Profiles in History: Geoffrey Plantagenet

Most people have heard of Richard the Lionhearted, if only through Robin Hood stories. They’ve also heard of his brother, John (the phony king of England). A few less people have heard of their older brother, Henry, who predeceased them and their father, Henry II, and their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. But who has heard of their middle brother (between Richard and John), Geoffrey, duke of Brittany? Well, anyone who has seen The Lion in Winter has. But what do we know about this forgotten brother?

Why do I like Geoffrey so much? I think it all harkens back to the first bit of The Lion in Winterthat I ever saw. I was channel surfing and I found it on some movie station. It was the scene where Henry II is talking to Philip Augustus and all three sons start popping out from behind tapestries. I figured out who Henry was, but I assumed that Philip was either John or Richard (since I had no idea what was going on and, as far as I knew, Henry only had two sons). When three more sons presented themselves, I was beyond confused. Who the heck were these people? My parents ended up buying it and I was pleased to see that the scene made much more sense in context. I then got to school, and promptly learned about the Plantagenet kings in my second semester of Western Civ. It was an exciting moment for me.

Geoffrey II Plantagenet was the fourth son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine (the eldest son died in infancy). He was married to Constance, duchess of Brittany and had three children: two daughters and his son, Arthur. Geoffrey seemed to have a passion for joining his various siblings in rebellions against their father. He even took young Henry’s side in a battle against Richard. Geoffrey was also a close friend of Philip Augustus, king of France. One version of Geoffrey’s death (at age 28) has Philip so distraught the he attempted to jump into the coffin as well.

Geoffrey’s early death is the reason that he did not become king after the death of Richard. However, due to the law of primogeniture, Geoffrey’s son, Arthur, ought to have been next in line in place of his father. However, after Geoffrey’s death, Arthur was place under the wardship of John. He was sent on a boat across the channel to England with some of John’s men, and he never arrived… Before his death, Arthur carried on the family tradition of rebellion and joined his father’s friend Philip in war against his uncle, Richard. Anyone who has seen The Lion in Winter and believes the family schisms to be exaggerated, that family had serious issues.

If Geoffrey had lived longer, would he have earned his own fun place in history alongside his brothers? I would certainly hope so, because he was definitely wily enough to deal with Philip if he had ever come to the throne. As it is, I get to adore this forgotten son of British history.

Now, you should all go do something fun and holiday related. I will sink back into my life of academia and count the days until the end of the semester, with half of me wanting them to go faster so I can go home and the other half wanting them to go slower so I have more time to study and work on my two papers.

Brenna

Enlightened Despotism

Happy Thanksgiving! I sincerely hope that this weekend is relaxing and that you have a chance to spend time with your family and friends before the holiday season really gets in gear.

Last fall, I took Russia and the Soviet Union I with Dr. Black, and it was a wonderful class. Russian history seems to always take a back seat in European/world history courses in favor of Western Europe, China, and the United States, which is a shame, because Russia was formed from a variety of ethnic groups and throughout its history, there have been lots of colorful characters who overthrow rulers with startling regularity. The downside of having this many characters is that Russian history is pretty complicated. Especially in the Middle Ages, when there were a whole bunch of Russian princes running around. Our first textbook was a collection of primary source documents from the medieval period, and they were really challenging reading.

At about this time last year, we finished studying Catherine the Great, tsarina of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She is a really fascinating persona for more reasons than just her romantic life. During her life, she had an absurd number of lovers, which contributed even more to court politics, as you might imagine. However, anything you may have heard about a horse being involved in her death is absolutely not true and is urban legend, just as Marie Antoinette (a contemporary of Catherine, acutally) never said that the peasants should eat cake.

Catherine came to power after some of the court nobles wrote a manifesto dethroning Peter III and confirming her as tsarina. She was a hands-on ruler, and foreign relations were an important part of her reign. In order to keep neighboring Poland weak, she negotiated with the rulers of Prussia and Austria to partition Poland, effectively eliminating it as a territory by 1795. Catherine was also involved in the affairs of the Holy Roman Empire and a war with Turkey in 1778.

What interests me the most about Catherine the Great is her intellecutal prowess. She was extremely well-read (she admired the works of Voltaire and Montesquieu and even corresponded with Voltaire) and believed in many Enlightenment ideas. She was an autocratic ruler but still accepted the rule of law, thinking that rulers should not be arbitrary. She provided for the protection of the rights of serfs and of nobles, disapproved of censorship, and created many intellectual institutions. Catherine promoted secular learning and believed in reason. In my last paper for class, I talked about how the ways in which Catherine adopted Enlightenment values. She wrote educational books and supported the standardization of the Russian language, believed in Adam Smith's free enterprise theories of economics, worked to open trade within Russia, formed a Legislative Commission to serve as her advisory body, and protected many of the rights that are found in our Bill of Rights and in our tradition, such as habeus corpus, protection from false imprisonment, and protection from torture.

Unfortunately, Catherine backed away from this Enlightened position in the last years of her reign, as the French Revolution caused her to fear a similar occurence in Russia. She is considered an Enlightened despot as a result of her firm rule and her openness to Western ideas. One can only wonder where she would have brought Russia if things had been different in France and in America and whether she would still be considered an enlightened ruler if she lived in a different world.

Public Service Announcement: Supplemental

Gillian certainly managed to beat me to it. By it, I mean a public service announcement on writing. But I do have a few things to add to what she said.

I have gained a new appreciation for the work that is good writing this semester because I am in an internship to work in our school's Writing Center (where Gillian already works). I've always known that writing is important. I've always that it is something that will be in just about any job you could possibly have. I've always known that there are many kinds of writing other than an English paper. What I discovered this semester is that most people don't realize this. They assume that if they are not an English major, then they can kiss papers good-bye. Ah, how wrong they are.

