#involves governments going after intellectuals such as historians and teachers

[tiangouaway]

the zionazis are tagging their bullshit arguments as "anti intellectualism" or "purity culture" actually kill yourselves

[kuramirocket]

Carlos Muñoz, Jr. remembers when he first began to ponder the meaning of his Mexican roots.Muñoz, now 80, was living in the crowded Segundo barrio of El Paso, Texas. His family—like thousands of other émigrés—had settled there decades earlier, refugees fleeing violence spawned by the Mexican Revolution.Neither of his parents had made it past elementary school, but they wanted more for their son. So young Carlos walked across town every day to an Anglo neighborhood where the local school had more resources than barrio campuses.In that world, Carlos became Charles—rechristened in fifth grade by a white teacher in an attempt to “Americanize” him.

His school records were altered to label him Charles. But nothing else about him changed. “I began to wonder about what that meant,” he recalls. “That was the first time that I started thinking about identity and culture and that kind of stuff.”

It wouldn’t be the last.

The next year his family moved from El Paso to Los Angeles, where they hopscotched among barrios from the Eastside to Downtown to South Los Angeles. And no matter whether his teachers called him Carlos or Charles, their ingrained attitudes about his Mexican heritage narrowed his path.

The counselors at Belmont High School steered Charles away from college prep and toward vocational ed, even though he was an honor student. They suggested he become a carpenter, like his dad.

“If you were Black or Brown and a male at that time, you automatically got to be an industrial arts major,” he says. “You take the basic courses in English, history and government, but you don’t get the algebra and the biology courses.”

He didn’t realize until after he graduated with honors in 1958 that those courses he missed were required for admission to California’s public universities.

It would take six years for Charles to navigate a route—through community college, military service and a white-collar job that paid well but left him unfulfilled—to the campus of Cal State LA.

There, in the midst of a nascent Chicano rights movement, Charles reclaimed Carlos and played a key role in a history-making venture that would create new paths for Latino students: the creation at Cal State LA of the first Mexican American Studies program in the nation.

Its launch five decades ago—which Muñoz, then a graduate student, helped lead—would usher in a new era of ethnic studies across the Southwestern United States and ultimately around the country. Today more than 400 universities have programs dedicated to the study of the history, circumstances and culture of Latinos in America.

“Right now, there’s an awareness of ethnic studies. … But the beginnings of ethnic studies, as a discipline, were right here at Cal State LA,” says Professor Dolores Delgado Bernal, chair of what is now the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies.

“The discipline offers a lot to students, in terms of their identities, their intellect, what interests they pursue. Taking these courses allows students to say, ‘I can claim and be proud of who I am, and that allows me to better understand and accept others who are not like me.’ ”

“It’s becoming increasingly important to have that interdisciplinary background, and an understanding of other cultures and races,” Delgado Bernal says.

Today Muñoz is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He’s an author, political scientist, historian and scholar, specializing in social and revolutionary movements.

But the challenges Muñoz encountered on his journey from the barrio to the ivory tower typify the struggles that many Latino students still face today—and illustrate why Chicano Studies was necessary decades ago, and still has an important role to play.

In its early years, the Cal State LA program was a resource for local students who felt intimidated by college and invisible on campus.

The spotlight on Chicano history and culture allowed them to see themselves through a new lens, one scrubbed of stereotypes. And its sweeping scope connected them to other marginalized groups, illuminating struggles for equality that students found ultimately empowering.

“To me, the thing about Chicano Studies is that it was eye-opening to the truth and history,”  Carmen Ramírez, an Oxnard city councilwoman who attended Cal State LA for two years in the 1970s, says. “If you don’t know the truth, you can’t fix the future. … We need to know our history.”

And the dividends spread far beyond the campus, the student body and local communities. By its very existence, the Cal State LA program gave national credibility to the concept of ethnic studies as an intellectual pursuit.

“Chicano Studies opened the door to possibilities of employment on university faculties,” said Raul Ruiz, professor emeritus in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, which hired him in 1970. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State LA in 1967, and went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. at Harvard. Ruiz died this year at 78 years old. 

“Chicano Studies gave us opportunities to teach at the college level. And that was very significant in an era when many of us never had a Latino professor.”

At that time, “there were only about five Mexican Americans in the country with Ph.D.s in the social sciences,” recalls Muñoz, who earned his B.A. in political science from Cal State LA and a Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School.

Like Ruiz and Muñoz, several of the campus movement’s leaders went on to become college professors and scholarly experts in the field.

