Jeff Nelson (’87) umpiring an August 2011 game in Baltimore – Creative Commons (Keith Allison)

Bethel History alumnus Jeff Nelson (’87) has been a full-time umpire in Major League Baseball since 1999 (here’s his MLB profile), umpiring in two World Series (2005 and 2009), nine other playoff series, and the 2006 All-Star Game. To that list on honors, he can now add this: he topped former manager and new ESPN.com commentator Manny Acta’s ranking of the ten best umpires in the game: (the full article requires an ESPN Insider subscription)

1. Jeff Nelson: He averages 0.00 smiles per game, but no one cares more and works harder than this guy. Solid all around and very consistent.

Among other publications, Jeff was featured in Bethel Focus a few years back. As he reflected on the value of his Bethel education, he cited some of the same skills that we tend to feature as important benefits of a liberal arts education in general and a History degree in particular: critical thinking and communication.

His Christian higher education, he said, also helped him endure lonely times “between Idaho and Alberta, wondering if there’s any future.” And finally, he says, Bethel gave him an education that was “every bit what it was advertised to be.” He credits skills in public speaking and critical thinking honed at Bethel for helping him conduct negotiations on behalf of the World Umpires Association union.

Annie Berglund – “Protests, Patriotism, Prayer: Bethel College Students and the Vietnam Debate”

Joel Anderson – “The Intelligence Wars: Keeping the CIA Accountable”

Alissa Carsten – “Beyond Suffrage: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Gender Equality”

Zach Haskins – “Otto von Bismarck and Germany’s Foreign Policy, 1871-1890″

Nic Carlson – “When Nature Calls: Norwegian-Minnesotan Agricultural Immigrants, 1850-1885″

Adam Dvorak – “The German Peasants’ War: Reformation Theology and the Oppressed”

Hilary Ritchie – “A Shepherd and His Flock: Ephrem the Syrian’s Handling of Marcionism”

Presentations start at 6pm in CC 430. All are welcome!

Music is one way that many normal (non-academics) people [ed. - Hey!] try to make sense of the past. This is often done in country music, especially some of the older songs. There are many examples of ballads that reflect upon earlier times as well as particular lives. These try to tell the audience a story of what occurred and make emotional connections. However, this type of approach is usually influenced greatly by the person’s own emotions and attitudes towards the past without giving a great deal of analysis to the pros and cons of the topic being mentioned. These types of songs usually are very sentimental and paint an overly simplified picture of a time period or individual. This type of history is in a narrative form, so it is entertaining and reaches a mass audience, but leave out information that is not relevant to the telling of the story.

The ballad in country music is one of the more common ways history is included in music, but there are also other genres of music that try to make sense of the past through their themes.

- Alissa Carsten

Music is a simple way for a story or an account to swiftly be heard by the masses…. Brad Paisley is a perfect example of a singer/songwriter engaging in history through song. His song “Accidental Racist” attempts to observe and dialogue about presuppositions about race and personal ideologies based on garb and demeanor. He engages the troubled history of Southern race relations as just a track on his latest album. In that way the perceived presuppositions can be addressed and worked past. He attempts to do it in a gritty way and hopes to better engage the everyday American simply because he presents it as a song.

- Josiah Gerhardt

<<Read the previous post in this series

If you’re not already familiar with it, get to know the website of the Stanford History Education Group, directed by the award-winning historian Sam Wineburg. You’ll find many resources there, free of charge and available for download, including:

• Beyond the Bubble, “a new generation of history assessments” that draws on the digital archives of the Library of Congress.

• Historical Thinking Matters, a free curriculum “designed to teach students how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives.” It features four “Student Investigations” on the Spanish-American War, the Scopes Trial, Social Security, and Rosa Parks.

• And its newest, most popular resource, Reading Like a Historian, which provides a full set of 76 lessons in the U.S. history curriculum and an initial list of 15 lessons for World History. The lessons can be used as a set, or as stand-alone supplements.

