The History Cafe

I have finally done - I've had a couple of people ask me about doing something on medievalism (Game of Thrones...Lord of the Rings...you know, your basic medieval themed pop culture production.)  There are lots of blogs and podcasts dedicated to this sort of thing, so I've always hesitated, but I finally struck on a topic that didn't seem well represented out there in the interwebs and I found a great accomplice to talk with me and make sure I (an admittedly weak fan of the show) didn't make any really glaring mistakes.  Elly Truitt is associate professor of Medieval History at Bryn Mawr college and writes about medievalism among other topics (medieval and modern cultural connections, modernity, etc) on her blog Medieval Robots.  She's also done a podcast about her book of the same name (from UPenn Press).  She's also published a couple of cool essays about medieval machines and medieval fantasy, so clearly this was the right person for the job and I'm really happy she agreed to do this. In the podcast, we talk about the geographic assumptions implicit in the Game of Thrones world: what do the directions of North, South, East, and West mean in the world?  How do they identify people from hot or cold climates?  How do characters in the world deal with "foreign" people and what do they mean by that depending on where they come from?  It's a good conversation and there's plenty more to say - if you really disagree (or really agree, hopefully) talk about it in the comments...this is Game of Thrones after all. And for a real Game of Thrones dish of food, I appreciated the detail that when Tyrion is berating Cersei about the need for Joffrey to participate in the battle against Stannis late in season 2, he compliments Cersei on the Lamprey Pie (which, apparently, he has a fondness for.)  It's a great choice since both eel and lamprey were favorites of the European nobility in the late middle ages.  It is also a bit of an ominous food as the extremely cold and wet lamprey (according to humoral theory) was dangerous to eat without really dowsing it in strong hot spices (pepper, ginger, etc.) or even killing it by drowning it in wine.  Paul Freedman tells the story of how King Henry I of England, defied his doctors orders to stay away from such fish, ate a large plate of lamprey and died!  If you can get a hold of lamprey or eel (I personally have not had lamprey, but I do actually really like eel...in sushi, smoked, or in pie), you can make yourself a lamprey pie with one of a number of historical recipes. The clips played in the podcast from the show come from: Jorah Mormont narrating the "Free Cities" from the history and lore extras, Oberyn Martell talking to Varys in season 4, episode 6, and season 2, episode 7 in Qarth.

So as I say in the first two minutes of the podcast - I somehow recorded and even edited this podcast back in June when England voted to leave the European Union and then I failed to post it.  (And then I go on to say that I want to get through editing and posting fasted.  Ha!)  But anyway, the night of election 2016 here in the US seems like a plenty opportune time to post the same ideas since Trump's campaign has often been compared to Brexit itself.  Although as I write this it is not really yet clear if the surprise Brexit victory will repeat itself. The podcast itself looks at how the 19th century ideas of nationalism have informed current political rhetoric.  I get a bit far afield, talking about various forms of possible political organization and thinking about what a "nation-state" means.  These are questions that all have long books written about them, including the fairly famous work on nationalism by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.  But one point I found odd was how little people used the explicit ideas of nationalism when describing especially Donald Trump's campaign (those deeply opposed to him often use fascist, when I think nationalist is more appropriate...and possibly just as worrying) but also when talking about Brexit, although England for the English was definitely a rallying cry for that vote.  So this is my meditation on those questions.  I also talk about the relative decline in nationalism and even the nation state itself in the last 50 years (although as these debates prove, it sure isn't gone yet!) And for this nationalist discourse, of course you need a good nationalist dish: fish, chips, and mushy peas...where the best cod has come from Canada, the potatoes originated in South America (although you can surely grow potatoes in England these days), and the method of frying was purportedly brought by Jews fleeing Spain in the 15th century (although, frankly, I doubt that, because dipping something in batter and frying it?  Almost everyone has thought of that in the culinary traditions of the world...it is just so delicious.)  But don't worry!  Peas are a long, long (millennia, really...) staple in England.  Served with a very Mediterranean lemon, of course.  So enjoy! Bibliography: In addition to the book above, there is a lot of material on multiple topics - too long to list in short form here and I don't even quite know what books to start with.  So if you want anything in particular, e-mail me!