But even when they were offered faculty positions in Latino Studies, their contributions were often minimized or disregarded.

“Now we’re very visible at universities across the nation,” Muñoz says. “But during my career, I often had to face that perspective— you’re just ideologues, not scholars—from conservative faculty. It was not an easy path.”

For students like Ruiz, the path was equally challenging.

Ruiz had moved to Los Angeles from El Paso as a child in the 1950s. Told he wasn’t “college material,” Ruiz enrolled in Trade Tech, studied mechanical drawing and took a job drafting engineering plans for aviation systems. A year of that made him miserable, so he quit and in the mid-’60s applied to Cal State LA as an English major.

Then, as now, the Cal State LA campus was walking distance from one of the largest urban Mexican American communities in the United States. But few students in that community were being prepared for college.

The university experience seemed so remote that Eastside parents who could see the hillside campus from their yards thought “the building on the hill was the Sybil Brand Institute” for incarcerated women, Cal State LA Professor Ralph C. Guzmán told the University’s College Times newspaper in 1968.

Guzmán, who helped draft early Chicano Studies proposals, was one of just a handful of Latino faculty members then.

Ruiz was the only Mexican American kid in most of his classes, he said.

“I remember as an English major, the sense of me being up against everything. I remember making a presentation and the other students came at me hard with criticism,” Ruiz said. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Next time you’re going to know more than everybody else.’ ”

Ultimately, that would motivate him to develop a rigorous background in research. But as a new student, he found the social isolation to be a destabilizing experience.

After a professor told him he was smart “but basically illiterate,” Ruiz spent hours alone in the library—after classes and before his post office job—teaching himself to write.

“I would practice writing sentences and improving them until I could write a paragraph, and then an essay,” he said. It took him six months to develop the skills he needed. The skills he should have been taught in high school.

Cal State LA already had a robust interdisciplinary program of Latin American Studies, with classes that focused on Mexican culture but had little connection to the American experience.

“It was a marvelous program. It opened up my consciousness,” Ruiz said. But he came to realize that he knew more about Mexicans in Mexico than he did about families like his, “Mexicans in my own community.”

Beyond the University, in his own community, unrest and outrage were brewing. Mexican Americans had found their voice and were beginning to challenge the status quo. And nowhere did that coalesce more vividly than in the neighborhoods around Cal State LA.

“It was actually right here in the city of Los Angeles where the Chicano movement started,” noted legendary civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, when she visited campus to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Chicano Studies in September 2018.

The Chicano Studies program helped empower young activists and bring national attention to the challenges and concerns of Mexican Americans, she said.

Ruiz remembered what that felt like. “We were becoming part of this growing social movement that was sweeping the country, with massive anti-war protests and civil rights marches,” he recalled.

Community organizers rallied Eastside families to join the demonstrations. Student groups on campus worked together behind the scenes for change.

“I was not a radical person,” Ruiz said. “But you couldn’t help but become involved, or at least think about it.”

In March 1968, that awareness came to a head, as thousands of students at five high schools within a six-mile radius of Cal State LA walked out of classes and took to the streets, to challenge an educational system that didn’t recognize their worth or value their needs.

Thirteen adults would be arrested, jailed and charged with conspiracy for helping organize the walkouts. Muñoz—who’d proudly changed his name back to Carlos—was among them.

By then Muñoz was a Cal State LA graduate student and a U.S. veteran, who understood why students were walking out. The kid whom counselors steered away from college prep classes in high school was now on his way to becoming a university professor—and he was on the front lines of the battle to improve education for younger Latinos.

Police arrested Muñoz at gunpoint three months after the walkouts, as he sat at the kitchen table in his apartment doing his political science homework, and his wife and two young children slept upstairs. Muñoz spent two years on bail and faced a possible prison term of 66 years, until an appellate court dismissed the charges as a violation of the defendants’ First Amendment rights.

The walkouts alarmed the educational establishment, but energized the local community and moved education to the front of an activist agenda.

Cal State LA students, faculty and administration partnered with community groups to help broaden opportunities.

That summer Cal State LA’s student government voted to allocate $40,000 for an Educational Opportunity Program that would provide the support needed by students who were motivated but underprepared. Sixty-eight Latino and Black freshmen were admitted through the program that first year.

And University leaders agreed to work with student activists to get the Chicano Studies program up and running. The pioneering program was launched in the fall of 1968—with four courses and funding from student government.

