More Noted Things

by Cliopatria

The Giant's Shoulders #19, the history of science carnival, is up at The Renaissance Mathematicus. Indian History Carnival #25 is up at varnam.

Caleb Crain,"Semantic Time Travel," NYT, 8 January, is an essay on the new Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Amanda Vickery,"Love and marriage, English-style," TLS, 13 January, reviews Maureen Waller's The English Marriage: Tales of love, money and adultery.

James Stevens Curl reviews Joscelyn Godwin's Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World for THE, 7 January.

Eve Ottenberg,"A History of Slander," In These Times, 11 January, reviews Robert Darnton's The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon.

Josh Nathan-Kazis,"A Death in the Family," Tablet, 13 January, tells the story of a murder/scandal that destroyed New York's Sephardic elite.

John Gross,"Culture and the Great Depression," TLS, 13 January, reviews Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A cultural history of the great depression.

"Pobediteli: Soldiers of the Great War" is a Russian-produced interactive flash presentation of war on the Russian front in World War II. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

D. J. Taylor,"George Orwell's days," TLS, 13 January, reviews George Orwell's Diaries, ed. by Peter Davison.

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Karen Lofstrom - 1/17/2010

I have not read all the Indian Carnival posts, but none of the ones I've read challenge the Hindutvadi position in any way. They're either supportive or devoted to peripheral issues (the Hapsburgs were given an elephant but they killed it with neglect, the fiends).

Ralph E. Luker - 1/17/2010

Thanks for raising the issue. It would have been helpful had you suggested additional south Asian blogs that have a different perspective. We will be adding Professor Lal's own blog, which I have just found, to Cliopatria's History Blogroll. If varnam's hosting of Indian History Carnival means that posts on south Asian history written from a different perspective are excluded from the carnival, then your argument is a stronger one than if varnam has a point of view but doesn't exclude others from the carnivals.

Karen Lofstrom - 1/15/2010

I'm not sure that you should be advertising the Indian History Carnival. It's run by what seems to be a pro-BJP blog (Varnam) and it features articles of angry invective lobbed at hated figures like Michael Witzel, Wendy Doniger, Vinay Lal, Romila Thapar, and other historians demonized by the Hindutvadis as "Marxists."

The latest carnival is composed largely of rants against a UCLA history course that dares to question the historicity of the Ramayana and the canonicity of the Valmiki version, among other matters.

Sample of one article: Vinay Lal is described as "Professor Ignoramus Incompetentus" and the commentator goes on to say, "At the very basics, the noble professor reveals two things here: his utter ignorance of Sanskrit and an ability to comprehend the meaning of words."

If you feel that you must link to the Hindutvadi version of South Asian history, it would only be fair to link to other sources that contest that version. I'm not sure what they might be; the mainstream, non-Hindutvadi historians seem to publish books and journal articles, rather than hanging out in blogs. However, I could be missing a wonderful blog that would provide a counterpoint to IHC.