A good portion of your future will depend upon your ability to write well and effectively. Gillian and I are worrying about writing papers for history conferences. Last semester, I worried about writing essays for internship applications. All seniors who plan on going to graduate school are worrying about application essays. My sister, who is working on her PhD in neuroscience has to write proposals of various kinds. The point is, writing is everywhere.

I will admit that in high school, I coasted on my writing for as long as possible. Most high school teachers, I have noticed, do not have the highest standards for writing. This means that many students get a rude awakening when they get to college. I am also lucky in that I have been writing research papers since fifth grade, and I should thank Mrs. Choice every time I write one. But the fact of the matter is that good writing takes a lot of work. It does not happen in a burst of inspiration which leads to a polished eight page paper taking form in one sitting. If it did, my life would be so much easier than it is.

So, please, take our advice: take your writing seriously. It is something on which you will be judged in the future. You may be the most coherent, personable, kind person in the world, but if that does not come across on paper, then you will run into problems at some point. So, please, work on your writing.

Thank you for reading this. Public service announcement over.

Don't Blow Off Your Papers

A public service announcement from Ten-Page.

As previously published, I couldn't come through with a memoir on the wonderful Catherine the Great this past week, since I had too much work to accomplish. It would be more correct to say that I had one huge task to accomplish. Every spare moment of the past 4 days has been devoted to preparing my paper for New Deal and World War II, which was, by my own choosing, more ambitious of a task than it needed to be, but that's a story for another day. The point I would like to make is as follows: take your papers seriously. This is not going to be a Gillian-dropped-the-ball-and-waited-until-the-last-minute-to-write-her-paper-so-don't-make-the-same-mistake warning, but I would instead like to comment on my experience writing my paper to illuminate my point.

I wrote this paper on the Atlantic Charter and the ways in which it was a statement of the Allies' war aims and of their vision for the post-war world. If you've never heard of the Atlantic Charter, it's okay, because it really hasn't been studied in the way that I expected. Book after book I opened didn't have much to say about the document. I found a wonderful set of primary sources thanks to the American Presidency Project, but it just perplexed me that not much had been written about what struck me as a pretty important statement of policy and intent. I really enjoyed reading my sources and I found some pretty fascinating insights and had a lot of great ideas for this paper. This is only a last minute story in that I started taking notes last Wednesday, and this paper is due tomorrow, which worried me greatly, but I knew I would manage to get my paper together. Anyway, I get all my notes done on Thursday and I have an outline by dinner time and started writing it after dinner. But in doing that I came to some very interesting realizations and insights that pretty much changed my outlook on the world.

I've always been an idealist; I understand the problems we face, and, believe me, I get the reasons why we have them and why we haven't been able to solve them. But I still see the great potential in humanity and the great capacity to do good. But we don't, and if you want the full theological/historical/observational argument, I'd be glad to fill you in. Suffice it to say that a whole lot of things made a whole lot more sense to me as I analyzed this document and put my paper together.

Which brings me to my point. Papers are healthy. Yes, I love to write, and yes, I worked very hard to earn my nickname. I'm quite proud of my nickname, actually. But a paper is a chance or, dare I say it?, an excuse to really get into something you're interested in and make your brain happy by constructing an intellectual argument. You might get a prompt from a professor, but you still have the chance to make it your own, to add your voice and your insights to the intellectual conversation that academics reference. Not only that, but it gives you the chance to grow as a scholar and as a person. I'm a much better person because I wrote this paper. And it would be awesome if more students realized this about paper writing (and I bet the professors might get excited, too).

One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten recently was from Dr. Jeff Burson, who was a visiting professor last spring when Dr. Black was on sabbatical (WaC people: you can say what you want, but I have a different perspective than you). I met with him one day about graduate school, and he said that it's really beneficial if in graduate school, you treat all your seminar papers as future published articles, because publication is everything in the professional world. I've caught myself treating my undergraduate papers in this way, looking to publish them in the student journals we have here or present them at a conference or two (both of these are true for my WWII paper). It's really helpful advice, and it makes a big difference to look beyond the paper's due date and to think of a paper in this way. So I offer it to all the students out there. Think beyond, think big, and don't blow off your paper.

By the way, I did get my paper done, it just needs the last read-through and one end note needs to be adjusted, after I look up how to properly cite a website. The 16 page draft of the real paper is waiting for me to revise it next week or the week after, after I knock off some of these other assignments.

Repeating History: Who Hasn't Slept with Augustus' Daughter and the End of WWII

Faithful readers, I am back to share with you more scintillating lessons from this past week in history academia. I am also trying to ignore my roommate, who has been alternately talking to herself and me for the last hour, and I have decided that ignoring her will solve the problem of whether or not she's actually addressing her comments to me. So, here goes:

Ancient Rome:

We began he week by finishing up our discussion of Augustus and then moving on to his predecessor, Tiberius. As part of this, we watched a clip from I, Claudius which Dr. Sorrentino was able to find on YoutTube. In this clip, Augustus is asking a long line of men if they have slept with his daughter. When I was showing it to Bess, I counted, and there were 20 guys in the line. At the end of the questioning, Augustus yells, "Has anyone in Rome not slept with my daughter?" I'm really hoping that the answer to that question is yes, because the implications of the other answer are quite simply disturbing.

The next class, we discussed Roman religion. First of all, I found it interesting to actually learn about the Vestal Virgins. They served the goddess Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. They kept the eternal flame which represented the "hearth" of Rome burning. They were given over to the order between the ages of five and ten, and were dedicated to her for 30 years. During that 30 years, they followed a vow of chastity. If they broke their vow, they were buried alive. We also discussed some of the different festivals, such as the Lupercalia and the Bacchanalia. The later ended up having laws passed against it because, as Dr. Sorrentino put it, it "seemed to be affecting...family values." Probably had something to do with the orgies...

