DESERT HARVEST—Spring 2007
Vol. 15, No. 1

The view through the round window
by Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Director

   YOU DID IT! You magnanimous, visionary spirits brought the Heiko A. Oberman Chair Endowment, which includes the gift of the Oberman Library, past the $300,000 challenge mark before December 31, 2006.  Indeed, your outpouring brought us $30,000 past this goal!
   Because of you, I can now announce that we are on the downhill slope toward the full $2 million needed to complete the endowment. The overall total stands, as I write, at $1.28 million. Soon we shall be able to search world-wide for the first Heiko A. Oberman Professor in Late Medieval and Reformation History.
   In the meantime, during fall semester 2007, Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Peder Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, will be the Heiko A. Oberman Visiting Professor and will teach the so-called Division Seminar. His presence will provide an outstanding opportunity for UA History graduate students to work under the direction of one of the world’s leading specialists in early modern European history. Brady is author of several prize-winning books, on Strasbourg and on politics within the Holy Roman Empire. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has been awarded, among numerous other awards and honors, an honorary doctorate by the University of Bern, Switzerland.

                         *     *     *
   I am on sabbatical leave during 2007 and am completing a book that has been too long underway. Drained after a day at the computer, I watched an episode of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” only to see two detectives ask a suspect, “Why did you take a sabbatical?” The man replied, “I was exhausted. I needed to clear my mind.” This script reflects the attitude of the public toward sabbaticals: faculty who get them spend their time relaxing! I am not relaxing! I am finishing a long overdue book on the religious emotions in early modern Germany. At this writing, I have completed close to 200 pages; my graduate students ask for a report from time to time, as if to seek assurance that I am not simply avoiding them. They are under the exceptional tutelage this semester of Professor Kari McBride (Women’s Studies), a scholar of Tudor-Stuart England.  I miss them—although I am accessible.  Likewise, I regret not seeing some of you as often as before.  Do email me.  I read my electronic mail once a day.
   And do let’s slide down this final fund-raising slope of the Oberman Endowment and acquisition of the Oberman Library together.

21st Annual Town and Gown Lecture
Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University
by Tom Donlan, doctoral student     photo

   In early February, the Division had the great honor of welcoming the internationally renowned scholar, Natalie Zemon Davis, for a four-day visit, a special occasion in recognition of the career and recent retirement of our own beloved Professor Helen Nader. Over the course of her stay, Professor Davis enjoyed a few stops at Tucson's main cultural attractions, such as the San Xavier Mission (and lunch at the Desert Diamond Casino!), but the majority of her time was devoted to lively presentations and discussions of her most recent scholarship.
   The high point of Professor Davis' visit, at least for the mass of students, scholars, and other Tucsonans packed into the hall, was her Town and Gown lecture entitled “Philosophes, Jews, and Africans in Colonial Suriname: The Example of David Nassy.” Nassy, a physician/healer of Portuguese Jewish descent and an aficionado of Enlightenment thought, lived and worked in eighteenth-century Suriname, where Jews enjoyed considerable autonomy, and intermingled regularly with European elites, African maroons, and indigenous Carib peoples. Just one of a number of intriguing personalities showcased in Professor Davis' forthcoming book, “Braided Histories,” Nassy admired and at times envied the advanced skills of maroon healers. In an effort to improve upon his own expertise, Nassy acquainted himself with the African healer, Quassy, whom he came to view both as a colleague and a competitor.
   In this excellent study of cultural mixture across ethnic, power, and religious boundaries, Davis also explored the process by which certain maroon communities in Suriname embraced Judaism. As slaves on Jewish-owned plantations, these maroons were exposed to halakic norms and gradually adopted them. In communal records and the writings of Nassy, there are rich descriptions of slave observance of the Sabbath, the circumcision of boys, and intermarriage between Portuguese Jews and African converts. However, as Professor Davis explained, these cross-cultural exchanges were not without conflict. Nassy and other elders of the Portuguese Jewish community accepted those of African origin into the faith, but denied them full membership. Maroon leaders resented these limitations on their participation in the Jewish community and, drawing on the writings of Exodus and Leviticus, wrote up petitions of protest.
   A reception, generously hosted by Dr. Morris Martin and Mr. and Mrs. Steven Thu, followed the lecture.
   Professor Davis concluded her visit with one-on-one meetings with all of the Division students, which all parties enjoyed immensely, followed by a group discussion of her most recently published work, “Trickster Travels.” The History Department hosted this last discussion, Professor Miranda Spieler providing her introduction, as well as the dinner that followed that evening.
   On behalf of the Division, I would like to thank Professor Davis for coming to the UA. Your enthusiasm, graciousness, and mentoring are as exceptional as your scholarship and you stand as an inspiration to us all!

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor Erika Rummel, Wilfrid Laurier University

   In a four-hour workshop in January, Division students earned credit through intense study and discussion of the dynamics of the relationship between Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther during the years 1516-1524 with renowned Erasmus specialist, Erika Rummel, professor emerita, Wilfrid Laurier University, and adjunct professor, University of Toronto.

