Made it to End of Week One!

I was hoping to write a bit more substantial post this evening, but it has gotten fairly late, so I won't do that any more. (Sorry, I know you are deeply disappointed!) But I did want to pause for a moment and appreciate the fact that I (we) made it through the first week of online Houghton-at-home.

For me it was a fairly hectic week. Transitioning all of my classes online is challenging, but my department was also trying to interview a candidate in history this week--which we unfortunately had to do remotely, instead of being able to bring him on campus. I was supposed to travel with 19 students to Germany over Easter--we would have left next weekend--so I have been working to reschedule that trip for next fall instead. A professional association on whose board I serve--the Austrian Studies Association--has been meeting (also via Zoom!) to cancel its conference, planned for June in Poland, and perhaps schedule that next year. And I've still been catching up on some exams and other things that still needed grading from before all the students ever went home.

Lots to do. But we made it. And tomorrow--we start all over again.

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A Warning Against Drink

I have gotten several things read over the last few days, but I keep forgetting to post any of it. Some more Gotthelf, but also a couple of other things. I'll try to break them up in order to get a few more posts out of them! Last Friday I finished another Gotthelf novella, Wie fünf Mädchen im Branntwein jämmerlich umkommen . That title does not translate very well into English, or at least I don't think so. Something like, How Five Young Women Perish Miserably Due to Brandy (or literally "in brandy"). It is an early work of Gotthelf's and a piece of social criticism. When Gotthelf was writing (1838), the canton of Bern had recently liberalized its system for granting licenses to operate a pub. At the same time, new methods of producing cheap brandy from different sources, including even the ubiquitous potato, were developed. As a consequence, inns and pubs sprang up throughout the countryside, creating a new temptation for poor...

Dursli

Back to Gotthelf! I have already mentioned that I re-read Gotthelf's novella about the five young women who were ruined by drink. Last week I also re-read the second of his two early novellas tackling the problem of rural alcoholism, Dursli, der Brannteweinsäufer, oder Das heilige Weihnachtsabend ( Dursli the Brandy Drinker, or The Holy Christmas Eve ). This story also warns against the pubs springing up all over the Emmentaler countryside and their consequences for the rural poor. But it is also--even more than I had remembered, in fact--set in the broader political context of the times. Gotthelf begins the novella, in fact, before he ever even introduces the main characters, with about a 10-page discourse on the problematic reception in Switzerland of the ideas of the French Revolution. Its call for equality and freedom, he says, is naturally interpreted by the poorer classes not in terms of true Christian equality and freedom, but rather as a ...

"Plague Time" Essay Contest

If you are a major or minor in History, Political Science, Augmented History, Humanities, or German Studies, you are eligible to enter a brand-new essay contest being sponsored by the Department of History and Political Science. Details available here . And if you aren't a major or minor in one of those areas... it is not too late to become one now !

Plague Time

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