Announcing Coursekit

Darren Grem

Undoubtedly, most of y'all have put down your red pens and taken off your "instructor" hats for the winter break.  But if I could have your attention (Harvey! You! Yes, you! No fantasy football until I'm done talking!) for just one second, I'd like to invite you to take a look at Coursekit, the newest little teaching engine to come down the line.  I'm sure it's been talked about in other spaces, but since I don't remember it being talked about here, I figured I'd give it some free publicity.

Here's a take on where it came from, what it's about, and where it's planning to go:

A couple years ago, I sat in on a "Technology in the Classroom" course. We spent the early part of the day talking about new tools that were available. The discussion turned into a litany of complaints: IT policies that prevented the installation of new software, draconian site-blocking measures, thimble-sized storage allowances. At every turn, each new tool that a teacher wanted to try out would require a fight with administration. The frustration was palpable. "Why are the IT people making pedagogical decisions?" lamented one teacher, "Why do they get the final say about what does and does not happen in my classroom?"

Joseph Cohen, cofounder and CEO of Coursekit agrees. The problem, he says, is that most educational software is bought and sold at the enterprise level. The people deciding what to acquire are not the people using it and that disconnect has allowed unusable software to flourish. . . . [Thus,] On the product design side of things, Coursekit is focused on a user experience that is as simple and elegant as possible. This means that all the basics are there: a calendar, file sharing, submitting assignments, and grading work, but in ways that are stripped down to what Coursekit's user testing has shown them to be the essentials.

The "essentials" are teacher profile, syllabus, posting/comments module (similar to FB), assignments dropbox, and grading platform.  If you use Twitter or Wordpress in the classroom, then this streamlines that for you.  Additionally, it's 100% free since they've taken a"set up the site, monetize it later" business model.

Like all tools, it has its ups and downs.   If you want a more user-friendly interface (unlike BB), then it also seems to be worth considering.  I'm not sure if they're going to enhance the personalization of Coursekit soon by making it open to template modification (like Wordpress) or beef up some of the grading and watchdog tools (like Turnitin) that's a part of its competitors.  We'll also have to wait and see how it hooks up with other turns in the digital instruction world, such as the move toward digital textbooks, and the still-under-consideration move to see how smartphone apps and iPads might replace those big, gazillion-dollar "smart classrooms" some of the more money-flush colleges installed a few years back.  In any case, do know that there's another kid on the block for y'all to consider, especially if you've found (like myself) you're bombarding students with different digital platforms to use in class or for class projects.

History Now Features Colonial American Religion

Paul Harvey

The below is taken from an entry on John Fea's blog, featuring a new issue of History Now that is devoted to religion in colonial America; it should be of interest to many, so I'll repost here.
____________________________________________

"History Now" Explores Religion in Colonial America

The current issue of History Now, the online journal of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, is featuring articles, lesson plans, and activities related to religion in the colonial world. The articles include:

The Puritans and Dissent: The Cases of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson by Francis J. Bremer

Early America’s Jewish Settlers by Eli Faber

The Origins and Legacy of the Pennsylvania Quakers by Barry Levy

Thomas Jefferson and Deism by Peter S. Onuf

The issue also includes a very cool interactive map tracing the concentrations of various religious groups in different parts of the British colonies.

The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America

Paul Harvey

Several times on this blog we've discussed and reviewed John Fea's Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction. I'm presently using this in a class, to excellent results, as the students are very engaged with the material (and curious about the author!). Ed Blum's post on using the book in his Historiography course produced a series of blog comments which suggests that he must have had a vigorous class discussion coming out of the work.

Here's a very new primary source volume which should serve many as an eminently usable accompaniment for those wanting to dig into this era further or do a "compare the historian's work to the original sources" kind of exercise: Thomas Kidd and Matthew Harris, eds., The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America, just published with Oxford. Click on the link and it will take you to the Amazon page for the book, where you can go through the table of contents and see if the work is right for your class.

Even better might be combining this collection of documents with students searching out those from the kinds of revolutionary Americans discussed by Gary Nash in The Unknown American Revolution or some similar text which incorporates voices reaching beyond "the founders." Ed's students discuss precisely this point in their comments on his post (linked above).

