Below are a few notes related to my contribution to the round table held on 1 Nov. 2018 in Albuquerque, NM, at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. Other contributors to the round table included Amy Nelson Burnett, Kat Hill, David Yoder Neufeld, and James M. Stayer. Geoffrey Dipple was the organizer and moderator.
UPDATED: Dec. 2022
The text below dates from 2013. It is the previous unpublished version of a paper I presented at the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. At the moment there are no notes with the text. I plan to update the text to include at least a bibliography. The title of the paper I presented in San Juan is “Mennonite Printers, Anticonfessionalism, and the Persistence of Dissent in the Netherlands.” Except for updating the title for this post, I have only edited the text of the 2013 paper very lightly.
Part of the reason for publishing the 2013 paper as a blog post now is that my grad student, Brookelnn Cooper, is finishing off her MA research paper, and she is making the case for Colom as the printer / publisher of Menno Simons’ Blasphemy. For more about the Blasphemy, see my post about it here.
Image details coming soon…
ORIGINALLY POSTED: April 2018.
The theme of CBC Radio’s Podcast Playlist from 8 March 2018 is the cultural meaning of hair (“Long, Short, Straight, Curly: Podcasts about Every Type of Hair”). What do parts on the right versus the left mean? How are curls or straight hair related to political views? What about hair’s role in group and personal identity (e.g., Black and Jewish cultures of hair)? One purpose of this blog post is recommend this excellent episode of the show.
UPDATE (Aug. 2020): Slate’s Decoder Ring series has recently posted an episode on the “Mystery of the Mullett”.
It’s fabulous! Among other reasons, it’s a fun romp through recent cultural history (the sort of stuff I grew up with), and it ends with some serious reflections on backwards projections of cultural memory as well as the dangers of fake evidence and online trolling.
A second purpose is to gather and eventually add some further thoughts about the cultural meaning of hair in the study of early modern heresy and dissent. Gary Waite’s writing about visual depictions of wild heretics is part of my inspiration for the idea, as is my own recent far-too-long hair and experiments with a beard. For the former, see Gary Waite, “Naked Harlots or Devout Maidens? Images of Anabaptist Women in the Context of the Iconography of Witches in Europe, 1525–1650” in Sisters: Myth and Reality of Anabaptist, Mennonite, and Doopsgezind Women, ca 1525-1900 (2104).
This is a post-in-progress. Suggestions are welcome! Post them in the comments section of this webpage, or send them to @Mike_Driedger or @Amsterdamnified on Twitter. For more ideas, expand the post.
NOTE: This post will focus on literature from approximately the last 10 years (i.e., since the publication of Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation in Münster).
More literature is on the way. Stay tuned. (LAST UPDATED: 12 May 2018)
I’m compiling links to popular portrayals of the siege of Münster. I’ll update this post from time to time
WARNING: Be aware that most interpretations of Ana/baptist rule in Münster are based far too uncritically on the accounts of enemies. If you listen to these podcasts, please remember to practice the best habits of critical and historical thinking.
Cover of Dan Carlin, “Prophets of Doom,” Hardcore History, episode 48 (2013)
This is a quick introduction to using Zotero, a bibliographic tool that is unique and powerful because it allows for individual and collaborative work. Its main audience is intermediate- and graduate-level university students. I created this introduction originally for Gary Waite and his graduate students at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. This is background for the example later in this page. Suggestions for improving this introduction to Zotero are welcome. Read more
What’s your family history mystery? One of mine has to do with this photo.
PLEASE CIRCULATE! Call for Papers! Refusing to Fight: Reimagining War @Brocku October 2018. https://t.co/8soj0Fg1xQ #twitterstorians pic.twitter.com/bOSwUHLyTo
— Colin Rose (@crosehistorian) September 7, 2017
ORIGINAL POST (May 2017): The Blasphemy of Jan of Leiden is the oldest text by Menno Simons, and it indicates that he was an early opponent of the Anabaptists of Münster. This, at least, has long been the consensus view about early Mennonite history. A challenge for researchers, however, is that the oldest copy of The Blasphemy is from 1627. This post introduces a project to find out more about this 1627 text.
UPDATE (Sept 2019): The transcription project is still in planning. Brookelnn Cooper has completed her MA research paper (“Identifying the Anonymous Printer of Menno Simons’ The Blasphemy of Jan van Leiden [1627]: A Typographical Analysis”) and her degree at Brock U, and she has begun doctoral studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, where she’s working with Jeffrey Collins.
I created this post on the second full day of the conference of the Intl Assoc for the History of Religions.
