europe saw its rulers becoming more absolute, although some were benign in their despotism. In fact, in much of central and eastern Europe, serfdom, a labour system generally considered to be "Medieval," was making a comeback. The serfs aren't freed in Russia till 1861, which really begs the question of Modernity. Is the Scientific Revolution modern? or Early Modern? The jury's out on that one. But I think we can safely say that the Early modern period ended on the morning of the first day of the Enlightenment.

Alternatively, Early Modern is a state of mind.

An afterthought: Why is it that I heard someone refer to the situation in New Orleans as medieval. I though sure that such disasters were more common in the literature of the Ancient Near East ...