The editors include a number of the old standbys on the subject (Jefferson's Danbury letter, the Treaty of Tripoli, various fast day proclamations, and some of the Founders' musings on the subject) as well as some other material less frequently invoked (some state constitutions, the Northwest Ordinance, and some others). Below is a bit more about the book from its website; it looks like a good bet to be a classroom staple for those who teach in this era, much as is Kidd's volume with Bedford books The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents, which I used to excellent results last summer in leading a group of K-12 educators in a Teaching American History program in thinking about how to integrate religion in their American history lesson plans.

Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. Historians Matthew Harris and Thomas Kidd offer an authoritative examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume - writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers - show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution.

In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were "created" equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. Harris and Kidd show that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.

Including "Religious Others" in the Christian Nation "Debate"

by Edward J. Blum

Amid the culture wars of the 1990s, Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore published a slim volume. It had a provocative title and a silly subtitle: The Godless Constitution: The Case against Religious Correctness. Thankfully, the subtitle was later changed to A Moral Defense of

the Secular State (although, of course, the “a” before “moral” could cause some confusion). Kramnick and Moore argued that the founders of the United States purposefully created a secular nation and that waves of evangelicals throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries added religious appendages to the secular framework. This left many Americans confused, frustrated, and bitter. Thank goodness Kramnick and Moore could show us the right (and by right, I mean left) way. Reviewing the first edition, UNC’s John E. Semonche concluded that The Godless Constitution was “not an unworthy entry into a debate that has never verged on the profound.”

Wow. If that doesn’t make you chuckle, then you haven’t read enough reviews that essentially end, “makes a significant contribution to many significant fields.”

“Profound” is such a tricky word. Semonche certainly wasn’t referring to Madison’s and Jefferson’s discussions of church-state relations – so profoundly analyzed in David Sehat’s The Myth of American Religious Freedom. Perhaps Semonche was thinking of Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer, but their acolytes certainly took their works to be profound.

Thanks to John Fea, historians now have a profound tool to use in the debate. I have been teaching Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? in my historiography class, and we’re having a blast. Fea shares at least one commonality with Kramnick and Moore. All write from a shared frustration with the simplistic histories of the nation presented by the religious right. Unlike Kramnick and Moore, however, who wish to defend a secular state, Fea wants to teach about history. He wants students and interested readers to think in terms of change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity. And as a teaching device, this book is without doubt profound. There is so much to commend in Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, especially Fea’s examination of the history of the idea that the United States was a Christian nation.

When I hold The Godless Constitution and Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? side-by-side, I’m left with a few questions. First, where are the women? If “American religious history is women’s history” (or is it women’s history is religious history … I can never remember; thank goodness for google), as Ann Braude so famously put it, how are we still able to write histories like this without women playing prominent roles? Second, do the voices of African Americans or Native Americans or immigrant Americans trouble the discussion? Years ago, I published an essay on African American uses of “Christian nation” rhetoric and others have done similar work, such as Joanna Brooks in American Lazarus or Eddie Glaude in Exodus! Have we abandoned “religious outsiders” in this debate?

Third, and finally, is there any difference in historical and theological opinion among conservative evangelicals and anti-liberal evangelicals? Jason Bivins published an amazing book several years ago on “anti-liberalism” (meaning animosity for the large state and liberal norms, but not necessarily pro-Republican Christians) where he showed how home schoolers and the Berrigan brothers shared a political sensibility of frustration. If we consider the contemporary political terrain as complex and variegated (even among conservatives who are so easily made into caricatures rather than understood on their own terms), then what are the differences of opinion among the anti-liberals and anti-secularists?

My point from these questions would be this: to understand historically the Christian nation debate, we need to expand the parameters of inclusion and more richly think about the political fabric of the nation. Without doing so, we’re left thinking antebellum Whigs dominated American politics (they didn’t!), that Martin Luther King, Jr., was the only one to use Christian nationalism for moral politics (he wasn’t), and that contemporary conservatives are convinced antichrist is among us (many don’t and many think those who do are nuts).

I’m off to the East Coast with a satchel full of new books … so I’ll be back with some reviews from 35,000 feet. You can expect several “unworthy” entries.