This month (bi-month?  Something like that - I wish these happened a little more frequently) I'm again talking with my friend, medievalist and journalist Clair Gillis.  In part in response to the topic popping up in the news from time to time, I figured we should have a conversation about Isaiah Berlin's essay on Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace titled The Hedgehog and the Fox.   Initially, the Hedgehog and the Fox were meant to distinguish between writers or historians that look at the world through a single, over-arching lens in formulating their explanations and their work (the hedgehogs who know "one big thing").  Versus the foxes that are constantly adapting or changing how they approach problems and the solutions they rely on (the Foxes who "know many things").  The concept applies fairly directly to history and is something that many historians are familiar with, but the appearance in politics and other contemporary areas of discussion amuses me and it seemed worth talking about. In the podcast, we explain how Isaiah Berlin formulated the original essay and how it applies to War and Peace and then we branch off from there.  Along the way, Claire and I talk about a wide variety of topics that come out of the conceit of the Hedgehog and the Fox ranging from our dissertation topics, the methodology of doing history, the relation of the past to the present, high medieval political violence, and Newt Gingrich's tweets about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (fair warning...for that you actually have to wait almost to the very end, but it is in there - I promise!) It is tempting, in light of the reliance on War and Peace for the origins of this topic, to present a great banquet dish that Tolstoy would have enjoyed as the meal for this hefty podcast.  However, it turns out that Tolstoy was a fairly moralistic eater - a vegetarian and generally opposed to extravagant food.  He advocated eating a combination of bread, oats, and rice for the majority of one's life - not an entirely inspiring menu for our conversation.  So instead of a full meal as the length clearly implies, I'm going with what was purportedly Tolstoy's favorite pie - often called "Anke Pie."  It's really more of a lemon tart with a sweet pound-cake like crust covered or filled with an sweetened lemon custard thickened with eggs.  There are Several Recipes available on the internet and if you try one, I'd love to hear how it turned out!   Bibliography (in rough order of podcast mention): Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953). Philip Tetlock and D. Gardiner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Crown, 2015). Thomas Bisson, Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140-1200 (Harvard University Press, 1998). Bisson, Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe (U. Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power Lordship and the Origins of European Government (Princeton University Press, 2015). Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communication and Commerce AD 300-900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

This month (bi-month?  I've not been the most regular about getting something out even every other month!) I talk about one of my visits to the Cathedral archive in Spain.  Archives form the core of most (though not all) historical work.  Every major city or town has some form of archive with the documents and records produced in that place and for Europe, that means documents about the place often going back centuries.   Because they hold the records of a place, they are also sometimes the site of debates or struggles about the past.  In the podcast, I bring up a couple of examples - Memorial Archive in Russia and the Bosnian National Library in Sarajevo - that have been points of serious conflict in the recent past.  There are a few examples towards the end of how we all now engage in archiving activities and some of the questions involved in the preservation of information. This is one of the more rarefied topics in this series, so for a small lunch, I would recommend a Spanish style sandwich (usually called a Bocadillo) which I frequently ate during breaks from archival work.  In their simplest form, they are usually just meat or cheese on a thin baguette (often enough only Spanish jamon).  They appear even in airports and train stations, but in Barcelona there are some shops that sell upgraded bocadillos including olives, avocado, diverse sauces and other accoutrements.  I personally always leaned towards the sandwiches with tortilla (egg and potato) in them plus roasted peppers or tomatoes (or like the image - tomato and bacon!)

