Intellectual History Commons^™

The Grand Rapids Public Museum: What’S In A Building?, Nicholas A. Claus

Grand Valley Journal of History

“The Grand Rapids Public Museum has provided educational and community opportunities to the local area before and after 1937, however, a split was made from amateurism to professionalism with the procurement of a permanent building in 1937.”

Where From Here? Ideological Perspectives On The Future Of The Civil Rights Movement, 1964-1966, Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

Many civil rights movement activist-intellectuals declared that the movement was in a state of "crisis" by the mid-1960s. This article discusses how four black intellectuals--Kenneth Clark, Bayard Rustin, George Schuyler, and Malcolm X--from different ideological perspectives responded to the perception that the movement was in crisis and examines how their ideological underpinnings affected their policy proposals for achieving black equality in the United States. These leaders also wanted to ensure the continued relevance of the movement for racial equality in the United States.

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …

A People's History Of Baseball, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Mitchell J Nathanson

Baseball is much more than the national pastime. It has become an emblem of America itself. From its initial popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, the game has reflected national values and beliefs and promoted what it means to be an American. Stories abound that illustrate baseball's significance in eradicating racial barriers, bringing neighborhoods together, building civic pride, and creating on the field of play an instructive civics lesson for immigrants on the national character. In A People's History of Baseball, Mitchell Nathanson probes the less well-known but no less meaningful other side of baseball: episodes not involving equality, patriotism, heroism, …

“No Man’S Land”: Fairy Tales, Gender, Socialization, Satire, And Trauma During The First And Second World Wars, Dawn Heerspink

Grand Valley Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Culture: The End Of Russian Intelligentsia, Dmitri N. Shalin

Russian Culture

No group cheered louder for Soviet reform, had a bigger stake in perestroika, and suffered more in its aftermath than did the Russian intelligentsia. Today, nearly a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his plan to reform Soviet society, the mood among Russian intellectuals is decidedly gloomy. "The intelligentsia has carried perestroika on its shoulders," laments Ury Shchekochikhin, "so why does it feel so forlorn, superfluous, forgotten"? G. Ivanitsky warns that the intellectual strata "has become so thin that in three or four years the current genocide against the intelligentsia would surely wipe it out." Andrey Bitov, one of the country's …

A Victorian Class Conflict? Schoolteaching And The Parson, Priest And Minister, 1837-1902, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

Building on his previous work on the history of education and Methodism, John T. Smith’s new monograph explores clerical attitudes toward and involvement in nineteenth-century English elementary education, particularly the office of the teacher. Though Smith also pays attention to the attitudes of teachers toward clerics and examines how teachers experienced heavy-handed clerical management of elementary schools, Smith is at his best and is most original when writing from the clerical perspective. The result is a welcome new take on clerical-teacher relations, which historians of education have tended to write from the perspective of the teacher, often with little sympathy …