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While historians know that history is about interpreting primary sources, students tend to think of history as a set of facts. In The Saint and the Count, Leah Shopkow opens up the interpretive world of the historian using the biography of St. Vitalis of Savigny (d. 1122) as a case study. This biography was written around 1174 by Stephen of Fougères and provides a rich stage to demonstrate the kinds of questions historians ask about primary sources and the interpretive and conceptual frameworks they use. What is the nature of medieval sources and what are the interpretive problems they present? How does the positionality of Stephen of Fougères shape his biography of St. Vitalis? How did medieval people respond to stories of miracles? And finally, how does this biography illuminate the problem of violence in medieval society? A translation of the biography is included, so that readers can explore the text on their own.
Decoding the Disciplines is a widely-used and proven methodology that prompts teachers to identify the bottlenecks – the places where students get stuck – that impede learners’ paths to expert thinking in a discipline. The process is based on recognizing the gap between novice learning and expert thinking, and uncovering tacit knowledge that may not be made manifest in teaching.Through “decoding”, implicit expert knowledge can be turned into explicit mental tasks, and made available to students. This book presents a seven-step process for uncovering bottlenecks and determining the most effective way to enable students to surmount them.The authors explain how to apply the seven step...
The Profession of Widowhood explores how the idea of ‘true’ widowhood was central to pre-modern ideas concerning marriage and of female identity more generally. The medieval figure of the Christian vere vidua or “good” widow evolved from and reinforced ancient social and religious sensibilities of chastity, loyalty and grief as gendered ‘work.’ The ideal widow was a virtuous woman who mourned her dead husband in chastity, solitude, and most importantly, in perpetuity, marking her as “a widow indeed” (1 Tim 5:5). The widow who failed to display adequate grief fulfilled the stereotype of the ‘merry widow’ who forgot her departed spouse and abused her sexual and social freed...
Norman historians have never been systematically studied, but the tradition of historical writing they created offers valuable insight into the nature of Latin historical writing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This book, the first to treat the Norman tradition as a whole, considers not only what the Normans wrote and what methods and models they used, but also how history was used in Normandy and who read it. Historical writing is one of the ways in which communities create themselves or imagine themselves into being. In the eleventh century, Norman historians wrote Normandy's history as a comedic adventure, in which Normans triumphed at home and abroad. In the twelfth century, their...
Here, Reddy illuminates the birth of a cultural movement that managed to regulate selfish desire and render it innocent - or innocent enough. Reddy strikes out from this historical moment on an exploration of love, contrasting the medieval development of romantic love in Europe with contemporaneous eastern traditions in Bengal.
When the First Crusade ended with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, jubilant crusaders returned home to Europe bringing with them stories, sacred relics, and other memorabilia, including banners, jewelry, and weapons. In the ensuing decades, the memory of the crusaders' bravery and pious sacrifice was invoked widely among the noble families of western Christendom. Popes preaching future crusades would count on these very same families for financing, leadership, and for the willing warriors who would lay down their lives on the battlefield. Despite the great risks and financial hardships associated with crusading, descendants of those who suffered and died on crusade would continue to take t...
An examination of medieval historican writings through the prism of violence. The concept of medieval historiography as "usable past" is here challenged and reassessed. The contributors' shared claim is that the value of medieval historiographical texts lies not only in the factual information the texts contain but also in the methods and styles they use to represent and interpret the past and make it ideologically productive. Violence is used as the key term that best demonstrates the making of historical meaning in the Middle Ages, through the transformation of acts of physical aggression and destruction into a memorable and usable past. The twelve chapters assembled here explore a wide ra...
Teaching and learning in a college setting has never been more challenging. How can instructors reach out to their students and fully engage them in the conversation? Applicable to multiple disciplines, the Decoding the Disciplines Paradigm offers a radically new model for helping students respond to the challenges of college and provides a framework for understanding why students find academic life so arduous. Teachers can help their pupils overcome obstacles by identifying bottlenecks to learning and systematically exploring the steps needed to overcome these obstacles. Often, experts find it difficult to define the mental operations necessary to master their discipline because they have become so automatic that they are invisible. However, once these mental operations have been made explicit, the teacher can model them for students, create opportunities for practice and feedback, manage additional emotional obstacles, assess results, and share what has been learned with others.
This book discusses the discipline standards of History in Australian universities in order to help historians understand the Threshold Learning Outcomes and to assist in their practical application. It is divided into two sections: The first offers a scholarly exploration of contemporary issues in history teaching, while the second section discusses each of the Threshold Learning Outcomes and provides real-world examples of quality pedagogical practice. Although the book focuses on the discipline of history in Australia, other subjects and other countries are facing the same dilemmas. As such, it includes chapters that address the international context and bring an international perspective to the engagement with discipline standards. The innovation and leadership of this scholarly community represents a new stage in the transformation and renewal of history teaching.
Contemporary historians overtly eulogising the Norman achievement are shown to have employed a variety of literary strategies to convey implicitly their treacherous and predatory ways.