Muñoz wound up teaching the program’s introductory course in the fall of 1968: Mexican American 100. Graduate student Gilbert Gonzalez taught Mexican American 111, a course on Mexican American history, and Professor Guzmán taught two upper-division classes.

“I was a first-year grad student in political science,” Muñoz recalls. “I had no teaching experience. I didn’t even know how the University worked. … We were very, very fortunate that there were progressive people in the administration. They were very helpful in generating support.”

In fact, the Chicano Studies movement at Cal State LA created a blueprint for collaboration—in an era when campus clashes were the primary tools of social and academic change.

Students worked with parents and with University leaders. Chicano and Black student groups supported one another. Both groups wanted a voice, a bigger presence on campus and a curriculum that reflected their culture and history.

Today, the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies offers more than 150 courses, taught by scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Its academic legacy is strong and its graduates have contributed immeasurably to the University, the region and beyond.

The number of students majoring in Chicano Studies has grown by almost 40% over the past 18 months, said Department Chair Delgado Bernal at the anniversary celebration.

“Maybe that’s because of the political climate,” she surmised. “Students are looking to understand it, and to have the skills, knowledge and rhetoric to respond.”

Over the years, the department has opened new career paths for students, elevated the status of Chicano scholarship and empowered successive generations in ways that only understanding your culture and history can do.

Its success reflects the foresight of its founders and the University’s ongoing commitment to academic rigor, inclusion and equality.

“Our whole purpose was assisting our community, supporting the aspirations of students and asserting our right to be here,” Muñoz says of the department’s creation a half-century ago.

“We said let’s do something so our younger brothers and sisters won’t be victimized by racism, the way we were.”

[selenammoon]

Seeking And Preserving the History

Doing something a little different this week and blogging about several women historians who have birthdays this week.

Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004) was an American author and journalist, best known for her 1997 book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II about the Naking massacre. Her first book was Thread of the Silkworm, published in 1995), a story of Tsien Hsue-she, a Chinese-born physicist forced to leave the American space program and deported back to China during the McCarthy era. After returning to China, he founded its international missile program.

The Rape of Nanking was published sixty years after the massacre, the first full-length nonfiction book, and the most detailed Western account of the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers after they invaded in December 1937. Within two months, more than 300,000 civilians were murdered and 800,000 women were raped.

Chang was inspired to write the book when she attended a conference in 1994 sponsored by the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia and saw photographs of the atrocities at Nanking. Later, she met a group of Chinese-American activists when she moved to California with her husband.

Her maternal grandparents escaped mere weeks before the Japanese invasion. Chang grew up hearing gruesome stories about Nanking, but could not find any books on the subject in her school library. She later learned that there was very little printed material on the subject in China, Japan, or the West. She wrote The Rape of Naking, “out of a sense of rage. I didn't really care if I made a cent from it. It was important to me that the world knew what happened in Nanking back in 1937."

She spent two years researching, including going to China to look through archives and interview survivors. She made several discoveries, including diaries of two Westerners who saved hundreds of Chinese civilians, whom she dubbed the "Oskar Schindler of Nanking” and the "Anne Frank of Nanking." The first was John Rabe, a German Nazi party member. He established an International Safety Zone before the Japanese soldiers arrived from Shanghai. The second was a Minnie Vautrin, an Illinois woman, a missionary and teacher at the Nanking Women's College that became part of the Safety Zone. She saved hundreds of women and children there, but suffered a breakdown believing that she had failed because she had not saved more. In 1940 she returned home to Illinois and committed suicide a year later.

In her next book, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History published in 2003, the year before she died, Chang chronicled the 150-year history of Chinese immigration. At her death, she was working on a book members of the U.S. tank battalions who were taken prisoner by the Japanese and forced into the Bataan Death march. After the American general surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942, the Japanese forced the troops to walk sixty-five mines through the jungle, during which around 8,000 died. Survivors spent the rest of the war in prison camps or as slave laborers. Though it was the largest U.S. Army surrender, the story was mostly forgotten after the war. One of the men she interviewed was Ed Martel, one of the last survivors, whom she “cross-examined...like a district attorney for five solid hours."

Chang committed suicide while still researching her book on Bataan.

In April 2017, a memorial hall honoring Chang opened in her ancestral home, Huaian, Jiangsu province. Each of the six parts of the museum depict an aspect of Chang’s life. It is the second memorial to commemorate the Nanking massacre, after the The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre was built in 1985.