Welcome to 2016! I've been a bit delinquent with podcasts for a couple of months, but here, finally, is a new one.  This one was inspired a few months back by the youtube comment stream (crazy but true!) on a John Oliver Last Week Tonight clip: the "How is this still a thing?" on Columbus Day.  Don't ask how I ended up reading that far into the comment stream...in general I'm a fan of John Oliver, but not an avid reader of youtube comments. But back to this podcast.  Basically, someone took the discussion about Columbus and turned it towards the general idea of the pros and cons of "Western Civilization" (one of those great internet almost unanswerable threads that invites plenty of trolling.)  In and amongst the discussion someone brought up Henri Pirenne's Mohammed and Charlemagne as evidence (in a discussion with otherwise about zero evidence.)  In the podcast, I talk with an early medieval expert - Clair Gillis, who is great to talk to - about how Pirenne ended up in that sort of discussion as well as the origins of Pirenne's ideas and his place in contemporary medieval scholarship. Lastly, I just want to note that my dad gave me a copy of Pirenne's Economic and social history of Medieval Europe, before I had even really become a Medievalist.  He enjoyed reading Pirenne in college, before a lot of the revision we talk about in this podcast had taken place, so this podcast is dedicated to him for having introduced me to Pirenne in the first place.  Thanks! And for the food, clearly a full dinner that crosses the "Pirenne Line" mentioned in the podcast is in order.  So I recommend Duck a l'Orange.  Sautéed or roasted duck with a deglazed brown sauce sweetened with orange juice and sugar and served with orange slices.  Humans in Europe have been eating duck for a very long time.  However, citrus fruits probably originated in central Asia (perhaps northern India).  Lemons appeared in Rome, but more as decorative plants than as food.  The use of oranges and lemons in cooking entered Europe as a direct influence of Islam in Sicily, Italy, and Spain.  Lemons and Oranges are now almost ubiquitous fruits, but even in the 16th or 17th century, they would have felt foreign or somewhat exotic in European cooking.  But today there are several European "classic" dishes that involve citrus as a core component - hence Duck a l'Orange. Bibliography: There are tons of books on any of these topics as I mention in the podcast, so e-mail if you want to read more, but for the main references from the podcast itself, here they are.  

Here is the last installment of the History Cafe visits the Metropolitan museum in New York.  If you didn't hear the first two, they are all separate topics.  The first two cover the twelfth century, and late-medieval mysticism.  This time, we're talking about archeological reconstructions.  Most of the archeological sites and many of the ruins we look at are in part repaired or reconstructed and it isn't always obvious how. In this podcast, we talk about some of the problems and choices that people make and how we as scholars and as the public view ancient artifacts in a museum (and in New York.) The focal points for the first half of the podcast are the well known Temple of Dendur in the Met and the building itself of the Cloisters Museum - both of which were originally ancient buildings from across the Atlantic that have been reconstructed in New York City.  We talk about how they got there as well as the choices made in their current location and presentation.  Then we discuss And for food, since in many ways this is a podcast about NYC, what could be more New York than a big plate of smoked fish with some bagels and cream cheese...when I was there, I was fortunate enough to have time for an extended breakfast of a bagel absolutely stuffed with amazing king salmon lox made by Shelsky's in Brooklyn.  I also bought a big piece of hot smoked bluefish caught on the Atlantic coast to bring home for the next day's breakfast.  Amazing. (And if you're not sure of the difference between hot smoked and lox, you should look it up - there's a big difference...and here Lauren Mancia and I part ways.  She, as a New Yorker, sweared up and down that lox is required at all bagel and salmon occassions and that hot-smoked salmon is tough, greasy, and generally unpalatable.  As an original northwesterner myself, I find lox often flavorless and stringy and hot-smoked salmon richer, denser and generally more delicious.  Shelsky's lox, though, is amazing even to a heretic such as myself.  So yeah, get yourself some smoked fish...) And finally, here are the images and links mentioned in the podcast basically in order of appearance:                   LINKS: The Athens Charter The Venice Charter Current UNESCO conventions and agreements Music Credit: The two musical interludes are both excertps from Steve Reich's "City Life" performed by Ensemble Diagonale, directed by Rene Bosc.

