The History Cafe

We’re back here at the History Cafe!  (along with major epidemics…maybe I should not make to big a deal of that…)  But considering the current pandemic and sitting in my house on lock-down along with much of the rest of the world, it seemed like a good time to revisit one of the touchstone’s of … Continue reading The Black Death with Professor Abigail Agresta →

Well, it’s been a year since my last podcast and this podcast took a couple of months to edit. Bad turn around time all around.  But I’m still here and still more or less at this!  I will hopefully be doing more in the future, but might have to have another few months hiatus before I … Continue reading Wilhelm Furtwangler: Romanticism, Pure Music, and the Nazis →

I have finally done the thing – I’ve had a couple of people ask me about doing something on medievalism (Fantasy…Lord of the Rings…you know, your basic medieval themed pop culture production.)  And in this case, we’re talking about Game of Thrones (yes, that’s Tyrion Lanniser eating Lamprey Pie over there).  There are lots of … Continue reading Geography in Game of Thrones with Elly Truitt →

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 … Continue reading Brexit and Nationalism →

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 Clare 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 … Continue reading The Hedgehog and the Fox with Clare Gillis →

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 … Continue reading A Visit to an Archive →

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 … Continue reading Islam, Pirenne, and Historiography with Clare Gillis →

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 … Continue reading History Cafe visits the Met with Lauren Mancia – Archeological Reconstruction →

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 … Continue reading Medieval Bells in Valencia Spain →

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 … Continue reading Anti-Jewish Riots in Valencia, Spain, 1391 with Abigail Agresta →

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 →