Author: Mike Driedger

Norman Cohn’s Divergent Legacies: A Presentation on YouTube

Mike Driedger

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 27 May 2021: I have changed the title of this post (although the URL remains the same). The original post indicated that the YouTube video and other parts of the post were related to a June 2020 presentation (Vortrag) I was making at the Europa-Universität in Germany.

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.

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HUMA 7P55: An Example of Distant Reading (Augustine and Melville)

HUMA 7P55: An Example of Distant Reading (Augustine and Melville)

Mike Driedger

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

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Biographical Sketches of Mennonite and Collegiant Revolutionaries in the Netherlands, 1780-1815

Biographical Sketches of Mennonite and Collegiant Revolutionaries in the Netherlands, 1780-1815

Mike Driedger

I’m planning more posts about the following politically significant figures, about whom little is known in the non-Dutch-reading world. For now, the links to Dutch and English sources (Biografisch Portaal van Nederland and the Global Anabaptist-Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, plus a few others when appropriate) will serve as a start.

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Maria Aletta Hulshoff (1781-1846)

Maria Aletta Hulshoff (1781-1846)

Mike Driedger

Updated: Dec. 2022

Maria Aletta Hulshoff (1781-1846), daughter of the significant Dutch philosopher and Mennonite preacher, Allard Hulshoff, was (like her father) an ardent supporter 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).

Title page of Hulshoff’s 1817 book.

Other sources in English include the following:

A biography in Dutch is available in the Vrouwenlexicon online. Go to https://dutchdissenters.net/wp/2022/05/anabaptist-women-in-early-modern-dutch-history/ for more details. In Dutch, also see André Hanou’s notes at https://web.archive.org/web/20080125115929/http://web.mac.com/andrehanou/iWeb/Site/Herkauwer/1925AFEF-5C07-4FE9-95E3-775472D89D78.html.

Mennonite Revolutionaries: An Oxymoron? (2014 and 2019)

Mennonite Revolutionaries: An Oxymoron? (2014 and 2019)

Mike Driedger

This post shares slides from a presentation that I gave on Friday, 1 March, 2019, at the Grace Mennonite Church in St. Catharines. My talk’s title was “Mennonite Revolutionaries: An Oxymoron? Examples from the Dutch and Batavian Republics (ca. 1780-1810), and (Maybe?) Their Relevance for Today.” It was the second of four talks in a public discussion series called “Peace of Cake” (talks about peace church histories and ethics, plus continuing discussions afterwards over cake). I gave an earlier version of this presentation at Piet Visser’s retirement symposium in Amsterdam in June 2014.

*** You can view the slides by going to http://amsterdamnified.ca/learn/reformations/media/mennonite-revolutionaries. ***

Many of the quotations are in Dutch without translations. For the presentation in St. Catharines, I provided explanations.

For the 2019 presentation I prepared the following handout / timeline…