I am behind on reporting on my reading list for 2013 – for that, I apologize, but what that does mean is that you’ll see at least two andprobably three new blog posts this week […]
Messiahs and scapegoats and taboos, oh my…
S&R Honors: Ivan Toms and Lawrie Schlemmer – what we were we still are
Waiting for a miracle “How long are you prepared to wait?” I asked. It was 1991 in the Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth and I was in my final year of […]
Playing with pain: RGIII and the challenge of The Sport Ethic
It’s not often you get to see one of your research interests play out in real-time. But last night, during the Seahawks-Redskins playoff game, we saw The Sport Ethic clearly illustrated. Quick refresher: The […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions and Histories
Final part of a series “[H]istory and historical fiction,” says historian Paul Ashdown, “are alternate ways of telling stories about the past.” In that context, Ulysses S. Grant spoke more truth than he realized […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions told until they are believed to be true
Part eight in a series “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Ulysses S. Grant said in his Personal Memoirs. Grant was specifically […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: The Civil War’s great storyteller
Part six in a series. No written work embodies the tension between art and history more fully than Shelby Foote’s mammoth three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. Few people realize Foote was a novelist […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: “Frankly, my dear….”
Part three in a series As the horn section carries Max Steiner’s score from its overture into the sweeping, now-iconic strings of its main theme, Gone With the Wind opens with haggard-looking slaves returning from […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: The ways we remember the Civil War
Part two in a series “We may say that only at the moment when Lee handed Grant his sword was the Confederacy born,” wrote Robert Penn Warren during the Civil War’s centennial; “or […]
Was there a Mrs. Jesus?
In case you don’t regularly visit the “Entertainment” section on the main Google News page, you may have missed the article published yesterday afternoon with variations on the headline, “A Faded Piece […]
International community: Zombie apocalypse not likely
Daniel Drezner’s visit to Graceland a few years back taught him something important about writing about zombies. Fellow tourists seemed to fall into two contingents: The first contingent was thoroughly, utterly sincere […]