On Friday, we learned about the situation in Judea. They threw off their Hellenistic rulers, the Seleucid family. Then the priestly family which had led the revolt, the Macabees, took over. After a few rulers, one of them declared himself king as well as high priest. This was a problem, since he was not of the Davidic line. At various times, certain factions made alliances with Rome, and, in the end, Rome concluded that the political situation there was extremely unstable, thus when Vespacian became emperor, he and his son basically threw the Jews out of Judea.

New Deal and WWII:

We finished up the war this week. The Allied troops moved across France while the Russians came toward Germany from the other direction. In December, the Germans engaged in a massive counter attack against the Allies, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. One of the reasons the Allies won was because Patton, who further south, was able to bring his army up much more quickly than people thought he should have been able to.

When the Big Three met at Yalta to discuss post-war plans, FDR did not want to offend Stalin because he figured that he would need Soviet help for the invasion of Japan, because by this point everyone knew that Germany was done, it was just a matter of time. However, FDR died in April, so he was not able to see the end of the war in Europe. This also left Truman in a rather awkward position, since FDR had not kept him up to speed on everything, not the least of which was the Manhattan Project. Hitler also killed himself in April and the Germans surrendered in May.

Everyone knew that Japan was next now that Germany was done. While the war in Europe was finishing, we invaded the main island of the Philippines. The fighting there was intense, but in the end we won. Then, the debate arose over how to deal with Japan. MacArthur wanted to do an invasion, while Nimitz wanted to blockade the Islands. Then, we successfully tested the first atomic bomb. This left Truman with a difficult choice. Should he use the bomb or not? As we all know, he did use the bomb, twice. There is still a great deal of controversy over whether he should have done so or not. Nevertheless, it happened and Japan surrendered.


Well, there you have it. Since next week is Thanksgiving break, and we will only have one session of each class, I don't think that there will be a Repeating History next week. Do, however, look out for a Profile in History on Wednesday and a Holiday History on Thanksgiving, which will (hopefully) be guest blogged by my roommate, Bess.

Brenna

Even History Majors Fail Sometimes...

Well, I fell down on the job this week. Here's why:

There was supposed to be a Profile in History last night.
It was supposed to be about Catherine the Great.
Gillian was supposed to write it.
It was not supposed to involve me. I was going to sit back and read the fruit of my lovely co-blogger's education.

However, Gillian knew that she was going to have a lot of school work to do yesterday, so she asked me on Tuesday if I could write about someone else this week, and she would blog about Catherine next Wednesday from the comfort of her own break at home. I agreed, being an understanding person and not thinking about how much school work I had to do yesterday. I should have made a PostIt note to remind me, but I did not. Therefore, I got so involved in working on the paper for our New Deal and WWII class, which is due Monday, that I never got around to the blog. I forgot. I am sorry.

Since I will be spending the majority of my free time to day working on that paper, there will not be a Profile in History today. But it will be back next week with all of the fun facts about Catherine that Gillian can dredge up from her much abused mind. And I'm sure that it will be worth the wait.

I hope that the weather is more cheerful for our faithful reader than it is for us today. It is grey, it is rainy, and I desperately did not want to get out of bed this morning. If your day is like this, then have the best day you can have.

Brenna

The George Washington Book Prize

When we began our freshman year at Washington College, it was the first year for something else, as well: the George Washington Book Prize. This prize is awarded to a book which provides a new angle on either George Washington or the founding of the country.

We both recall slogging through the rain to hear Ron Chernow's lecture on Alexander Hamilton that Thursday freshman year, even though Gillian and I did not know each other then. Last year, we again slogged through the rain, together, this time to hear Stacy Shiff talk about Benjamin Franklin. Gillian read Stacy Schiff's book, which analyzed Franklin's experience in France and his role in securing the French as allies in the American Revolution. She said that it was a really fascinating book and a great read, and I do plan on reading it, at some point...

It has become a point of pride for us that we have attended all three GW Book Prize winner lectures thus far. This year, we got to hear Charles Rappleye talk about the Brown brothers and their relationship to the slave trade in Revolutionary era America. I, unfortunately, could not stay for the whole talk, due to the fact that I had a rehearsal at which I needed to be. Normally, I would have skipped the rehearsal; however, I'd already missed two, one for my Fellowship talk and the other for our trip to Virginia. Gillian said the talk was really interesting; Rappleye talked about the personality differences between the two brothers who were polar opposites, as one was a fervent abolitionist, and the other was firmly devoted to the slave trade and its profitability. Rappleye also chronicled Moses' various efforts to end the slave trade and John's efforts to keep it going. Gillian intended to finish the book before school started, and began reading the book at the beginning of the semester, but she had to set it aside to do the things that professors assigned. That will be the first book she reads over winter break (which, horrifyingly enough, is only a few weeks away).

After the talk and my vocal consort rehearsal, we hooked up and headed downtown to the president's house for the reception. We got invited because we are cool history majors. Since we had both conscientiously RSVP'd, we had name tags with our year on them waiting for us so that people would know who we were. I talked to a woman from the C. V. Starr Center that I had met when I did my presentation, which was nice. There were lots of hors d'oeurves, and Adam Goodheart made a few presentations, recognized some people, and introduced a professor who is a visiting fellow this year at the C. V. Starr Center. After all that, we worked our way over to where Dr. Miller and Dr. Black were, and talked to them the rest of the time. I'm sure that some college students would cringe in horror at the idea of talking to professors outside of the classroom, but we like our professors here. They are nice people. They are not scary, they don't look like they are going to eat our children or anything odd like that. We also walked back to campus with them, which was nice, because walking home in the dark is not the most fun thing in the world. The conversation was pretty hilarious, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

The next day, Adam Goodheart, the head of the C. V. Starr Center, conducted an interview with Mr. Rappleye about writing about history, which we both attended (at least until I had to go to Ancient Rome). The talk was very interesting, and at the end, the audience members had the chance to ask Mr. Rappleye their own questions. Everyone was surprised that it wasn't raining all over everything this year, which was certainly a nice change of pace.

