The Renaissance is having a big year. Part of what’s fueling scholarly interest is the 200th birthday of Jacob Burckhard, author of what is arguably still the most famous study of the Italian Renaissance, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Here, read about the life of the man, historian, and author of this seminal work. […]
Professor Michael Carasik discusses how Hebrew has survived the ages as both a language, and an intrinsic part of Jewish culture. […]
The history of Spanish Gypsies is more complicated than one of traveling beggars—they were an essential part of the development of modern Spanish culture. Here is their story. […]
Nearly everything we know about Roman women is filtered through the lens of how Roman men viewed them. Here’s what historians have pieced together through this one-sided account of history. […]
Halfway through China’s most powerful dynasty, the empire was rocked by accusations of sorcery. These accusations of sorcery in the Qing Dynasty involved tales of masons, monks, and others stealing human souls by cutting the hair of their victims. […]
The Christian emperor Constantine was ever pragmatic; he could only push his pagan subjects so far. One act of his, in the end, ensured the position of Christianity: the establishment of a new capital that would be known as Constantinople. […]
Political turmoil in the Ukraine. The struggle of nationalism in Poland. The resurgence of neo-Nazism around the world. The conflicts of Eastern Europe are all over the news today, but beyond the headlines is a long and complex series of events going back more than a hundred years. […]
“I retain an unalterable affection for you, which neither time nor distance can change.” -Letter from George to Martha Washington, 1775 […]
Absolutism was a system of government in which all sovereignty resided with the king, true to Louis XIV’s dictum: “I am the state.” Particularly in France and Germany, the wars of religion had seriously weakened national governments and monarchies. Nobles had regained a great deal of power, peasants were in revolt, and there was really a great need for a political rebuilding of monarchies. […]
The role of the Middle East in World War II fundamentally altered Americans’ conception of the region. For the first time, U.S. officials saw the geopolitical orientation of the Middle East as vital to American national security—a view of the region that persists to this day. […]
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