Joan Kelly (March 29, 1928 – August 15, 1982) was a leading Italian Renaissance historian who challenged dominant notions of women’s roles during that time. She took night courses at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, graduating with her BA summa cum laude in 1953. She also was the only woman in New York to receive a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship that year. She received an M.A. (1954) and Ph.D. (1963) in history from Columbia University, where her dissertation Professor Garret Mattingley described her dissertation as, "the best Columbia dissertation he had ever read." It became the basis of her first book, Leon Battista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance.

She spent the next few years teaching, including at Sarah Lawrence College where she became interested in women of the Renaissance and feminist theories of history and social change. She worked with Gerda Lerner to develop the first M.A. program in women's history there and was acting director of the women's studies program at City College of New York (CCNY) from 1976-1977. She defined herself as a socialist feminist and developed a Marxist-feminist theory of history.

Kelly wrote “Did Women Have A Renaissance?,” a ground-breaking area of scholarship (she concluded that they did not) and co-authored a Households and Kin: Families in Flux, a high school textbook. Her essay collection, “Women, History and Theory” was published posthumously.

Additionally, she served on the Renaissance Society of America executive board, was chair of the Committee of Women Historians of the American Historical Association, and was on the board of the Feminist Press.

In 1874, two years after Kelly died, the American Historical Association created the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, “for the book in women’s history and/or feminist theory that best reflects the high intellectual and scholarly ideals exemplified by the life and work of Joan Kelly” which addresses “a recognition of the important role of sex and gender in the historical process. The inter-relationship between women and the historical process should be addressed.”

Muriel Wright (March 31, 1889-February 27, 1975), a member of the Choctaw Nation, was a teacher, historian, and editor. Her mother Ida Belle Richards was a Presbyterian missionary teacher who arrived in 1887, and her father, Eliphalet Nott “E. N.”) Wright, was a Choctaw and a graduate of Union College and Albany Medical College in New York. He returned to the Choctaw Nation in 1895 to establish a private practice and serve as company physician for the Missouri-Pacific Coal Mines at Lehigh.

Wright could trace her white ancestry on both sides of her family to the Mayflower (1620) and the Anne (1623). On her mother’s side she is descended from Frances Sprangue, who arrived on the Anne. Her paternal grandmother Harriet Newell Mitchell Wright, who descended from two Mayflower passengers William Brewster and Edward Doty was a Presbyterian missionary teacher who moved from Dayton, Ohio to the Choctaw Nation. In 1857, she married Rev. Allen Wright, principal chief of the Choctaw Nation from 1866 to 1870. It was he who suggested that the territory be named “Oklahoma” which means "red people." in 1866. Wright was a member of several organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames.

Wright attended Wheaton Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts and completed a teacher education course at East Central Normal School in Ada in 1912, but did not receive a degree. From 1912 to the mid-1920s, Wright worked at several schools in southeastern Oklahoma as principal and English and history instructor. From 1916-7, she studied English and history at Barnard College.

Wright’s interest in Choctaw history began in 1914 when she met journalist and Oklahoma Historical Society board member Joseph B. Thoburn. He encouraged her to study southeastern Oklahoma’s geography, map the Choctaw Nation, and conducted field work almost annually from 1922-9. Thoburn and Wright collaborated on a four-volume work, Oklahoma: A History of the State and Its People (1929). She also wrote three Oklahoma history textbooks used in the public schools: The Story of Oklahoma (1929), Our Oklahoma (1939), and The Oklahoma History (1955).

In addition to studying Choctaw history, Wright was actively involved in Choctaw Nation affairs as secretary of the Choctaw Committee during the 1920s, member and secretary of the Choctaw Advisory Council in 1934, and as a Choctaw delegate to the Inter-tribal Indian Council from the late 1930s to the early 1940s.

After joining the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1922, Wright wrote articles for the The Chronicles of Oklahoma from 1923 to 1971 on topics such as Indian and military history, biographies of notable women, and historic preservation. From 1943 to 1954, she was the journal’s editor in all but name, which she officially became in 1955. Wright produced more than one hundred issues, including over sixty-six of her articles.

Wright’s A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma (1951), which surveys the sixty-seven tribes then in Oklahoma, including their location, membership, history, government, contemporary life and culture, removal experiences and adaptation to change, “remains a standard reference for studying the state's American Indian people.”