This month I have another "live" cast recorded in the city of Valencia.  Over the course of the podcast, I walk up the main bell tower of the Cathedral of Valencia to listen to the huge bell at the top, nicknamed the "micalet," strike noon.  Along the way, with a few other bells woven in for good measure, I talk about how large cast bells first came to be used in late Medieval Europe and what they symbolized for the Christians who rang them.  Bells in medieval Europe took on distinct personalities often with inscriptions speaking in the first person talking about all of the good that a bell could achieve.  In their most general sense, they made the smaller and local rituals of the mass and the liturgy within a church building legible and audible for a much wider space, defining a sonic community of all those who could hear the bell and recognize what its ringing represented. In the podcast, I mention a few differen bells, a film, and one bell recast as a chandelier (yes, really!)  So here are their images and links for reference:   Since we're in Valencia, some sort of dish with rice is obvious required.  Paella is ridiculously common - even though this would often be a dinner or full meal, but hey, in Spain they also eat the large meal in the middle of the day, so think of it as a really big lunch.  However, traditional Valencian paella is usually made with chicken, rabbit, breen beans, and snails (yeah...snails...no seafood - that's considered a different dish.)  But I recommend if you can find it a good arròs negre.  This is a rice dish with a bunch of seafood (muscles, clams, sometimes cuttlefish) that is then flavored with garlic and squid ink, turning it pretty black and very fishy.  The image here has it served with roasted peppers and you almost always get it with a side of alioli, which is delicious. And lastly, a bit of bibliography: O. R. Constable, “Regulating Religious Noise: The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World,” Medieval Encounters 16 (2010) 64–95. Michelle Garceau, “‘I call the people.’ Church bells in fourteenth-century Catalunya,” Journal of Medieval History, Volume 37, Issue 2, 2011. Arnold and Goodson, “Resounding Community: The History and Meaning of Medieval Church Bells,” in Viator 43 No. 1 (2012) 99–130.

As a follow-up to last month's shot about violence, this month I have an interview with Abigail Agresta talking about a series of anti-Jewish riots that hit numerous cities in Spain in 1391, starting with Seville and spreading across most of Spain.  We focused mostly on the interpretations of one of the worst riots in the city of Valencia.  On the way, we talk quite a bit about how scholars think about anti-Jewish violence in the medieval period, what relationship that violence has to modern anti-semitism, and the changing character of Christianity's relationship to Judaism. These riots in 1391 offer a great way to think about inter-faith relationships in part because Spanish Jews have often been seen (and not without good reason) as being quite well treated by both Catholic and Muslim majorities during the medieval period.  However, even this good treatment was never a perfect guard against the possibility of violence against minorities.  In Valencia, even as the violence broke out, the city leaders attempted to quell it first and then later attempted to explain to the king why they had been unsuccessful at protecting the Jews - something they readily acknowledged as their normal responsibility. This is also the first podcast in this series with incidental music.  There are three selections all from the group "Cinco Siglos" and their disc Sones de Sefarad. Excerpt 1: "La Fuente Fría" Excerpt 2: "Ahot Ketana" Excerpt 3: "Está Raquel lastimosa" For food, I recommend a nice dish of Bamyas.  It's an Arabic name but a common food in the Sephardi diaspora.  It's a dish of Okra in tomato sauce (and the tomatoes should tip you off that this is not a medieval dish...)  Like the Sephardi themselves, okra was probably part of medieval Spain, but today it's actually quite hard to find.  However, there are good recipes for it (and many Sephardi grandmothers surely have their own version) in several traditional Jewish cookbooks.  It's really quite simple, though - well chosen soft ripe Okra pods, light tomato sauce, and a ton of olive oil and garlic.  Fry the pods in the oil, add the garlic and then simmer for 15 minutes or so in the tomato sauce.  If it were more Spanish, you'd pour some extra oil and salt right on top at the table before mopping it up with bread. Bibliography: David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (University of Chicago, 2014). David Nirenberg, "Massacre and Miracle in Valencia 1391," in La Corona catalanoaragonesa, l'Islam i el món mediterrani (CSIC, 1013). Mark Meyerson, Jews in an Iberian Frontier Kingdom: Society, Economy, and Politics in Morvedre, 1248-1391 (Brill, 2004). Mark Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth Century Spain (Princeton University Press, 2010).

