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. 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.
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.
Updated: Nov. 2021
Maria Aletta Hulshoff (1781-1846)
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).
- The text is available online at 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 Maria Aletta 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.
- https://radicaltranslations.org/database/agents/2684/
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)
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…
“New Approaches to the Radical Reformation”: Notes from My Presentation (Nov. 2018)
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
Jacob Aertsz Colom, Dutch Mennonite Anticonfessionalism, and the Persistence of Dissent in the 17th Century
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…
Heresy / Hairesy
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.
New publications about Ana/baptist Münster
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)