Getting to go to these lectures is one of the reasons why being at this school is so rewarding. Washington College has been around since 17 82, and we take all of that history quite seriously. Being a history major, all of that background provides a wonderful environment in which to study. The school also does a pretty good job of having a lot of good speakers come each semester, which add to the college experience for students, professors, and the other members of the College community.

I Know What I Did Last Summer Pt. 3: Conclusion

Good day, everyone! I am back to finish up discussing my wonderful summer fellowship experience. It was so kind of them to give me money to support me over the summer; however, as I am sure most of you know, large amounts of money seldom come without strings. The string for this money was, as these things go, quite manageable and, once my part was over, pleasant. I had to go to the Customs House, which houses the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and present my research to my fellow fellows, their faculty sponsors, the selection committee for the fellowship, the couple who sponsors the fellowship, and anyone else who decided to come and could fit into the small room.

Naturally, since this was a chance for me to speak publicly and prove that I am an intelligent person who spent my summer well, I began to feel nervous about a week in advance. The week of, I began to look over my notes, I made an outline of what I wanted to talk about, and I practiced giving my talk so that I would stay within the suggested time guideline. My roommate, who has a tendency to freak out much more than I usually do, was no doubt perplexed to see this other side of me. She also was kind enough to let me bounce ideas off of her one night as she was washing dishes.

Well, soon enough, Thursday rolled around and, since I only have one class on Thursdays and it is over by 10, I had nothing to do for the day except to worry about my presentation. I tweaked my outline, practiced my talk at least five times, and tried to keep myself calm as much as was possible. I got myself dressed up and walked downtown to the Customs House. I arrived early, successfully found the room we were presenting in, sank into a large squishy arm chair, and tried to look as though I belonged there. Shortly, Adam Goodheart, the head of the C. V. Starr Center, began, saying that we would go in alphabetical order and that he'd introduce us.

The girl before me talked about the educational system in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. It was certainly not something I knew a lot about, so I found it quite interesting. When she was done, and questions had been asked, it was my turn. I got up, walked to the front of the room without falling over, and began to talk. I even made them laugh a few times. Generally, it went well. I was also pleased that everyone asked really good questions. Other than Prof. Volansky asking me how on earth I came up with my topic (which was the role of women in the 1893 Columbian Exposition, for those who don't remember), my favorite question was from Dr. Black (who, as was mentioned in our earlier post Guest Stars, is the chair of our wonderful history department, and who I had only briefly met when he had to sign my major declaration form freshman year). He asked about the fact that it was an international exposition, were there any foreign women involved. Now, I'd specifically tried to keep my talk on the American side of things, since the research was supposed to be about an aspect of American history, but his question gave me the chance to talk about the things I'd learned about all of the foreign women, as well.

Once I was done, I was able to calmly sit and listen to the presentations of the last three students, which were all extremely interesting, as well. After that was dinner, and I found myself at a table with Dr. Black, Mrs. Collier (one of the donors for the Fellowship) and a few other adults from school. I am proud to say that I was able to keep my conversational end up with a group of adults. Generally speaking, socializing with people I do not know is not my strong suit, so I was glad that it went well. It was also nice to finally meet Dr. Black, since Gillian has always spoken so highly of him.

In the end, it was a wonderful evening. I managed to make myself sound intelligent, rather than like the raving lunatic my roommate must think I am sometimes, and I had a wonderful time. For all those WaC sophomores or juniors who are reading this, if you have any interest in some aspect of America's past, you should really apply for this fellowship next semester. It was a wonderful experience, which I am not about to forget any time soon. I am also, at the moment, working on a paper based on my research that I can submit to the Phi Alpha Theta conference this year.

Well, that finally wraps up my wonderful summer. I hope that you all enjoyed reading about it and, if you have any questions about the 1893 Exposition, do not hesitate to ask.

This is Brenna, signing off...

Repeating History: Child-Bearing Incentives and D-Day

Good day, our loyal readers! It is now that time where we tell you what we have learned in our history classes this past week. Well, again, by "we" I mean "me." Gillian is off spending time with her family, so she could not assist. Ah well, enjoy!

Ancient Rome:

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, a new triumvirate sprang up, to which historians gave the highly creative appellation, the Second Triumvirate. Now, the Second Triumvirate was a recognized political entity, unlike the First Triumvirate, which was an informal political alliance. The Second Triumvirate was composed of Marcus Antonius, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Since no one actually wants to remember every single one of a Roman's names, these three are generally known as Marc Antony, Marcus Lepidus and Octavian.

Octavian, named as Caesar's heir in his will, came to Rome at the behest of the senate to try and bring Antony under control. However, the result of Octavian's battle with Antony was their agreement to cooperate, since Octavian recognized that the senate was just using him. So, the three triumvirs divided up the Roman world among themselves. One of their first acts was to initiate violent proscriptions. One of the men to die as a result was the great orator Cicero. The triumvirs also had Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius, declared outlaws so that they could go after them, which they did. Both Brutus and Cassius killed themselves after their armies were defeated.

However, Antony and Octavian still did not like each other all that much. Lepidus was off chilling in North Africa while Antony went of to the East. While there, he began an affair with Cleopatra of Egypt. This was a problem because Antony was married to Octavian's sister, Octavia. To make it better, she was Antony's second wife. So, she was left behind to care for Antony's children with his first wife while he went off and had children with Cleopatra. Personally, I'd say that that seems like poor planning on Antony's part.

