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A compendium of information for Reformation Research: internet sites, sources, announcements, teaching tips, what we're reading!
Blog Archive
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2007
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February
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- QUESTION: Valdes, Hus, and others
- SOURCE: Jesuit Relations in Canada
- TEACHING: Sources on Catholic Theology
- POV/TEACHING: Combining Ren/Ref
- LINKS: Couch Potato Research
- POV: Reformation textbooks?
- Free Resource: German Medieval History
- SCSC 2006 Panel report: Early Modern England in Print
- NEW BOOK: Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours
- SOURCE: The Kessler and Seydel Collections at Emory
- ANNOUNCEMENT: Fellowship
- ANN: Fellowship
- ANN: Medieval History Seminar
- ANNOUNCEMENT: SUMMER SEMINAR (CANADA)
- ANNOUNCEMENT/TEACHING
- NEWS: New evidence on posting of 95 Theses emerges
- ANNOUNCEMENT: NEH Summer Institute
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February
(17)
7 comments:
Wow, what a great question! I think I'll start the ball rolling by answering myself. I haven't settled on a narrative textbook yet and the one I chooses depends on my mood. I have used Euan Cameron, The European Reformation; James Tracy, Europe's Reformations; Dairmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation. Does anyone have any feelings about these? My students tend to like the narrative sweep of MacCulloch but be bothered by his judgments, to like the accessibility of Tracy but be bothered by the lack of a strong chronological narrative, and to like the blow by blow politics of Cameron but not to like his compressed theological treatments.
What experiences do others have?
I usually have not had the leisure to teach a class just on the Reformation, but a more general Renaissance and Reformation course. That complicates the textbook issue greatly. Once I just put about five on reserve and left it at that. In the end, I gave up on textbooks and have instead used a combination of source collections and reserve readings from secondary works. Lecture provides the basic outline for the course. As to readers, I have been using the one Hans Hillerbrand put together many years ago, largely on account of inertia. I don't really like it very much -- he edits out parts of some of the texts which I find particularly interesting. One thing that seems to be lacking generally in readers is the Catholic side of the debate. Has anyone ever put together a source collection with the views of Luther's opponents or major figures of the early Counter-Reformation?
I use Denis Janz's Reformation Reader, then "force" my students to read Ignatius' Autobiography. This is for a Catholic and Prot Ref course. I like Janz's book, since there are fairly long selections of the readings, but lots of variety too (including Catholic texts). I don't use a secondary source, since I figure we cover the background and try to figure it out in class.
I really like Cameron's book, not necessarily because its content is so much better than the others, but because it is structured into sections and chapters that each have their own thesis. Even in upper level history courses my students need practice in identifying theses, and with Cameron's book I can tell the students to come to class prepared to discuss the thesis of each chapter in a section as well as the overall thesis of that section. This helps them see how a historian builds an argument over the course of a rather lengthy book, and it reinforces what I tell them about structuring their own papers around a thesis. I also find this structure more thought-provoking than the average textbook, which is so bland it is boring.
Hey -- we're getting a real thread going here!
The Janz book has been recommended to me before and I plan to look at it before my next outing after a well-earned sabbatical. I also agree with Amy on Cameron, though since I have to combine Ren and Ref into one course, I am hesitant to have them buy something so weighty.
Does anyone else teach a combined Ren/Ref course? How do you approach it?
Jonathan Zophy has asked me to post the following comment:
I like all of the texts discussed so far to which I would add Carter Lindberg’s. I have also used his sourcebook with success. However, my students at a commuter institution with mostly older learners prefer shorter texts. They do not want a summa. They just want a lively introduction.
I know this is terribly self-serving, but I have used my own A Short History of Reformation Europe, Prentice Hall, for the last ten years. For my combined Renaissance and Reformation course, I use my combined version, also from Prentice Hall, 3rd. edition. The Reformation volume is 210 pages of text and the Ren.-Ref. Volume is 323 pages. I supplement them with source books and monographs.
Hello, I do not agree with the previous commentator - not so simple
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