Reading Like a Historian lessons follow a three-part structure: establishing background knowledge and posing a central historical questions; student interaction with primary sources (using techniques like “Structured Academic Controversy” and “Cognitive Apprenticeship”); and an all-class discussion of the central question.

It’s featured in the newest issue of Stanford’s alumni magazine: (H/T John Fea)

Apparently the program has struck a chord. In school districts from red states and blue, New York City and Chicago to Carmel, Calif., history teachers are lining up for workshops on how to use the materials. The website’s lessons have been downloaded 800,000 times and spawned a lively online community of history educators grateful for the camaraderie—and often desperate for help….

Sitting back at his desk after the bell rings, [California history teacher Will] Colglazier says he can’t imagine teaching history any other way. “It’s so powerful to give these skills to students at a young age,” he explains. “I easily could have told them in one minute that the Dust Bowl was the result of overgrazing and over-farming and World War I overproduction, combined with droughts that had been plaguing that area forever, but they wouldn’t remember it.” By reading these challenging documents and discovering history for themselves, he says, “not only will they remember the content, they’ll develop skills for life.”

As Wineburg notes in the website’s book counterpart, “the practices historians have developed can be used to make sense of the conflicting voices that confront us every time we turn on Fox News or MSNBC. Put simply, the skills cultivated by Reading Like a Historian provide essential tools for citizenship.”

In addition to a brief program around 5pm, we’ll be screening Sam Mulberry’s newest movie, Kevin Cragg: An Oral History, in one of the rooms adjoining the lounge. (It’ll run on a continuous loop, so you can drop in to see as much or as little as you want at any point. We’ll also post it on YouTube later this month if you can’t attend the reception.) Since it’s a Sam Mulberry project, there’s a fantastic movie poster in addition to the fantastic movie:

Car and house restoration is a method of “doing” non-professional history. An example of its importance can be found in my own life:

My great-grandfather bought a 1906 Cadillac during the Depression, and over generations it has slowly come back to life. Not only has it given history a tangible feel, but it, among other restorations, has given me a way to interact with the same piece of history as my dad, grandpa, and even great-grandpa. Restorations take the focus off of the paper, and they force you to interact with the past and discover more in a less eye-straining (but more expensive) way.

- Nic Carlson
(last year we interviewed Nic about his semester in Prague, for our series on studying abroad)

An example of Red Wing pottery – Minnesota Historical Society

When shopping at an antique store or estate sale, you come across many unfamiliar things from the past that are no longer around in the present culture. There are different kitchen utensils or different products that are uncovered that reveal how life was lived at a different time. When you look at something like Red Wing crocks, for example. They used to be used to preserve or make food; due to refrigerators and electronic gadgets we no longer use many of them for their original purpose.

Though we don’t use them, we still find value in them. Whether it be to show how trendy and into old, vintage things we are or that we want to preserve the past through keeping and appreciating where we came from. Many buy an object from the past because it had once been in their grandma’s home and she used it for making Christmas dinners. Others just find the object interesting and want to repurpose it for a present-day use. The objects in these stores tell a history; they explain the everyday lives of those before us and then we use them to create our own history.

- Michaela Anderson

Coin collecting is a form of non-academic history in which I participate to a fair extent. In this the coins not only hold value because of the metal that is included but also in the date, mintage, and location where the coin was produced. Really old coins are not necessarily worth more due to their age. A lot has to do with events going on at the time that makes the coin valuable. It is a way of getting a hold of the past and using the coin (and its picture, design, and condition) to tell you about the time from which it comes. You can tell a lot about a country based on its dirty old penny.

- Bjorn Olson
(earlier this spring for Senior Sem, Bjorn wrote for us about the connections between history and individual and collective identity)

<<Read the first entry in this series                     Read the next entry in this series>>

The coveted traveling trophy

As we reported in March, History/Social Studies student Matisse Murray (’13) was awarded the 2013 Friends of the Bethel University Library Prize for Library Research, for her Senior Seminar research project, “Trees Nestled Among Skyscrapers: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Creation of Central Park.” Matisse is the second History major to win the award in its four years of existence. (Taylor Ferda won the inaugural award in 2010, for a paper on the response of the 8th century scholar-saint Alcuin to Viking invasions. Here’s the video of his talk and here’s the paper itself.)