In the 1950s, Wright and her historical society colleagues launched a program to create historical markers to raise awareness of the state’s history. Wright conducted most of the research for the inscriptions and created a list of sites which went from the initial 512 to 557 when the final list was published in the The Chronicles of Oklahoma in 1958. That same year, Wright and Oklahoma Historic Sites Committee chair George H. Shirk compiled and edited Mark of Heritage: Oklahoma Historical Markers, focusing on 131 sites. In 1966, Wright collaborated with LeRoy H. Fischer on "Civil War Sites in Oklahoma," identifying and describing the location and historical significance of the sites. In addition, she also conducted OHS–sponsored public tours of historic sites.

Wright received numerous honors including listing in the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1940, the University of Oklahoma's Distinguished Service Award citation in 1948, the Oklahoma City Business and Professional Woman of the Year Award in 1950, Oklahoma City University's honorary doctorate of humanities degree in 1964, and the National American Indian Women's Association Award in 1971. After retiring in 1973, Wright continued her research projects until she died in 1975. She was one of the first four inductees of the when the Oklahoma Historical Society launched the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame in 1993.

[fall2017ugc111]

Rome- Republic vs Empire notes

- 509 BCE to 100CE. - Key themes: Roman ID -> special to them and importance of republic. - Participating in Roman ID (esp. for women) + looking at diversity and agency outside of political sphere. - Roman republic -> empire -> living in the empire. - Republic: representative democracy -> elect officials to represent you. Usually homogenous group of ppl. -> eg. Same lang and culture. - Empire: Absolute authority for 1 individual. Usually formed via conquest (sometimes by alliance). Usually takes up large amt of territory. - 509 BCE to 44 BCE: The republic: - Transition to empire is gradual. - Rome started as a small city of Latin ppl abt 750 BCE. - Abt same time Assyrian conquered Israel and China is in warring state. - Ruled by foreign power initially called Etruscan kings, ruling from 650 to 509 BCE. - Ruled via kingship. - Abt 509 BCE, romans overthrew the last king and transitioned to Republic. - This became the heart and soul of Roman ID. - Key value: balance of power. - 2 forms: btw 2 major classes in their society -> patricians (3 part names) and plebeians (2 part names). - Roman classes based on bloodline. - Patrician -> can be senate and have political rep. Usually men. Can be wealthy or not. - Abt 400 BCE, plebeians get rep politically. - Ideal -> all involved in governance. - Maintained the senate and assembly for over 400 yrs. - Ppl of rome can be elected to the assembly. - Collective physiology -> deeply afraid of possibility of kingship. - They started conquering others almost immediately after overthrowing old kings -> always at war. - Not typical for republics. - Conquered majority of places before considering themselves as an empire. - But why conquer? - 1) “Defensive Conquest” -> conquer others before they conquer them. - Tied to military -> to serve in military, you must own land coz if you do you have a stake and you will fight well. - But commoners did not own much land. - So, they suggest giving land -> recruit ppl by promising land. - Created a feedback loop -> recruit ppl -> need more land -> conquest -> new boarders -> recruit ppl. - As Rome expanded, they needed ppl to look after the land so created provincial governors. - Provincial governors -> like kings in own territories. - Easy to gain personal loyalty from soldiers -> no need to listen to republic. - Infamous generals who did that: Marius, Sulla and Caesar -> turned around and conquered their own city. - Julius Caesar -> last nail in the coffin for the republic -> 100 to 44 BCE. - His actions and appointment as dictator for life -> resulted in his assassination. - Previously called Octavian but changed his name. - Augustus -> baby on leg considered a genie (divine right and inspiration to rule). - Means “the great one”. - Was in power mostly coz of Caesar’s will. - Caesar’s will was read in public and his wealth was divided as ifts to public, also to his soldiers. - In his death, controlled 17 legions of army vs Senate which had 12. - Proclaimed that he was the first citizen of the state -> gets to speak first in senate meetings. - Usually given to senior and older senates members. - Put under the guise of republic while Augustus actually holds great power. - Romans are deeply religious ppl. - THE HISTORIES (LIVY): - Themes: praise, condemnations, Rome as a city/state is described as? Possible perceptions? - City founded by slaves, outlaws and men so there was no women in the foundation of Rome. - When Rome was ruled by foreign kings -> considered a golden age by historians as they engaged in trade and was stable and wealthy. - Last few kings were very unstable and horrible. - Romans however, consider this a darker day of their history. - Initially took place in variety of city state. - In the city of Alba, near Rome. - Livy praises: - Para 3: As they were