That Religious Show (Hamilton College)

Kelly Baker

My dear colleague, S. Brent Plate, has an excellent article on Religion Dispatches about the visual culture of 9/11 about how often we remember to forget as well as the language used to describe the destruction and tragedy of the events. I especially like Brent's reflections on how movies became the interpretative frame for our descriptions.

While the article is not to be missed, Plate's current pedagogical project is also not to be missed. His class on Religion and Media at Hamilton College in New York started their very own radio show aptly titled, "That Religion Show," which airs Tuesday nights at 7 pm (Eastern) until finals at Hamilton. Tonight's episode is entitled Conflict and Commemoration: Ten Years After" and will air on WHCL 88.7FM, Clinton, NY or streaming at: http://www.whcl.org

Tonight's show includes the following discussion:

Find outwhat's so "religious" about 9/11.

Find outwhy sometimes two steel girders are just two steel girders.

Find outwhy scenes of destruction become "sacred," and therefore alsocontested.

Find outwhy we humans need images, dust, and old shoes.

With ThemeMusic by Michael "Doc" Woods, and contributions from Sarah Perdomo('12), Nzaba Fonseca-Sabune ('12), Daniel Hughes ('12), and Prof Plate.

Questions?email Prof Plate: splate (at)hamilton (dot)edu

Podcastsmay be available for later listening (we're working on that!)

As soon as a podcast is available, I'll let our readers now, so tune in!

Editor's note (9/20): The archives for the show will be available at www.sbrentplate.net/trs

Black Robes and Buckskin

Paul Harvey



Just a brief addendum to yesterday's posts. As long as we're talking books suited for the classroom, here's an alternative for you. For years, I have periodically used an excellent "greatest hits" anthology from The Jesuit Relations, this one being Allen Greer's edition for Bedford Books: The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America. There are many wonderful things about that volume -- the inexpensive price, the fine introduction provided by Greer, and a great selection of docs -- but just for your interest's sake, here's another possibility of a volume along the same lines, but with an updated translation provided by the editor that doesn't rely on the older, creakier one of Reuben Thwaites' original full-length edition of the volumes. So check out Black Robes and Buckskin below, reviewed for Choice; it will doubtless interest some of you. The volume includes some previously unpublished material, so I gather, as well as an important essay by the editor reprinted in the book.

Randall, Catharine. Black robes and buckskin: a selection from The Jesuit relations. Fordham University, 2011. 212p bibl afp; ISBN 9780823232628, $35.00. Reviewed in 2011sep CHOICE.

The Jesuit Relations is a unique set of documents, approximately 73 volumes, critical to understanding the history of New France. Written by Jesuit missionaries in New France between 1632 and 1673, the documents constitute a running commentary on colonial life and particularly on the culture of the Indians whom the Jesuits were trying to convert to Christianity. As important as they are to historians, it should be noted that they were also invaluable as a source for generating interest and income for New France in the mother country. Hence, the field reports of the Jesuits were edited several times before their publication. In these brief selections, Randall (French, Fordham Univ.) concentrates on what she terms "inculturation"--in essence, the Jesuits' toleration of Native culture and their attempts to understand it to further the conversion process. Her translation is more readable than Reuben Thwaites's monumental The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, first published in 1925. The present work includes 16 pages of illustrations, the author's own article, "Cathedrals of Ice: Translating the Jesuit Vocabulary of Conversion," previously published in the International Journal of Canadian Studies, 23 (2001): 17-34, and a brief bibliography. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. -- P. T. Sherrill, emeritus, University of Arkansas at Little Rock _____________________________________________ And fyi, a little more information about the book, from Fordham U. Press website. And hey, Fordham Press, after a decent interval has passed could you think about getting this in paper so we can assign it? We would appreciate that; merci. . The Jesuits approached the task of converting the native peoples, and the formidable obstacles it implied, in a flexible manner. One of their central values was “inculturation,” the idea of “coming in by their door,” to quote a favorite saying of Ignatius, via a creative process of syncretism that blended aspects of native belief with aspects of Christian faith, in order to facilitate understanding and acceptance. The Relations thus abound with examples of the Jesuits’ thoughtfully trying to make sense of native— and female—difference, rather than eliding it. The complete text of the Jesuit Relations runs to 73 volumes. Catharine Randall has made selections from the Relations, some of which have never before appeared in print in English. These selections are chosen for their informative nature and for how they illustrate central tenets of Ignatian spirituality. Rather than provide close translations from seventeenth-century French that might sound stilted to modern ears, she offers free translations that provide the substance of the Relations in an idiom immediately accessible to twenty-first-century readers of English. An extensive introduction sets out the basic history of the Jesuit missions in New France and provides insight into the Ignatian tradition and how it informs the composition of the Relations. The volume is illustrated with early woodcuts, depicting scenes from Ignatius’s life, moments in the history of the Jesuit missions, Jesuit efforts to master the native languages, and general devotional scenes.

