Blogging in Plague Time: For My Students

When I take students to Vienna, we always begin our visit with a quick walking tour of the city, partly to orient ourselves, and partly to keep everyone awake on that first afternoon. Among the sights we see is the Plague Column, pictured above in a 1742 engraving by Georg Christoph Kriegl. This remarkable piece of Baroque sculpture, which employs trinitarian motifs to unite political and religious imagery, was erected after one of the last great waves of the plague swept through Vienna in 1679. Emperor Leopold I commissioned it to remember the epidemic and give thanks for the city's salvation.

This seemed like an appropriate image for the first post of this new blog, which I am starting for my students at Houghton College as they have all left to go home in the wake of our own current epidemic. I hope that you students will find this a helpful way to maintain a sense of connection to me and to Houghton during the weeks ahead, when our relationship will be online rather than in person. The posts are likely to be fairly random, and I claim no great significance for them. I will write about whatever happens to be on my mind at the moment. So don't expect much! But it will help us keep in touch.

It seemed appropriate that the psalm in church this morning--which of course I had to hear via livestream--was the 23rd: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Comments

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...

"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 !

Summer Vacation

Let the summer begin! I finally finished off my grading yesterday. Now the summer opens up before me. Well, not exactly. I do have a few random independent study papers hiding in my inbox, which has been overflowing for the past week. But I can get them taken care of. And a handful of students still owe me late work, which will come in over the next few days. I'm also teaching a couple of online courses; the first exams from one of those come in next Monday. At noon today I have a committee meeting, a group pulled together to work on curricular planning for next fall in the face of continuing uncertainty. And this afternoon all faculty have to attend the first of several Zoom sessions devoted to online teaching, to help us prepare for all eventualities moving forward. Hmmm.... And oh, yes, I just remembered -- rats! -- that today is the deadline for reviewing the department's catalog copy for next year. There is also that long o...

Plague Time

Search This Blog