twins and no claim to precedence could be based on seniority, they decided to consult the tutelary deities of the place by means of augury  as to who was to give his name to the new city, and who was to rule it after it had been founded. - Praised the idea of finding divine judgement instead of own choice. - Also praised collective equality. - 4: Praise self-reliance and independence. - 9: Shows what self-reliance and divine help can get you. - 7: Praise citizen’s support of Romulus by giving personal resources -> duty as a citizen. - 3: praises humble beginnings -> started from the bottom and ended up great idea. - Livy condemns: - 13 and 14: Gives perspective of pelsavines NOT romans. - Roman’s actions were condemned. - Also for condemning of intermarriage btw romans and neighbours by neighbours-> seems insulted by this. - 3: Also condemned kingship by foreign king -> “cruelty”. - Threatened by children and also romans perception of king. - Roles of fate and the gods: - Thinks Rome is great coz of divine help. - God and fate is related. - Not a go to god for everything -> deities seem to be more distant. - Fate = divine. - Similar to Chinese and their ancestors -> augury -> read via animal entrails vs bones for Chinese. - Courage and self-reliance seem to go with divine intervention all the time -> tied together. - Rome created by both ppl and gods. - Seems that ppl who are self-reliant and have courage earns divine intervention. - Bad things -> more of human failure. - Good things -> they did well even as humans so earned divine favour. - Rome (city and state) is described as and perceived as…?: - Describes the city as great and powerful with neighbours being amazed by them too for their rapid growth. - Despite fact that this was used to cheat their neighbours later. - Makes neighbours seem less impressive. - Why are women at peace after abduction? - Livy thinks the attractive argument -> honourable wedlock, property, civil rights and ability of mothers to free men and promise of affection from their husbands. - Also, Roman’s highly value relationships btw husbands and wives. - Livy believes that would led to females being appeased. - But rmb, Livy is a guy trying to look at a girl’s point of view. - For romans these are valuable things. - Best way to move from our gut reaction and better understand this text? - Acknowledge your own beliefs and see what Roman’s thought and believed -> balance the two out. - Look past action of Romans and see the intention (betterment of society). - Look at text as a whole. - Note: Empire is where trade happens. - Next reading: Pliny is a new governor and don’t know what to do with Christians. - Asked the emperor what to do and later condemned Christians for political reasons. - Other reading: Clement of Alexandria -> same as Hellenistic world lecture. - Is a religious leader. - Just after a period of persecution of Christians. - Can be a response to persecution. - Romulus and Remus: Fractricide, a cruel king, barbarism, omens and gods. - Cincinnatus -> Roman senator that became dictator to fight a war, previously a farmer and was half naked, other senators convince him to go to war and in 14 days he saves the city. - Best part: as soon as his work was done, he gives up his power. - Horatius at the bridge: he and his troops stay at the bridge that is the only access to the city, Horatius fought well, managed to escape and had the help of gods. - Is a legend and a myth. - Point of both: self-sacrifice for Rome. - Livy tells these stories to connect to readers and this was done during Rome’s transition to empire. - Living in Roman Empire as a young girl or as a woman? - Tells abt nurturing, childhood, daily life and family structure. - Married fairly early- shorter lifespan and not educated. - 15yo married = good wife coz have children. - Romans love women with domestic abilities – ie. Worked well with wool. - Sources not official for women -> headstone and graffiti. - City of Pompey -> much graffiti abt who slept with who. - But sources not often written by women themselves. - Roles depend on class and age -> women’s roles. - Upper class -> educated but not expected to work, lower class = occupation bt not educated. - Women worked as midwives -> shown by inscriptions showing women in birthing chair. - But unsanitary and midwives with birthing chair and helper considered well to do. - Sitting position -> gravity helps women give birth better. - Midwives -> must be literate, soft hands, good memory, charge fairly, etc. - As orators -> women speaking in public. - Hortensia -> daughter of famous Roman politician. - She stormed the Roman capital to give a piece of her mind to the increase in taxes. - Says that they have to pay taxes but were not given power, fame or anything else in compensation. - Only possible for women in higher class like she is. - *** - A Christian in the Roman Empire: - Christianity development in Roman empire. - Context: Roman empire (primary), Judaism and Hellenistic world. - Note: Hellenistic world still playing a role but not explicitly. - Roman empire: - Like Persia -> practices religious tolerance ( as long as you offer sacrifices to the emperor) -> but Jews allowed to pay taxes instead coz they practice monotheism. - Like Greece -> appreciate