Paperback Writers: Just Out in Paper For Your Courses (With One Glaring Exception)

Paul Harvey

Some of our favorite books of the last couple of years which we've featured here at RiAH are coming out in paper now, just in time for use in your school year courses (not yet true of my newest Through the Storm, but your students will treasure the volume so much that they won't mind buying it in hard cover).

First, and Matt Sutton has already covered this, Steven Miller's outstanding biography/analysis Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South is out in paper. Any book liked this much by both Ross Douthat and Randall Stephens is sure to have wide appeal -- that's like appealing to John McCain and Andy Warhol fans at the same time. Steven's book is perfect for modern U.S. history courses, expertly covering issues in religious, social, and political history all at once, and engaging students with a figure that they might assume they know well, but will know much better after reading the book.

Next, Kip Kosek's award-winning Acts of Conscience: Christian

Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy is just out in paper with Columbia Univ. Press. It's been a while since we've discussed the book here, so let me just call you back to my lengthy post/discussion of the book here, right when it first came out. A brief excerpt from that previous post:

The savviest of the individuals in this book understood that a principle could become a spectacle, and indeed that it must become a spectacle if it was to draw sufficient public attention to make a difference. It was all well and good to tie in nonviolence with challenges to “capitalism, imperialism, racism, and war”; it was another, and something more effective to make Christian nonviolence a complex strategy as well as a religious conviction.” (50) Long before the kinds of people covered in recent texts, the radicals in this book understood race in global rather than national terms, and understood racial violence as a sub-species of the problem of violence more generally. The racial problem was, for them, “contiguous with the problem of violence.”

Just one more to mention, and this one isn't quite "newly" in paper, but recent enough: Chris Beneke's Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism, a work that made me rethink the entire periodization and conceptualization of pluralism. In "Beyond Toleration, and Beyond Those Yellowed Classroom Notes," I reflected at length on Chris's book and its challenge to my presentation of this material in the classroom.

And finally, I want to yell a little bit at one of my normally favorite presses, Harvard University Press, which has done such a great job with Randall Stephens's The Fire Spreads and Matt Sutton's Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, both handsomely done up in paperback, very classroom-usable form. So, to Harvard Press, what is UP with no paperback classroom-usable volume of Emma Anderson's magnificently moving book The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Story of a Colonial Native Convert. Shortly after its publication I published an extensive interview with the author, and I expected that the book could become a classroom staple of colonial history. But as long as it's in hardcover at $51, that is not likely to happen. Please, Harvard Press, set the book free -- put it out in paper! Allez! Allez!

Blum's Blogging: Teaching the United History History Survey

School’s Back From Summer

by Edward J. Blum

Well, it’s about that time, that delightful and dreadful moment when classes begin again. Unless you are privileged to have a sabbatical or be on fellowship (cough, cough, Sutton you lucky duck, cough, cough), the end of August is when the kids come back and time flies away. Alas, school’s back from summer!

This marks the beginning of my second decade of teaching, and I wanted to try something new not just within my classes, but about my classes. So, I’ve decided to start an interactive blog about teaching the United States history survey. I wanted to work through the changes that I’ve made, give my fellow teachers a platform to post and to discuss their teaching strategies, and to give students an opportunity to see behind the process of teaching and to participate in what is taught. I grabbed one of my favorite colleagues and teachers, Kevin Schultz from the University of Illinois, Chicago, author of a great survey textbook, Hist, and author of the tremendous new monograph Tri-Faith America, to help with the endeavor, and away we go. I invite you to join us over there with your own posts, reflections, thoughts, and considerations.