Well, to make a long story short, Octavian forced Lepidus to retire and then went after Antony and Cleopatra. He defeated their armies and they killed themselves (are we seeing a theme here?). For anyone who wants an entertaining account of this period of Roman history, read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. They are both wonderful plays.

Anyhoo, Octavian took power and, in 27 B.C.E., he declared the Restoration of the Republic. Interesting note, he was not called emperor, nor were the rest of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. They were princeps, which means "prince." Thus, this period is officially referred to as the principate. Of all the things Octavian did, the most entertaining was the Creation of the Julian laws. One group, the Julian Law of Chastity and Repressing Adultery, gave certain strictures about bringing women to trial for adultery. This did end up forcing Octavian to exile his daughter, but can you blame her? Her father married her off to two or three different men. But this wasn't the best part. Octavian also wanted to make sure that women had children. If a woman had more than three children, she had legal freedom from her husband, which is pretty cool. However, monetary incentives could be gained by having 25 or more children. 25!! Who actually wants to have 25 children? And there better be monetary incentives! How else could you afford them all? Further reason that I am glad I don't live in Ancient Rome.

The New Deal and World War II:

We finally invaded France this week. Churchill just kept putting it off, but it finally happened. Not until after we'd invaded Italy, of course. But I suppose I ought to back up a little.

When last we saw them, the Allied forces were trucking away in Africa. As things went well there, Churchill and FDR met in Casablanca to discuss what to do next. Naturally, the next step was Italy. Seems perfectly logical. But not to Stalin, who was still pissed that there was no western front to distract Hitler. And Hitler understood this to mean that there would be no distraction, so he continued to concentrate on Russia.

The Italian campaign did not go nearly so well as our military commanders anticipated that it would. Mussolini had just gotten overthrown, and then the Nazis came in to help. Most attempts to get around the Nazi forces ended badly, and the Italian campaign continued until Germany's surrender. (A note from Gillian--the Allies' first advance in Italy was made against a German fortification line known as the Gustav Line. Under the command of General Mark Clark, who will later be a successor of General MacArthur in the Korean War, the Allies made a landing at Anzio (Operation Shingle), which was behind the Gustav Line, in January of 1944, intending to flank the German troops and breach the line. Clark didn't move inland fast enough, and the line wasn't breached until May, which led to the capture of Rome in June 1944, two days before the Allied invasion of Normandy. The history of this episode was interesting to me, since one of my mom's uncles fought in the European theater and was among those who landed at Anzio.)

Planning was, however, going on for the cross-channel invasion of France. Since the British had the ultra secret (which I keep wanting to call the über secret, but that doesn't seem like the best idea...), they were able to set up a fake army and they could read German correspondence to make sure that they bought it, which it seemed that they did. Eisenhower massively freaked out about the invasion up until it happened (and can you blame him?), even to the point of writing an apology for defeat. However, D-Day more or less went off without a hitch, though there were heavy casualties (which was to be expected). There was then debate about how to proceed, but Eisenhower told FDR that he'd resign if it didn't happen his way, so FDR put his foot down to Churchill. Several small groups were sent off across France. Another invasion took place in Southern France, which was also a success and allowed the Allies to go at the Nazis from two different directions.

Not much was going on in the Pacific theater, since the majority of men and supplies were being channeled into the cross-channel invasion (no pun intended). There was also much political debate going on back home, especially over who should run with Roosevelt as his vice-president, since it was apparent to everyone that whoever was the new VP would sooner or later be president. It would seem that FDR could have planned all of that better. I don't blame him for wanting to see things through to the end, but he was sick and he knew it. Who knows how things might have gone differently if he hadn't run again.


Well, that's all for this week, folks. Tune in next time, but I don't know what you will be tuning in for since we haven't learned it yet.

Have a wonderful week!

I Don't Think We're in Chestertown Anymore.....

Yes, I'm back writing again. I've kind of assumed responsibility for our special features, and this is probably the last one for a while. Then I think I'll end up going back to my far-from-the-Internet life of papers and meetings. But first things first.

Almost two months ago, Brenna and I had the opportunity to go to a conference on all things Medieval and Renaissance in Wise, VA. One day in April, an email went around about a Medieval and Renaissance Conference at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, which is way the heck in southwest Virginia (really, really close to Kentucky--I direct you to the map the school provides on their website as a reference throughout this post), although we didn't fully appreciate that at the time. Anyway, we thought it would be great to go, so over the summer we assembled abstracts for our papers (my paper from last fall on the Visigoths and Brenna's paper from the spring on the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of France) and Dr. Sorrentino was wonderful and wrote us letters of recommendation to accompany our abstracts and sent everything in. There was some confusion in arranging everything and in determining when our presentations would be, but in the end everything worked out. We were slated to present in the 10:10 session on Friday, September 21, and there would be one other presenter.

We left on Thursday the 20th after my 1:00 class. Brenna and I both missed music rehearsals that afternoon, so we were able to hit the road a little after 3. We had made arrangements to stay with Brenna's wonderful aunt and uncle in Roanoke, VA, which is 5.5 hours from Chestertown and 3.5 hours north of Wise. We didn't run into traffic at all over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (even though two way traffic on the west-bound span terrifies me and I hate when I have to drive with two way traffic) or even in rush hour traffic around the Capital Beltway, and we stopped in Fairfax, VA, for about half an hour around 6:15 or so, just after we had gotten on I-66. As soon as we got out of Fairfax, we were instantly in the middle of countryside--rolling hills, lack of urban stuff, etc. It was really beautiful, especially as the sun continued to go down.

