A Winner! "Plague Time" Essay Contest

It is past time--you have all been waiting with bated breath--to announce the winner of our "Plague Time" Essay Contest. And we have one! The Department of History and Political Science is pleased to announce that the winner of the contest, for his essay "Plague Time: God's Judgment?", is...

...Blythe Gilbert! Blythe is a rising senior, a double major in History and Political Science, and he will be writing a senior honors project next fall on Italian Fascist foreign policy under Mussolini.

In his winning essay, Blythe ponders the fact that earlier generations of Christians, in the face of plague and pandemic, would have wondered what brought this terrible judgment of God down upon them. Drawing upon examples from Byzantium and the Puritans, he concludes--inspired by Martin Luther's experience with the plague--that Christians today, facing the coronavirus pandemic, should ask themselves not, "Why is God punishing us like this?," but rather, "What does God want us to do in the face of this trial?"

The department plans to make Blythe's essay available later in the summer. Shoot me an e-mail to reserve your advance e-copy of the winning essay.

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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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