Religious history has been one of the ways my classes have transformed dramatically – not just the religious content of the course, but also the religious composition of the classroom. When I first taught in Kentucky, it seemed everyone knew what the Bible was. I don’t think that’s the case of my San Diego students. All of our classrooms and contents will be distinct, and I hope you’ll make your way to the blog to help me and others to teach better (or at the very least have some zany fun in the process). Like it or not, school’s back from summer.

http://teachingunitedstateshistory.blogspot.com

What Does This Map Tell Us?

Randall Stephens

The other day in my Religion and American Culture class we were covering mid-19th century America. I've found that asking questions about maps and looking at the demographics of the religious landscape can be a helpful in-class exercise. This map of Major Communal Experiments before 1860 comes from the old Mapcentral site, Bedford/St. Martin's. (Click to enlarge.)


(Students should not get the idea that every American sold his/her possessions, took up with the Shakers, and renounced sex. But still there certainly was quite a bit of communal/utopian action.) After we look at the above in class we ask: What accounts for the heavy presence in the North and the absence in the South? Why did utopian experiments thrive in this age? How did these influence society?

Some selected quotes might provide interesting context to the map and give the students something to ponder. (The two I cite here are not exactly representative, but could get the conversation rolling.) See, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who famously rhapsodized to his friend Thomas Carlyle in 1840:

We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book.1 One man renounces the use of animal food; and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable share of reason and hope.

From the southern end, have a look at James Henley Thornwell, or George Fitzhugh, who wrote this in Cannibals All! or Slaves without Masters (1857):

Mormonism had its birth in Western New York, that land fertile of isms--where also arose Spiritual Rappings and Oneida Perfectionism--where Shakers, and Millenarians, and Millerites abound, and all heresies do most flourish . . . . Abolition swallows up little isms, and Socialism swallows up Abolition.

Bedford/St. Martin's Make History site provides some of the best map and visual resources for free.

Guest Post: Social Media in the American Religious History Classroom

Today's guest post comes from John L. Crow, a graduate student at my alma mater, Florida State University, in American Religious History. John's interests lie in theosophical movements, but this post engages the question of how to use social media effectively in our classrooms.--Kelly

Social Media Tools for the Classroom

John L. Crow

We have all read the news about the ever expanding presence of Facebook and other social networking sites. Terms such as “Classroom 2.0” and “Social Learning Network” have been batted around within the larger discussion of how these tools can assist in the classroom. Yet, for religious historians, many of these tools are less than helpful. However, one relatively unknown tool actually could be of use to classrooms and add an interactive way to look at historical periods. Dipity.com is a social networking and group collaboration website that allows users to interactively create timelines. These timelines can be consist of any event at any time period. Each timeline entry contains a title, description, plus a place for an image and a URL. Signing up for the website is free and the timelines can be created and collaborated by any number of people. As an example of what can be shown, I have taken the static table from Appendix I of Mary Beth Norton’s In The Devil’s Snare, the cases heard by the court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692, and rendered it as an interactive timeline here.

One can zoom in and out of the timeline and begin to see the gaps in activity, the clustering in trials, accusations and executions. The timeline makes the intermittent nature of the trials more apparent than a table.

The interactive and open nature of the platform allows anyone to transport time based data to a dynamic, interactive chronology. Classes could share in the creating of timelines, cooperating in populating continuities that collectively illustrate time periods under study. The particulars of events or the overlapping and interrelated aspects of history become visually and animatedly apparent. The best part is that an instructor can create a blank timelines, have students sign up for free accounts and then they can create the timeline entries as parts of assignments and as study aids.

Social networking is a presence in classrooms, regardless if we like it or not. The persistence of laptops and smart phones allows instant access to Facebook and other sites. Dipity.com, though, allows for a more constructive use of social networking, one that engages the students and enhances the possibilities of their comprehension of the complex and dynamic nature of American religious history.

Gender and Religion in American Culture

Kelly Baker

For the spring semester, I am enjoying a rare privilege for lecturers, teaching a senior seminar. I am teaching Gender and Religion in American culture. This is basically a crash course for our majors and non-majors in the intersections between gender and religion, gender as analysis, and the complicated relationships between religion and sexuality in the U.S.. The course is reading heavy and requires a fairly substantial research project. Yet, it is only a sixteen week course, so I couldn't possibly cover all I might want to.