The drive progressed fairly well until on I-81 just south of Staunton (birthplace of President Woodrow Wilson), I started seeing signs that the right lane would be closed ahead for construction. No big deal, I said to myself, and I moved into the left hand lane. Well, everyone else had the same idea. Traffic stopped. It was about 8:20, and it was 8:40 before we even saw the next construction sign, and even farther after that when we saw the actual construction. So we crawled along at about 10 miles an hour for about half an hour, and then we were able to speed up to a whopping 30 miles an hour as we passed the construction, which was taking up about a mile of the right hand lane. When we finally passed it, it was 9:00, we had gone about 3 or 4 miles in the previous 40 minutes, and still had over an hour left to go before we got to Roanoke. We got in at 10:20, which was about two hours later than we planned, but I guess that happens when one travels. While we drove, we listened to the radio, then as we lost the Baltimore stations, we switched to CDs; Brenna put in a Celtic Flute CD, which I really enjoyed. It was really cool to be driving down a highway in such a beautiful area (foothills of mountains) looking up at the almost full moon and the light it casted on the thin clouds in the sky while listening to Celtic Flute music. When we got to the Bychowskis', we chatted for a while with Brenna's uncle and then went to bed, since we had a long day ahead of us on Friday.

That long day started at 5am since we had to hit the road at 6 for the next leg of the journey. We had a wonderful breakfast with Brenna's aunt before she left for work and we left for the conference. We got back on I-81 (still dark at this point) and remained on 81 for the next two and a half hours or so. We drove almost 300 miles on 81, starting at exit 300 coming off of 66 and going to exit 150 to Roanoke and then getting off on exit 17 in Abingdon, VA, and in that time, we passed every exit for every college, from driving through the campus of James Madison University to passing the exits for Virginia Tech, Washington and Lee, and a whole bunch of other schools. After getting off 81, we continued on toward Wise, driving through a bunch of small towns, including Castlewood, which is, according to the sign we saw (in the side of a mountain), the birthplace of Daniel Boone. For that reason, Castlewood is now numbered among my favorite small random towns, along with Pheonixville, PA. But I digress.

We got a little turned around between Coeburn and Wise (the two towns are right next to one another), but we successfully reached our destination. Our directions made things more complicated than they actually were, but it all worked out. To get to the town of Wise, we had to wind our way up this mountain. From the top, things looked something like this:




When we got to the school, we parked, then attempted to figure out where we were supposed to go. After a few minutes, we finally found the Chapel of All Faiths, where the main sessions were and where the registration table was. We checked in and shortly after made our way over to the Slemp Student Center, where the undergraduate panels were held. By this time, it was about 10 and almost time for our panel to start. The chair of our panel was a student at UVA Wise and we chatted with him until we started. The third presenter didn't end up coming, so Brenna and I read our papers (in that order), then there was time for questions. None of the students in the small audience asked any questions, but the moderator and the professor who organized all the undergraduate panels both posed some very interesting questions. I also realized while I was reading that both of our papers echoed some of the same themes about medieval kingship. Our panel ended extremely early, so we went back to the car and dropped some stuff off, and walked around the campus, which looked like this:




Then, it was almost time for lunch, so we went to the dining hall, which is set up very much like ours here at WaC and is supplied by the same food service that feeds us here. After lunch, we went to the two other undergraduate panels, the first entitled "Medieval Art and Literature," in which we heard a FASCINATING paper about Fra Angelico's fresco of the Annunciation and the importance of the birthing stool as a symbol in the painting. The second panel was called "Renaissance Drama and Gender," and featured papers about The Roaring Girl and Shakespeare, the latter of these two Shakespeare papers being extremely controversial and sparking a lot of discussion. This presenter's thesis was that Shakespeare plays, especially Romeo and Juliet are being used to brainwash young girls and enforce the patriarchy. At the end of the day was the keynote lecture, given by Bonnie Wheeler of Southern Methodist University on the idea of reputation in the Middle Ages in general and in Sir Thomas Malory's Sir Lancelot in particular. It was a really fascinating talk, even though I've never studied Malory and am really unfamiliar with the context of the discussion.

After the keynote address, we headed back for Roanoke. We left Wise at about 6 and got back to the Bychowskis' at about 9:30. We spent more time with Brenna's uncle and then started moving toward bed at about 11:30. We got up at 7 the next morning and had breakfast with Brenna's aunt and uncle and then left for Chestertown at 8:15. The various legs of the trip back were pretty uneventful, marked only by stops for food at McDonald's, stops for gas, and then hitting almost a dead stop on US-50 in Annapolis (Navy played Duke that day, so both Annapolis exits were packed), but as soon as we got over the Severn River, it was smooth sailing all the way back to WaC. We arrived back at 1:45, ordered pizza for dinner, and didn't do much else for the rest of the night. It was an awesome experience to go to the conference, and both of us were really, really glad we went. We'd both like to see more students from our school consider going; between Dr. Sorrentino's classes, Prof. Olsen's classes (his field is Medieval literature), Prof. Moncrief's students (Shakespeare), and the various art classes that are offered, we bet we could send a lot of students. And since there were people from as far away as Canada, Texas, and Florida at this conference, it's not like we would be the only ones who traveled great distances to be able to attend. Will Brenna and I take pieces of our theses back next year? The jury is still out on that one, but I for one would love for other students to have this same experience, and I'm excited to attend and hopefully present at Phi Alpha Theta's conference in the spring.

Profiles in History: Huey P. Long

Well, hello again all of you. It's shaping up to be a beautiful day, and I am going to tell you about a man who could have changed the course of American history drastically, had he lived. Naturally, I am referring to the dictator of Louisiana, Huey P. Long.

Now, some of you who are reading this may know who Huey P. Long is, and that is probably because you know me far too well. However, he is a truly fascinating and frightening person who deserves some recognition.

