Beginning in the late 8th century, the Carolingian Renaissance was a period of literary and artistic growth during which the study of architecture, jurisprudence, and scriptures blossomed. Peaking during the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, the era also saw the development of Medieval Latin and Carolingian minuscule, which provided a common language, writing style, and method of communication for scholars throughout Europe. Why do some dispute the legitimacy of this “renaissance”? Discuss
Month: June 2024
fulsome
Ronald Reagan Challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear Down This Wall" (1987)
The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 by the East German government and later extended along the entire border between East and West Germany. Built to prevent defections, it became a symbol of the Cold War. In 1987, US President Reagan visited Berlin to commemorate the city’s 750th anniversary and used his speech to publicly challenge Gorbachev to destroy the wall. Two years later, it was dismantled in a failed bid by the Communists to retain power. Why did some Reagan staffers oppose his speech? Discuss
Eddie Adams (1933)
Adams, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer and photojournalist noted for his war coverage and portraits of celebrities and politicians, began his career as a combat photographer during the Korean War. His best known photograph, a harrowing image of the moment that South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Vietcong prisoner, Nguyen Van Lem, on a Saigon street in 1968, won the Pulitzer Prize. Why did he later apologize to the police chief for having taken the picture? Discuss
American Craft
Witnessing the late-19th-century severance of American culture from its Colonial American and Native American craft roots, early proponents of the American craft movement began to advocate for well-designed and crafted objects in the American home. Today, independent studio artists continue that work by producing fine art using methods such as glass blowing, pottery, and weaving. What pioneer of the American craft movement is best known for the stained-glass pieces that bear his name? Discuss
cudbear
King Alexander I of Serbia Assassinated (1903)
Twelve-year-old Alexander Obrenovic became king of Serbia in 1889, when his father, King Milan I, abdicated. Proclaiming himself of age in 1893, he took over the government, abolished the relatively liberal constitution of 1889, and restored the conservative one of 1869. In 1903, after Alexander temporarily suspended the liberal constitution he had granted in 1901 so that he could replace certain government officials, he and his wife were assassinated. Who succeeded him? Discuss
Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847)
An English suffragist and social reformer, Fawcett rejected the violent acts of some of her contemporaries in the suffrage movement, believing that the enfranchisement of women could be achieved by peaceful means. Her efforts as president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies from 1897 to 1919 are considered to have been instrumental in earning women over 30 in the UK the right to vote in 1918. Her older sister, Elizabeth, was the first woman licensed to do what in Britain? Discuss
The Tasaday
First touted in 1971 as a tribe that had lived in isolation on the Philippine island of Mindanao since the Stone Age, the Tasaday were later declared a hoax perpetrated by Philippine government official Manuel Elizalde. His claim was challenged in the 80s by Swiss anthropologist and journalist Oswald Iten, whose investigation of the two dozen Tasaday concluded that they were really members of known local tribes living a staged Stone Age lifestyle. How might Elizalde have profited from the hoax? Discuss