Here's a glimpse of the syllabus:

Description: This course covers the role of religion in lives of American women and men, gender as a category of analysis for the study of religion, the often-conflicted relationship between religion and sexuality, and perhaps most importantly, how religion and the religious construct, reconstruct and deconstruct gender norms. Religion informs gender, but gender also informs religious discourse. American men and women practice and live religion, and thus, religion cannot be separated from the sexed bodies we inhabit. Gender matters.

We will examine the pivotal role of religion in defining and constructing gender from Puritans to Salem Witch Trials to Spiritualism to muscular Christianity (including modern constructions of religion and sport) to contemporary debates over sexuality and abstinence to home birth to LGBTQ concerns to gender performativity. We will use historical and modern case studies to explore both the nature of femininity and masculinity in the religious lives of Americans.

Assignments: Research Project and Presentation, Gender as Analysis Paper (autobiographical paper on how gender impacts you), and a Field Visit.

Select Readings: Joan Scott, “Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5 (Dec., 1986), pp. 1053-1075.

Ann Braude, “Women’s History is American Religious History” in Retelling U.S. Religious History, ed. Thomas Tweed, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

Pamela Klassen, “Sacred Maternities and Postbiomedical Bodies: Religion and Nature in Contemporary Home Birth,” Signs, 26:3, (Spring 2001), pp. 775-809.

Marilyn J. Westerkamp, “Puritan Patriarchy and the Problem of Revelation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23:3, (Winter 1993), pp. 571-595.

Robert Orsi, “ ‘He Keeps Me Going’: Women’s Devotion to Saint Jude Thaddeus…” in Religion in American History: A Reader, eds. Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout, (Oxford: 1998).

Bret Carroll, “The Religious Construction of Masculinity in Victorian America: The Male Mediumship of John Shoebridge Williams,”Religion and American Culture, 7:1, (Winter 1997), 27-60.

Krista McQueeny,"We Are God's Children, Y'All:" Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Lesbian- and Gay-Affirming Congregations, Social Problems, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Feb., 2009), pp. 151-173.

The full syllabus is available here.

For this course, I am relying upon experiential and autobiographical assignments, so I'll post later about what happens. This is a new practice for me, and I think perhaps a concept like gender might make more sense if students have to apply it analytically to themselves. I've already done this. Selfishly, I want to think more about the role of autobiography in scholarship, so I am testing this out on my students as well as myself.

For readers of the blog, what might you assign for a gender in American religions course? What am I missing? What might be added?

Just a quick note to say, I did rely upon articles rather than books to expose students to many styles of gender scholarship in differing subfields (history as well as sociology, etc.) and topics rather than taking a solely historical approach.

What to Do With God in America

Paul Harvey

While we're in catch-up blogging mode, I meant to link to this piece earlier, "What to Do with God in America," over at A Lively Experiment, David McConeghy's blog. McConeghy summarizes and provides links to various of the summaries/reviews/academic critiques of the PBS series, and then proposes an elaborate classroom exercise over a period of week in which students would examine the narrative of the film on their own, and get involved in making a proposed film of their own.

With all the discussion about PBS’ God in America series, it occurred to me that it might be possible to use the series as the basis for a course that privileges deconstruction of the (maligned) narrative that PBS built and therefore employ remixes as a way for students to create counter-narratives that explicitly engage the primary source. Perhaps the documentary would provide a shortcut allowing us to manage both content and technical mastery.

We had some discussion here earlier about the pros/cons of blogging, especially for younger scholars and graduate students. This kind of post certainly fits in the "pro" category, as it provides the kind of reflection on teaching and innovative proposal on classroom work that should be impressive to any search committee.

New Year, New You, New Books … Already?

by Edward J. Blum

We’ve only just begun the fall semester, but it won’t be long until book orders are due for the spring. So, as you’re putting in orders for old faithfuls like The Kingdom of Matthias (IBSN: 0195098358) or new loves like Freedom’s Coming (ISBN: 0807858145), you may want to consider the third editions of Major Problems in American History (ISBN: 0495915130). If you’re not familiar with my blog posts, then you need to know that most of them are self-promotional. If you are not familiar with this series, the Major Problems, then you should really get your hands on them. The collections match 8-10 primary documents from a given period or topic with 2-3 scholarly essays that debate the key points. I have used just about every one and students seem to love them. It’s high-quality one-stop shopping (more like Target than Walmart) for primary and secondary sources!

