Spring 2013 Events
Wednesday, February 20: 
Bethany Kilcrease (Aquinas College)
"The New Science and New Catholic Apologetics in Victorian Britain"
3:30pm, Meeter Center Lecture Hall
By the 1870s, Victorian Britain found itself swimming in a sea of socio-economic and political change. The scientific community found itself in no less a period of upheaval during these years. In biology, Darwinian evolution was establishing itself as the newly dominant scientific paradigm. Meanwhile, unsettling new discoveries in physics (radio waves, discovered in 1888; X-rays, discovered in 1895; and radioactivity, discovered in 1896) seemed to upend the old Newtonian universe. While Protestant intellectuals and theologians struggled with the implications of the “new” science, both Anglo and Roman Catholic apologists seized the cultural moment to advertise the modernity and scientific nature of their faith as opposed to Protestantism. Catholic apologists argued that Darwin’s theory of biological evolution supported the doctrine of the historical development of dogma as explicated by J. H. Newman. Moreover, they believed the late-Victorian scientific discoveries actually validated Catholicism by demonstrating the existence of “invisible” realities capable of interacting with matter in a manner analogous to sacramental theology.
By examining the writings of individual Catholic apologists and converts, especially the tracts produced by the Catholic Truth Society, I hope to argue that the period between 1864 (the year of Pius IX’s publication of the Syllabus of Errors) and 1907 (the year of Pius X’s publication of Lamentabili Sane and Pascendi Dominici Gregis) was marked by a pan-Catholic embrace of much of scientific modernism. Indeed, prior to the Modernist Crisis, British apologists and converts saw Catholicism as both preeminently compatible with modernity and as a tonic to mitigate its worst aspects.
Find out more about Bethany Kilcrease here.
Wednesday, March 13:
Bert de Vries (Calvin College)
“From One Desert Society to Another: Archaeology and Community at Umm el-Jimal, Jordan and Las Vegas, Nevada"
3:30pm, Meeter Center Lecture Hall
The study of Umm el-Jimal has revealed a vibrant and creative ancient society in the semi-arid landscape of the Nabataean, Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic past in Jordan. The question now is: can the spectacular remnants left by those ancient ancestors enhance the sense of heritage and success of their living successors, the modern community of Umm el-Jimal? This lecture will focus on the key ways in which this symbiosis between ancient and modern is being developed. The story reverberates with similar processes of symbiosis between ancient and modern in the arid landscape of Nevada.
While the 6th-8th C. AD Umm el-Jimal community flourished due to clever water management, a community of Ancestral Puebloans took advantage of the perennial waters of the spring and stream located at Las Vegas' Springs Preserve. The pit houses they settled in were recently excavated. This presentation will conclude with a comparison of the ways in which the preservation and presentation of these ancient sites is serving the modern communities of Jordan and Nevada.
Explore a virtual museum of Umm el-Jimal here.
Monday, April 8:
Perrin Rynders (Partner, Varnum Law)
"A Liberal Arts Grad in the For-Profit Sector: Ready, Set, Go"
4:00pm, Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Perrin Rynders is a partner at Varnum Law in Grand Rapids, a Calvin History alum, and the current president of the Calvin Alumni Association. He will speak on what liberal arts graduates have to offer for-profit businesses. He will discuss his story at Calvin, the decision to enter the field of law, and his transition from school to working in a legal firm. He will also talk about what it takes to "get there" and survive, thrive, and seek the Lord's calling in his chosen occupation.
History majors and minors considering a career in law or business are encouraged to attend. There will be time for questions at the end of the talk. Find out more about Perrin Rynders.
Co-sponsored by CAS, Pre-Law, and Career Development.
Wednesday, April 17:
Chris Alexander (Davidson College)
“The Arab Spring Two Years Later"
3:30pm, Meeter Center Lecture Hall
The spring of 2011 marked the beginning of the most dramatic and optimistic period of political change in the Arab world since the 1960s. Popular uprisings challenged authoritarian rulers from Morocco to Bahrain. Dictators fell in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Two years later, the regional picture is grim. In even the most hopeful cases, progress toward democracy has slowed or gridlocked. Other countries remain mired in chaos and bloodshed. How do we account for these outcomes? What do they mean for the region’s future?
Co-sponsored by AADS, the Henry Institute, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Learn more about Chris Alexander and his research here.