spread of knowledge and are intellectual ppl. - Distinct to Rome: Citizenship rights as a reward for good behaviour -> offer full citizenship rights to anyone who plays well into the empire. Eg. If they conquer you and you do not fight back, you can be a citizen -> can run for political positions, full legal rights and protection under laws, etc. - Jewish ppl do not get citizenship coz Judea was a pain in the butt for the Romans. - Jewish hated being conquered and it took abt 100 years before they were fully conquered. - There was periodic revolts and was ultimately unsuccessful. - Romans became really hard on Jews as a result. - Jews are angry over being occupied but Romans did bring great things to the places they conquer -> eg Education, wine, medication, water supply, etc. - Jesus -> is a Jewish teacher/ rabbi who was concerned with the 600+ laws, born in Judea, is concerned with proper worship and rituals and how to perform them. Also has multiple accounts of miracles and died in 20 CE by Roman crucification. - Was considered a political threat to the Roman empire -> seen as a charismatic leader. - After his death: stories that he is resurrected circulated initially by female followers only, they met in secret, had secret meetings, sacred meals -> as Jesus still considered political prisoners. - Took up tendencies of Hellenistic world more than Jews. - Romans see religion as civic or private. - See religion as having 2 pieces -> public facing and private facing. - Christians only do private facing -> so Romans very worried. - Vs Judaism was organized and the Jewish leaders had worked it out well with the Romans via bargains. - Even Jews had a public (civic) face but Christians did not. - Plus, Christians were not big enough (or old enough) to do bargaining. Not as organized as well. - Most ppl are polythetic so one more “god” does not matter but Christians are monotheistic so they do not do sacrifices. - No sacrifice = wishing the emperor is dead/ ill. - For civic: - pietas - reverence for things that deserve reverence -> roman word that applies to civic religion -> apply to emperor, participation in public faces. - Sacrifices to the Emperor - Attendance of public feasts & religious festivals - Roman Religion: Private - Hellenistic Mystery Cults - Secret, ceremonial, gradual initiation - Most popular: Mithras. Originally an Indian deity and is a sun god. - Followers are baptised into a cult and also had a resurrection story. - Romans had great issues with Christianity. - Due to… romans being suspicious about mystery cults in general. - Early sources of Christians was that they were participating in incestuous orgies and eating babies. - Also feared rebellion in Judea due to previous conflicts. - Primary issue: did not want to sacrifice to empire -> seen as political rebellion. - Resulted in sporadic persecutions until 313 CE -> Romans never went about to wipe out Christians. - Tacitus -> Text: Germania. - He roughly concurrent with Pliny and Alexandria. - Grew up in roman empire as a whole but not in Rome (travelled there though). - Took up almost all political positions available. - Also, friend of Pliny the younger. - Text was in his midlife and Rome has not conquered the territory he talks about. - Tries to make sense of who these ppl are -> ethnographic piece. Who they are and how they fit to Rome. - A technical writer -> interesting details in text. - Pliny: - Concerns? -> abt rate of spread of Christianity and the future impact (temples are abandoned). - Also, of the undermining of traditional roman religion. - Seems confused on what to do with them and slightly sympathetic (gives reason for torture). - Expected something worse but just found superstitions he did not agree to. - Avoid condemning them wholeheartedly. - Also describes as a Christianity as a contagion (disease) -> looks down on Christianity. - Methods of judgement in terms of fairness? -> Seems so, just give a sacrifice and you are spared. - But can be hypocritic since Christians are monotheistic -> but must sacrifice instead of give money and considering Romans are supposed to be okay with religion, religious tolerance does not seem to exist. - Follows good roman procedures in general. - Also, unsure if he should take anonymous tips -> but was told not to or false accusations can happen. - Pliny acts with Roman tendencies and persecutes minorities legally. - What are some of the ways we overlook persecution in the modern day, even id it is legal? - Alexandria: - Similar to letters Paul wrote to church. - Paul is famous for writing letters of advice in earlier times of 1st century. - Similarity and differences -> tone is the same, period of uncertainty so there was an idea of comfort/ reassurance in the letters. - Alexandria has a godly figure in his letters -> god will take care of everything and text is orientated towards god. - Bhagavad-Gītā -> does orient towards divinity too. - Basically, let go of everything for the faith you belief in. - Genesis and Alexandria -> both faced persecution but in G. the rewards are explicit but Alexandria talks about reactions instead. - Epictetus and Clement was around the same time as each other. - Alexandria -> promises more abstract and very vague (delayed gratification), ask