Sadly, the new edition for Major Problems in American History began with a loss. Just before revisions started, editor Jon Gjerde passed away, professor of history at UC Berkeley and author of some amazing books on the West, ethnicity, and rural life,. I joined my colleague Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman (author of the fantastic book on the Peace Corps, All You Need is Love) to edit the new editions. Professor Gjerde did an incredible job establishing the main contours for the first volume and it’s his strong architecture I built upon.

The two new volumes highlight the role of religion and culture in significant, entertaining, and critical ways. Volume 1 (through Reconstruction) now has poems from Anne Bradstreet and court testimony from Tituba; it follows the emergence of American civil religion with patriot songs from the Revolution and odes to Washington; it careens into the antebellum period with new doctrines from the Church the Church of Latter-day Saints and salacious exposés on the Kingdom of Matthias. It has prophetic visions from Native Americans, new biblical interpretations from feminists locating egalitarianism in the Bible, and heavenly images of emancipation. For secondary documents, Volume I now has snippets from David Hall’s Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment on the colonial era and Nell Painter’s Sojourner Truth on antebellum religion and reform, where Truth’s adventures are matched with the analysis of Finneyite revivalism in Paul Johnson’s Shopkeepers’ Millennium.

Volume II amped up its religious coverage as well. Lost Cause ministers lionize the South, Brigham Young battles anti-Mormon ballads, Mark Twain satirizes the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson uses new technology to defend the old-time religion, Father Coughlin denounces FDR, Vance Packard laments the religion of America in the Cold War, and Jerry Fallwell calls for the nation to return to the Bible.

God in America, Coming to Your TV Soon!

Paul Harvey

Here's the press release for the much-anticipated PBS "American Experience" production for the fall, "God in America," to be premiered Oct. 11 - Oct. 13. Program summaries are available here.

Coming This Fall to PBS: God in America
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE present six-hour documentary series

Monday, Oct. 11, 2010 - Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010, 9-11 p.m. ET

Boston, MA [April 14, 2010] -- How has religious belief shaped American history? What role have religious ideas and spiritual experience played in shaping the social, political, and cultural life of what has become the world's most religiously diverse nation?

For the first time on television, God in America, a presentation of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, will explore the historical role of religion in the public life of the United States. The six-hour series, which interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization and interviews with religious historians, will air over three consecutive nights on PBS beginning Oct. 11, 2010.

God in America examines the potent and complex interaction between religion and democracy, the origins of the American concept of religious liberty, and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation's courts and political arena. The series considers the role religious ideas and institutions have played in social reform movements from abolition to civil rights, examining the impact of religious faith on conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War, and how guarantees of religious freedom created a competitive American religious marketplace. It also explores the intersection of political struggle and spiritual experience in the lives of key American historical figures including Franciscan Friars and the Pueblo leader Po'pay, Puritan leader John Winthrop and dissident Anne Hutchinson, Catholic Bishop John Hughes, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Reform Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, Scopes trial combatants William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, evangelist Billy Graham, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell.

"The American story cannot be fully understood without understanding the country's religious history," says series executive producer Michael Sullivan. "By examining that history, God in America will offer viewers a fresh, revealing and challenging portrait of the country."

To extend the reach of the series beyond the television screen, God in America has formed strategic partnerships with The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, the Fetzer Institute, Sacred Space International and other organizations. An integrated multimedia campaign set to launch six months prior to broadcast will include community engagement activities, media events and an interactive God in America Web site. The campaign will deepen public understanding of religion and spiritual experience in the life of the nation by encouraging the public to explore the history of their own religious communities and their individual spiritual journeys.

"Americans are awash in a sea of faith, but their knowledge about religious faiths and religious history often runs as shallow as their commitment to religion runs deep," notes Stephen Prothero, chief editorial consultant for God in America, professor of religion at Boston University, and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't. "A series like God in America can help correct that imbalance and provide the basis for a common understanding of the role religion has played in American public life."

God in America is an AMERICAN EXPERIENCE/FRONTLINE co-production, headed by series executive producer Michael Sullivan, series producer Marilyn Mellowes, series director David Belton, and producer/directors Greg Barker andSarah Colt. The executive producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning. The executive producer for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is Mark Samels.