There will be a ceremony in the Library next Thursday, May 9, 10:15am at which the Library Research Prize will be presented and Matisse will give a talk based on her paper. Hope to see you all there!

Some of Matisse’s other written work has already been published on this blog: we posted her essay on individualism and collectivism in early 20th century America (from HIS350 Modern America), and she was one of the students to share their reflections on the World War I travel course that premiered this past January.

Don’t delay further! Help us honor one of the most beloved professors in the history of the History Department as he enters retirement. Send your contribution to history-department@bethel.edu.

True and devoted reenactors attempt to portray life from a historical period. Some groups are more obsessed with being as accurate as possible. Civil War reenactors, particularly the 1st Minnesota, are some of the most accurate reenactment groups in the nation. For them uniforms are hand made using period fabrics, etc… They even refrain from using verbiage and modern slang. They try to get into the mindset of historical figures and periods to learn what life may have been like. It’s hard to say that reenactment is accurate because the people who do it did not experience [that historical period/event] themselves but use primary and secondary research to influence how they act, what to wear, what to eat, and what to think. A good reenactor will fully accept an alternate life for a time.

Reenactors introduce people to history in a way that is fun and interactive. In that way they are valuable. They can peak one’s interest in learning more about a particular time.

- Parker Foss

Civil War reenactors at a 2008 parade in Red Wing, MN – Creative Commons (Jonathunder)

One way in which people practice history from a non-academic standpoint is through reenactments. While I have never taken part in one, I have seen photos and videos from acquaintances who love to participate in Civil War reenactments. I think this form of history can have many benefits for explaining events of the past. For a girl from suburban Minnesota, the Civil War is something I encounter through reading and watching documentaries. However, if I traveled to a historic battlefield and observed costumed men (and women) fighting in formations, making strategic advancements, falling back, and if I heard the sounds of gunfire, I would experience the war in a realistic and unique way. It would reveal to me the lasting effects of the Civil War in the memories of people whose family members died over it. Even more powerful, it would remind me of the terrible loss of every human life. Though not traditionally “academic,” like archival research of museum exhibits, reenactments contain facts, concepts, and meaning of events in the actions and emotions of those dedicated to the events’ histories.

- Annie Berglund
(Annie has been perhaps the most prolific student contributor to AC 2nd: you can read about her internship at the American Swedish Institute, her research into German film after World War II, her experience studying World War I in Europe, and her views on history as a form of storytelling, the challenge of historians avoiding ideological bias, and the experience of studying the history of ethnic minorities in the United States)

Read the next post in this series>>

The idea behind the Digital Public Library of America is fairly simple actually — it is the attempt, really a large-scale attempt, to knit together America’s archives, libraries, and museums, which have a tremendous amount of content — all forms of human expression, from images and photographs, to artwork, to published material and unpublished material, like archival and special collections. We want to bring that all together in one place….

It very much has that spirit of the public library. We want to make the maximal amount of content available in a maximally open way.

Right now DPLA links to over two million sources held at archives, libraries, and museums. (It doesn’t host items itself, but provides metadata that makes searching easier.) It’s probably best just to dive in and see what you find. Indeed, Cohen hoped that there “will be a real element of discovery — both directed discovery and also coming across new things through serendipity, things you might not encounter otherwise.”

But if you’re looking for some places to start…

• The “Exhibitions” page currently spotlights a few themes from U.S. history, including activism, the Great Depression and New Deal, the National Parks Service, Prohibition, and the Native American experience in 19th century Minnesota.
• Browse by place (Minnesota accounts for about 31,000 records by itself) and year or decade

The DPLA is also meant to facilitate the work of software engineers and researchers by providing open data and an app library. (The first two apps posted very much fit with the “discovery” theme, as they’re meant to help you explore the DPLA.)