Huey P. Long was born in a small town in Louisiana. As he saw the horrible conditions that he and the people around him were living in, he decided that he wanted to do something about it. He became governor of Louisiana in 1928 and then became a U.S. senator in 1932. However, he had handpicked his successor as governor and he had taken such firm control of every aspect of Louisiana’s government that he ran the state from Washington, D.C. Even though he supported FDR’s campaign in ’32, he soon split with him and began to prepare his own presidential campaign for ’36. He even went so far as to write a book called My First Days in the White House about what he would do as president. Due to his assassination in September ’35, the book was published posthumously.

While governor of Louisiana, Long worked hard to improve the state’s infrastructure by building new roads and even having a new capitol building built. He called his main program “Share the Wealth” and its slogan was “Every Man a King.” He even had a song written called “Every Man a King.” Yes, he had his own theme song. It’s actually a really catchy song, which is too bad because I’m not a huge Huey Long supporter. Randy Newman actually recorded a version of the song on his album Good Old Boys. We watched a documentary on him in class, and it was disturbing how like Hitler he was in his speaking style. As Gillian likes to say, “He ran Louisiana like Hitler ran Nazi Germany.” And it’s true.

Long ended up being assassinated in the capitol building he had built and that created what Prof. Striner likes discussing as important historical What If’s. I’m personally glad that this country never had to see him as president, because it was such a vulnerable time, I could easily have seen him leading the country down the merry road to fascism.

I think that that is it for this week’s Profile in History. Tune in next week and have a party with Catherine the Great (and her horse isn’t invited…).

Appologies

I know that I am supposed to post tonight about our favorite almost dictator, Huey P. Long. I had a nice post written. However, when I tried to post it, there were issues and, needless to say, it is gone. At this point, I do not feel like attempting to salvage it right now. So I'm afraid that you will have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out more.

Brenna

A Tale of Two Lectures, by Charles Dickens

At long last (again), I have returned to the land of blog. Seeing as I can never manage to play my violin or answer my emails, I'm not sure why I thought being a co-blogger was a good idea. Oh, well. And if you are reading this and are one of the people to whom I owe an email, I'm slowly but surely working on them.

Anyway, an odd twist of events brought me to two phenomenal lectures today of a historical nature, and I thought I'd share them. My discourse will probably be long, which is fitting, since Dickens is one of my favorite writers. Let me first say that if I have misremembered anything, please feel free to comment to set me straight.

This evening, I attended the annual Conrad M. Wingate Memorial Lecture, which this year featured Dr. Vladislav Zubok, Associate Professor of History at Temple University (for more info about him, visit his Meet the Faculty page on Temple's website). His lecture was entitled, The Soviet Union: America's Worst Enemy? and it was extremely fascinating. His main points of consideration were: why did the Cold War start?, why did it end the way it did?, and that the USSR was actually America's best enemy.

Dr. Zubok talked about how Stalin was the cause of the Cold War. At the end of World War II, which was an incredibly devastating war for the USSR, the Soviet people generally wanted peace. They did not want to engage in another war because they were exhausted from the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis. Stalin also found himself in the midst of a Cold War of sorts internally; the war had brought liberal, Western ideas to Russia, and he feared losing his own power to the notion of a better life. He actually had to work to convert his leadership, military, and then the Soviet people back to his version of Socialism. But then he noticed that Britain had access to oil drawn from the oil fields of southern Iran (as part of their sphere of influence) and he wanted it. The Americans then weighed in and told Stalin to stay out of Iran, pushing the Iranian question to the top of the agenda for the newly formed United Nations. And thus began the Cold War between the most powerful country and strongest economy in the world and the exhausted USSR whose people didn't want another conflict, even if they had the means to take on the strongest economy in the world.

After Stalin was Khruschev, and it was under his leadership that the Soviets finally reached the technological capacity, marked by Sputnik, to even reach the US with weapons. Khruschev was also generally well liked by Americans. However, in 1962, Soviet missiles appeared in Cuba. American history generally states that they were poised for attack, being only a few miles off of Florida, but, according to Dr. Zubok, the Soviets sent the missiles there to deter the US from attacking them. Khruschev knew in advance that Kennedy planned to make a speech on October 22, and he was terrified that it would be a declaration of war. Because the USSR still did not want to go to war with the United States.

Dr. Zubok commented that no one predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse in the way that it did. By the 1980s, the food lines and other shortages (like toilet paper) were called "temporary difficulties," but they didn't go away. In Dr. Zubok's estimation, Gorbachev was not able to effectively lead the USSR because he didn't have a clear sense of direction and he could not hold the country together. The USSR was the best enemy America could have had, because over the course of the Cold War, both sides had a diplomatic and political understanding and knew what the rules of engagement were, even when they broke those rules. Americans were also provided with a profound sense of identity and a black and white understanding of the world, all of which are lacking in today's war against terror.

I was really glad I was able to go to Dr. Zubok's lecture, and I think I might have to read his book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. There were many interesting questions posed after the lecture; the question I had but didn't get a chance to ask was as follows: in light of the misperceptions of both sides, were there any ways in which the Cold War could have progressed differently? Feel free to weigh in on that one.

The second lecture I went to today was actually a lunch time lecture sponsored by the Literary House as part of their series, Storytelling in the Digital Age. Today's talk was given by our own Prof. Corey Olsen, English professor, expert in medieval literature, and currently my professor for Foundations of Western Literature. His talk was entitled Breaking the Silence: Literature Before the Book. From his lecture, I think we can say that some of what we believe about the Middle Ages is true: books were rare and expensive, and there were very few literate people. However, as Prof. Olsen explained, the people had access to ideas, and literacy was not necessarily synonymous with education, the possession of ideas, or even of civilization. He showed us some images from the stained glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral that illustrated popular Bible stories, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and even complex theological ideas, exemplified by a panel showing the crucifixion of Christ, the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, and Joshua and the other Israelite spy bringing food back from the Promised Land to show the Israelites before they entered. These latter two images become typologically related to the Crucifixion, as the sacrifice of Isaac anticipates the sacrifice of Christ, and the association with Joshua, the one who led Israel into the Promised Land, shows how through the cross, Christ leads His people into the Promised Land (and as an added bonus, Joshua and Jesus are the same name in Hebrew). Medieval people were very well aware of these teachings, gaining this awareness namely through homilies preached to them.