This month on the History Cafe, we’re trying something new.  This is a relatively short podcast (10 minutes) that asks a question with a handful of examples.  It is in no way exhaustive, but hopefully sparks a fair amount of thought.  It is also an example (to me, anyway) of how history often plays out … Continue reading History Cafe Shot – What do we mean by Violence in history? ?

This is part two of our History Cafe Visits the Met series and Lauren Mancia is back to talk about how objects and images interacted with Medieval ideas of mystical experience.  This is the podcast where we talk about the little bed (see the image below).  We were down in the main museum, not in … Continue reading History Cafe visits the Met with Lauren Mancia – Medieval Mysticism ?

Lauren Mancia is back and for a whole series we are calling The History Cafe Visits the Met!  We recorded several podcasts live at the Met Museum looking at specific items in the collections ranging from the Gothic Chapel to the Temple of Dendur to a little tiny doll’s bed used for mystical contemplation (this … Continue reading History Cafe visits the Met with Lauren Mancia – The Cloisters Gothic Chapel ?

This is another live-in-Spain podcast, this time from the famous monumental mosque-cathedral in Cordoba.  Cordoba was an important Roman provincial town, a military outpost of the Visigoths, and for centuries one of the most important seats of Islamic culture in Spain until it was conquered by Ferdinand III of Castile in 1236.  The main Christian … Continue reading The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba Spain ?

This episode is an interview with a friend of mine who also studies famines, although he specializes in England.  The Great Famine hit most of Northern Europe – from England to Poland, Central France and parts of Northern Italy to Sweden – in 1315.  The bad harvests lasted for at least two years and included … Continue reading The Great Famine in England with Philip Slavin ?

It has been a while now, but I’m back with hopefully a string of new podcasts.  First off, I have a small, on-location, observation about the relationship between church and state power in Spain.  This is a topic that has lots of depth to it, and this little intro only scratches the surface, but standing … Continue reading Church and State in Early Modern Spain ?

This time on the History Cafe, I have an experiment in field recording.  About a month ago, I went to Spain for a couple of weeks and while there I recorded a few sets of thoughts about Spain’s history in a couple of locations.  I’ll be editing a few of them as History Cafe broadcasts … Continue reading The Royal Botanical Gardens – Madrid Spain ?

This month on the History Cafe we’re back to an interview, again with a recent alum of mine, Jessica Stout.  Most of Jessica’s work focused on nineteenth century British literature (some of which gets mentioned in the podcast.)  For her historical work, Jessica looked at the debate that began in the late eighteenth century but … Continue reading Constance Maynard and Women’s Education with Jessica Stout ?

So we missed January, but we’re going to make it up for it by having an extra large dose this February.  What I am presenting here is a series of thoughts about teaching and some specifics about how I organize my Introduction to Medieval Studies course.  Starting in 2011, I created a handful of lectures … Continue reading Teaching Medieval History ?

For December, I have a discussion with one of my recent graduates.  At Marlboro, every students does fairly extensive research and prepares a collection of materials in a senior portfolio referred to as a “Plan.”  Elliot Samuel-Lamb did his work on brewing and beer and together we researched the character, flavor, and brewing practices of … Continue reading Early Modern English Brewing with Elliot Samuel-Lamm ?

This month on the History Cafe, we are talking about the notorious emperor Nero.  Perhaps most famous for “fiddling while Rome burned,” (and to be fair, when everything was pretty much burned down, Nero built one of the largest palaces ever constructed in Rome, complete with gardens, courtyards, and all the gold one might imagine … Continue reading The Emperor Nero with Will Guast ?

This month’s podcast is a double story.  The first narrative is about my recent research into high-speed couriers in the late-medieval period.  It turns out that the city of Valencia (as well as, probably, the king of Aragon and the king of Mallorca) had a group of runners specifically dedicated to transporting their official communication … Continue reading Couriers in Medieval Valencia ?