a lot more than other religion -> VS other religions with explicit rewards that are almost always immediate. - Clement advises his readers to lay low -> don’t call attention yourself during persecution. - Gives practical advise on how to avoid persecution by Romans. - *** - Christianity later became a major religion in Rome and in the tribes that caused the fall of rome. - Conversion of Constantine: - Roman emperor that ruled later converted to Christianity. - Was a gradual acceptance as his mother and advisors became Christians. - Legend battle of the Milvian bridge -> forces are out numbered and goes to sleep in desperation and despair, later wakes and finds under this sign you will conquer (a cross) and he did. - 313 CE. - His convergence meant Christians were accepted and made official in the empire. - But also raises qns of exact beliefs and codes -> need to codify way of thought and doing. - These debates continued for a long time. - Paul -> first Christian to move out of Judaism and tried to include gentiles (outsiders) in the mix. - Some issues -> they are not circumcised, etc. - Reached peak in 323 CE in counsel of Nicaea -> what are the correct beliefs for Christianity. - Constantine was heavily involved as he was the emperor. - Major concern: orthodoxy (means right beliefs) -> major difference -> prioritizes beliefs over actions (compared to other religions). - Prioritizes your internal life and your beliefs -> are they right? - What to do with Jesus? - He is divine in some way but what does it mean for him to be god? - Debates if he is fully god, fully human or both. - Later decided he was both. - He was fully god but incarnated into fully human. - After defining right beliefs define wrong beliefs -> Heresies. - Some disagreements like… - Arians -> He is not as fully god as the father, Headed north and went to Germania. - Monophysites  -> he is more god. - Gnostics -> he is more a spirit. - Were all kicked out of the church. - But they don’t think they are wrong, they still belief they are right. - Also developed the trinity -> three persons, one god. Three persons inherent in this one god -> the father, the son and the holy spirit. - Religion that makes them comfortable with mystery in their belief -> philosophical vs beliefs -> similar to Daodejing. - These heresies had a life outside Rome and headed to other countries. Later returned. - 313 BCE -> primary religion of Rome is Christianity. - Became the major religion in successor states after Rome fell. - Key: idea of continuity and change. - Rome fell -> but in some ways, it also transformed. - Germanic tribes took over western rome. - Divisions in Rome -> 1st is btw 2 political hubs of empire. - Roman emperor believes that the empire is too large to rule over so he divided it into 2. - Both parts stayed majority Christians. - Eastern roman empire vs Western roman empire. - Govern by different political centres. - Took different trajectories and collapse at different times. - Eastern side fell at 1453 CE, much late than the other half. - Eastern half -> benefited from trade routes and was a lot wealthier. - Western half had to delegate trade to them. - The wealth allowed them to pay the Germanic tribes to not attack them. - Some Germanic tribes remain unconquered by Rome. - Division btw Western and Eastern Church: - W. Rome: Pope, homoisios, called themselves the catholic church (universal church). - E. Rome: Patriarch, homousios, called themselves the orthodox church (right belief church). - Arians -> went and seek converts in German territories. Became very successful and most of the tribes converted. - Fall of Rome: last roman emperor Romulus Augustus (nickname: little Augustus). - 476 CE Germanic tribes took over the city and kicked him out of the city and he went on to live with the Eastern roman empire. - Warlord: Odoacer -> named changed as he thinks himself as Roman. - Romans have no clue who the Germanic tribes are. - Just name them as eastern and western goths. Ie. Visigoths and Ostrogoths. - Can recognize a common structure of their leadership -> a comitatus (war band) -> primarily, the leader/ chief is the one to divide the spoils of war while the warriors have to act as advisors and loyal supporters. - Germans look at webs of loyalty or enmity -> blood feuds in Germanic tribes for several generations is possible. Tribes/ families are at war with each other. - Similarly, alliance is very strong btw families and personal ties matter a lot -> will run on for several generations. - Roman boarders with Germans will always be very unstable -> conquered Germans are paid well and have some rights and benefits, they are official allies. - They serve as border guards against other German tribes -> motivated by money. - Readings: - Thomas -> Germans hold up the leadership of Rome and that created medieval Iraq. - Is a francisian firar -> an insider and a member of the religious order. - Written same year that Francisis is made a saint. - Is very literal, not all crazy (although he talks to animals). - Very dedicated to his religion. - Establish a new form of monastic life -> life of a monk. - He transformed it from a secluded thing to a urban thing. - Mendicant order = strict vows of poverty, often on the move, primarily urban.