Even though books were rare, reading and books were a huge part of Medieval culture. In monasteries, one monk would read to the rest of the monks while they worked, and in families, one family member, usually a daughter, would read to the rest of her family; therefore, people were aware of textual ideas. Reading aloud was the preferred method; Prof. Olsen pointed to St. Augustine's account in Confessions of St. Ambrose, who would read silently so as not to invite commentary and questioning from listeners and in order to read a greater number of books. This practice of silent reading was out of the ordinary, and Prof. Olsen explained the great effort to which Augustine went to explain Ambrose's actions. Reading was arguably a much more intellectual effort in the Middle Ages, as punctuation and paragraphing were not standardized yet, and readers were lucky to have even spaces between words. Therefore, readers had to study the texts before they read them aloud in order to make sense of the text and to prepare an effective reading.

Finally, Prof. Olsen gave us two examples from Sir Thomas Malory's writings to show us some of the challenges to understanding the texts and some of the literary conventions used. Repetition was a major device, and Malory used repetition of ideas to remind readers of details as he set his scene and to connect various points and to introduce new ideas into his schema. We also looked at the different ways the text could be interpreted, as the lack of punctuation requires us to determine where clauses and ideas end, and there are always some different options. Thus, it is up to us to distill the author's meaning and to insert breaks accordingly.

Prof. Olsen's lecture was wonderful and was filled with humor, as his lectures always are. I'm really glad I was able to go to both of these lectures; it made for a busy day, but it was well worth it, as my busy days usually turn out to be. Tomorrow, Brenna will probably enlighten the blog with a discourse on Huey Long, and at some point I will return to relate the tale of our adventure to a conference a few weeks back. It's a wonderful story, and it will be illustrated! Stay tuned!

Ten Page

Repeating History: The Truth About Togas and Europe First

Welcome to our first Repeating History, the part of our blog where we fill you on what we learned in our history classes the previous week. We only had two periods of Ancient Rome and New Deal and WWII this week because we have them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Wednesday was Advising Day, so we had no classes. Well, here goes:


Ancient Rome:

Monday was actually not remotely interesting because we took our second exam of the semester. It was on the period of time between the tribunate of Gaius Grachus and the death of Julius Caesar. We had intended to have the exam the previous Friday, but, as Dr. Sorrentino said, "I really want to kill off Caesar before the exam," and we weren't going to do so until Friday. So, Caesar died and our exam got moved.

Yesterday, we watched the most amazing video I have ever seen in my life. It's called Let's Wrap and it was about Roman clothing. I don't think that I've laughed quite so hard in a long time. It was extra funny because the woman was completely serious. She had some pictures of getting fellow Ancient Rome scholars to dress up in her outfits at some conference in Rome and I seriously have to wonder how she managed to talk them into it.

Also, most of her models looked awkward. Often, after she'd dressed them up, they would try to awkwardly leave, but she'd grab their wrist and hold them there until the scene was over. It was kind of sad. I did however learn to dress myself like a Roman woman using nothing but a bed sheet. Naturally, I had to try it (which would not surprise any members of my immediate family), leading my roommate to walk in on me wearing my nice purple sheet pinned over my shoulders and tied around the waist, and she commented, "Nice toga."

Now let me get a few things straight. What I was wearing was not a toga. I was wearing a long, Greek-style woman's tunica (Latin for tunic). A toga is a long piece of cloth which is worn wrapped artistically around the body and was only worn by men. Only by citizens, to be exact. As I discovered from the reading which I did for class, if a woman wore a toga, it meant that she was a prostitute. I am not kidding you. Also, when wrapped properly, early, shorter togas created a fold called a sinus and the later togas, with longer fabric, made a fold called a umbo. What were these folds? Ancient Roman man purses. That's where they kept their scrolls or money bags.


New Deal and WWII:

We learned about the debate over where to focus first, Europe or the Pacific. A lot of former isolationists wanted to do Pacific First because it was the actions there that got us into the war. However, MacArthur and Eisenhower only wanted to have a holding action in the Pacific while concentrating on Europe. The problem was that the British did not want to rush into a cross-channel invasion, so the first move against the Nazis took place in the north of Africa.

However, Stalin desperately wanted the British and Americans to do a cross channel invasion so that Hitler would be torn between two fronts. One of FDR's conditions for agreeing to postpone the invasion was the Churchill would have to be the one to tell Stalin what was going on.

While this was going on, the Americans were losing in the Philippines, but they were fighting successful island battles to keep the Japanese from advancing any further.


Well, that was our week in history classes. We hope you found it as educational as we did.

In Memoriam

Late last night, I discovered that Mr. Schraft, the band director from my high school, passed away. He suffered a stroke last weekend and he had apparently been battling cancer before that. I never knew him that well since I did choir instead of band, but I know that he touched the lives of so many students all through his years of teaching.

People can say what they would like about the education system in this country, but teachers have always been, and will always be, in a unique position to change the lives of their students forever. I know that Mr. Schraft had that affect on many of the students who passed through his bands. I’m sorry that I never got to know him better.

My heart goes out to his family, as well as my sister and everyone I knew who was I band. Considering the nature of today and tomorrow (All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days), I would ask that everyone keep him and his family in your thoughts.

Rest in peace, Mr. Schraft. I know that wherever you are now, there must be music.

Brenna