Since 25 June is the anniversary of the fall of Münster to siege forces, I have brought this post from June 2015 to the top of the blog, and I have updated the post in a few places.
Conspiracy thinking, past and present
This is the start of new post. In it, I’ll highlight The Expert Guide to Conspiracy Thinking from the Anthill Podcast. Here’s a trailer for the series.
Stay tuned for more soon.
Europa-Uni Presentation from 23 June 2020
On the 23rd of June, 2020, I gave a paper via remote link to an audience at the Europa Universität in Frankfurt / Oder. The talk is entitled:
Reflections on The Pursuit of the Millennium, Europe’s Inner Demons, and The War on Heresy: Six-Word Arguments to Highlight Norman Cohn’s Divergent Legacies. (The orange text is important when you peruse the Prezi frames.)
I used the Prezi below in the presentation. You can explore it on your own by going to https://prezi.com/raocgxnxjxkv/. There are many frames that I did not discuss in detail.
If you would like to read my presentation, you can find it by opening the rest of this post.
UPDATE from 24 June 2020: I have put the recording of my presentation on YouTube. The text below is a close but not exact transcript of the presentation.
HUMA 7P55: Iconoclash and “truth-ification”
Iconoclash is a collection related to an exhibit from 2002 that is entitled “Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art” (https://zkm.de/en/event/2002/05/iconoclash). It was the ostensible subject for our wide-ranging and very productive discussions on Feb. 24 on related subjects.
HUMA 7P55: More Discussion of Colas and Toscano (27 Jan. 2020)
On 27 Jan. 2020 the PhD seminar at Brock University will continue a comparative discussion of two books on “fanaticism”.
HUMA 7P55: An Example of Distant Reading (Augustine and Melville)
In February 2020 the HUMA 7P55 reading group will be testing Voyant Tools in conjunction with several theoretical readings by Reinhart Koselleck, Raymond Williams, and Ian Hacking. If you’d like to Read More, you’ll find a Voyant Tools analysis frame that compares Augustine’s City of God with Melville’s Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale. The reason for offering this comparison is that one of the participants is part of another reading group at McMaster University in Hamilton that is focused on these two texts (click the link to RELIGST 775). Note: The image above the post is a fixed version of the dynamic cirrus (word cloud) available below in the interactive Voyant window, together with many other dynamic frames.
NOTE: Last updated on Friday, 31 Jan. 2020
HUMA 7P55: Jan. 13, 2020 (Strategic Reading)
Notes from the HUMA 7P55 meeting from Jan. 13, 2020, on strategic reading
HUMA 7P55 is a PhD course at Brock University. The theme is “Fanaticism: Political and Aesthetic Dimensions.”
Biographical Sketches of Mennonite and Collegiant Revolutionaries in the Netherlands, 1780-1815
I’m planning more posts about the following politically significant figures, about whom little is known in the non-Dutch-reading world…
Wybo Fijnje, Mennonite democratic revolutionary of the era of the French Revolution
I’m adding a space for a future profile of a significant figure in Dutch public life in the revolutionary era. Here’s a brief preview of a post I’m developing about Wybo Fijnje…
François Adriaan van der Kemp
Below is a pre-publication version of the following article:
Michael Driedger, “Kemp, Francis Adrian van der,” from The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, ed. Mark Spencer (2015).
- NOTE: If you wish to cite the article, please make sure to consult the published version.
IMAGE SOURCE: The portrait I use at the start of the post is from the Luce Center at the New York Historical Society in New York City. Its reference number is 1922.5, and the caption that goes with the portrait reads: “The subject was born in Kampen, the Netherlands, the son of John and Anna (Leydekker) Van der Kemp. He was ordained a minister at Leyden in 1776. This portrait was painted at the request of some of his friends while he was in prison in Utrecht in 1787. Banished from Holland because of his controversial political views, he brought his family to America in 1788. The portrait descended through the family to his granddaughter, Pauline E. Henry, from whom it was acquired by the donor.”
Maria Aletta Hulshoff
Maria Aletta Hulshoff, daughter of the significant Dutch philosopher and Mennonite preacher, Allard Hulshoff, was (like her father) an ardent support of democracy. among her writings was the Peace-republicans’ manual; or, The French constitution of 1793, and the Declaration of the rights of man and of citizens, according to the Moniteur of June 27th, 1793; in the original French, together with a translation in English (New York, 1817).
- The text is available online at Link to archive.org.
Title page of Hulshoff’s 1817 book.
Other sources in English include the following:
- The Library of Congress has a letter from her to James Madison from June 1, 1814.
- The Wikipedia profile of the Maria Aletta Hulshoff needs work, but it is a good starting point.
- There is no Wikipedia post in English about Allard Hulshoff, and Nanne van der Zijpp’s short GAMEO article about Allard Hulshoff (which also mentions his daughter — casting her in a negative light) is very poor.
I will try to add to this post in the coming weeks.