Wednesday, May 1:
Honors Thesis Presentations
3:30pm, Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Join us in celebrating our honors students by coming to hear presentations of their senior research projects:
Jobadiah Christiansen:
"The Technology and History of Lime-burning from Prehistoric to Late Antiquity in the Southern Levant: Umm el-Jimal as a Model for Future Research"
This paper treats the question of sources of lime used at Umm el-Jimal in the Byzantine/Ummayyad period. It covers the history of lime-burning to better understand the state of lime-burning in the Byzantine period. Based on this history, I make suggestions of possible avenues for further research on lime production at Umm el-Jimal. (Advisor: Prof. Bert de Vries)
Eric Doornbos:
"Shifting Boundaries in the Balkans: A Comparison of 1919 and 1995"
During the 20th century, the Balkan region in central Europe struggled to define its state and corresponding boundaries. Following World War I and as a result of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was established out of the ruins of former empires. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia while creating a multi-ethnic state. The 1919 Versailles Treaty and the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords are outlined in terms of the historical and political setting, the treaties, the impact of the negotiators and their assumptions, and the effects of each treaty on state formation. (Advisor: Prof. Bruce Berglund)
Caleb Lagerwey:
"Chaplain of Progress: The Role of Progress and Evolution in Lyman Abbott's Justification for American Expansion in 1898-1900"
Recent historical scholarship has begun to recognize the importance of Lyman Abbott, an American preacher and editor, who often spoke for a broader range of liberal and progressive American Protestants around the turn of the century. His mainstream beliefs, often appearing in his weekly Outlook magazine, supported American empire as a sign of the progress of the United States as a nation under God’s direction, as a way of maintaining its vitality, and as a away of fulfilling its Christian obligations to promote Christian and democratic civilization among less socially and culturally developed peoples. This paper presentation will supplement the existing literature by synthesizing separate sources and shedding new light on Abbott's world and Abbott himself by using his evolutionary thought to show the connection between the diverse component he passionately defended and promoted in the Outlook, sermons, and books. It argues that progress and an evolutionary lens were integral to several components of Abbott's views on American expansion and, by extension, to the views of many mainstream American Christians from the same era. (Advisor: Prof. William Katerberg)
Past Events: Fall 2012
Wednesday, September 19:
William Katerberg, Calvin College
"Other Manifest Destinies: Globalizing American Creation Stories"
3:30pm in the Commons Lecture Hall
American "creation stories" emphasize our nation's "manifest destiny." For example, myths about the U.S. frontier depict settlers migrating into the wilderness, with ingenuity and courage adapting to new circumstances and building new lives, thus generating the unique American character and freedom. But what about he Native Americans and Mexicans already living in the land? And how did U.S. frontiers compare to those in Canada, Argentina, south Africa, Australia, and more? These issues are not only historical, but ethical. What does it mean to love our neighbors as ourselves when it comes to historic national identities? Answering these questions won't end angry debates in the U.S. over legal and illegal immigration. But it might reorient how we as Americans think about ourselves and others in these debates.
Co-sponsored by the Mellema Program in Western American Studies.
Thursday, October 11:
Dale K. Van Kley, Ohio State University
“From the Catholic Enlightenment to the Risorgimento: the Exchange between Nicola Spedalieri and Pietro Tamburini"
3:30pm, Chapel Undercroft
The focus of this paper is a late eighteenth-century exchange between Nicola Spedalieri, a beneficiary at the Vatican basilica in Rome, and Pietro Tamburini, a professor of theology at the University of Pavia in Lombardy. Long regarded in Italian historiography as paradigmatic in some way, the debate pitted two “heavy-weights” against each other in the era of the French Revolution, Spedalieri a well-known defender of Catholicism against the Enlightenment, and Tamburini, the unofficial Italian chief of the Catholic but anti-papal moment of reform known as Jansenism. Writing after the outbreak of the French Revolution but before French armies occupied Italy, the two contestants blamed each other for that Revolution about which neither of them was very enthusiastic.
Aside from recounting the debate itself, this paper tries to use this paradigmatic exchange to link two classic historiographical problems: the first an old one, the possible Jansenist origins of the nineteenth-century movement for Italian unification known as the Risorgimento; the second a relatively newer one, the possible existence of a Catholic variant of the eighteenth-century—and pre-revolutionary—Enlightenment. If, on the one hand, it is possible to locate a unified “Catholic Enlightenment” in mid-eighteenth-century Italy, events contrived to pull that enlightenment apart in ways that the debate between Spedalieri illustrates. On the other hand, if it is possible to discern religious as well as “secular” ideological origins of the Risorgimento, then those origins are not uniquely Jansenist but also draw from orthodox Catholic opposition to Jansenism.
The conclusion is that, allowances changes made by the vast hiatus of the French Revolution, the Risorgimento effected a partial re-composition of religious elements that the end of the eighteenth century had sundered. It also follows that if the Risorgimento is regarded as part of “modernity,” then modernity also had religious and specifically Catholic origins.
Read more about Dale Van Kley.
Wednesday, November 28:
William Van Vugt, Calvin College
“British Isles Music on the American Frontier - Some Early Explorations"
3:30pm, Covenant Fine Arts Center Recital Hall (CFAC*107)
During the 18th century, many of thousands of people left England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland for the North American frontier, and they brought along their culture, including their music. On the frontier their culture adapted to the new American environment. This colloquium presents music from the British Isles and demonstrates how the melodies, keys, and lyrics were affected by life on the American frontier. The music will be presented on guitar, fiddle, and mandolin, with Bruce Ling of Hawks and Owls String Band.
Co-sponsored by the Mellema Program in Western American Studies.
Find out more about past events, including recordings and .PDFs of some presentations.