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor James M. Estes, University of Toronto
by Lizzy Ellis-Marino, master's student

   On Monday, March 26, Division students were treated to a seminar with the distinguished intellectual historian, James M. Estes. After spending the day offering professional advice to Division graduate students, Professor Estes spent the evening discussing with us his work on the “Collected Works of Erasmus” at the home of Professor Susan Karant-Nunn.
   After some brief jocular opening remarks from both professors, Professor Estes told us about the birth and growth of the Erasmus series, and how he came to edit and annotate some of the volumes of correspondence. Hired by Victoria University at the University of Toronto fresh out of graduate school (his choices were Toronto or Spearfish, S.D.), Estes was present for the founding of that university’s Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. There he has enjoyed not only the fellowship of his colleagues and the support of a fine university, but, due to the proximity of the Toronto University Press, he has had the privilege of working on the CWE series, one of the finest scholarly endeavors in the English language.
   The CWE started in 1969 as the idea of one man at Toronto University Press. Having discovered that there was no complete English edition of Erasmus’s correspondence, he thought that an annotated, English-language edition of the letters of the famous Dutch humanist would be an appropriate task for the press. He submitted his idea and, except for one board member who demurred, saying, “Let them learn Latin!” the project enjoyed nearly universal support and was quickly expanded to include most of what Erasmus wrote.
   Over the years, the CWE has become a major undertaking. Because of the breadth and depth of learning of the great man, the CWE has become a truly interdisciplinary venture. Classicists, theologians, intellectual historians, patristic scholars, and even a previous Division seminar have contributed to the volumes. The result has been a work of superior quality, for both English speakers and the international scholarly community. According to Estes, some German intellectual historians are known to consult the notes in the CWE over the various Latin editions of Erasmus’s work because of their completeness.
   Later in the evening, the discussion turned toward Estes’s broader research. Students asked questions about the relationships between the major intellectual figures of the Reformation. Estes gave us his take on the cordiality of the relationship between Melanchthon and Erasmus. According to Professor Estes, Melanchthon was willing to talk to anyone who could follow his ideas. Throughout their later lives, Erasmus and Melanchthon carried on a cordial argument. Estes also discussed the moment Erasmus dropped his support for the Lutheran enterprise. Apparently, the humanist, who remained a loyal Catholic, feared that he would contribute to a schism in the Church even if the new party were, as he thought the whole Church should be, more moderate. Christian unity remained paramount for him. The evening ended with friendly conversation in Professor Karant-Nunn’s kitchen.
   Professor Estes’s visit gave us an inside look at a major scholarly project. This and other visits from the foremost scholars in our field provide Division students with invaluable guidance and inspiration.

In memoriam
Ann Orlov-Rubinow, friend of the Division

   With sadness we mark the death on January 5 of Ann Orlov-Rubinow, 81, a friend of our founding director, Professor Heiko A. Oberman, and his wife, Toetie, and of the Division.
   We remember her many and varied achievements, as a civil rights activist who marched with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965; as Harvard University Press editor; as Vermont bed-and-breakfast owner; and as a graduate student of theology at the age of 70. It was at Harvard University Press that she first met the Obermans in the 1960s when she edited his “Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism.”
   We in the Division will miss her presence and that of her late husband, Merrill Rubinow. They were enthusiastic supporters of the endowment for the Heiko A. Oberman Chair and the acquisition of the Oberman Library.

Report from the seminar
Acquiring interdisciplinary tools
by Sean Clark, master's student

   The Division’s required seminars for this year have been happily disorienting. In the fall, Professor David Graizbord led us on an intense and wide-ranging exploration of early modern European Judaism. This was for most of us our first real exposure to the intricacies of Jewish history and though the time and place were familiar, the cultural and religious differences made it feel as if we had discovered a new world hidden in plain sight.
   This semester’s seminar is at once more familiar and more foreign. It takes as its subject discourses on the body in early modern England and is being led by Professor Kari McBride of the UA Department of Women’s Studies, who is helping us explore a whole other discipline. We are back on more recognizable cultural and religious ground, but we are approaching familiar topics with new tools and methods.
   “Interdisciplinary” is a term that gets tossed around quite a bit in academe these days. Many pay interdisciplinary studies lip service, but relatively few engage in it in a meaningful way. As graduate students in history, we are fortunately encouraged to explore other fields for whatever might be useful for our own research. This is particularly beneficial for my work. I study early modern travel literature, specifically German and particularly to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Levant. The sources I am most interested in tend toward the literary, though of vastly differing qualities, from high-minded and elegant to what we might today call pulp or sensationalist literature. The genres involved range from travel narratives and guides to sermons and even plays. In the past, such documents were examined almost exclusively for what they said about what “really” happened. More recently, historians have begun examining such sources for what they can tell us about how people in the past saw themselves in relation to the world around them and how they went about constructing their identities. This is the type of history I find fascinating.
   Once you have found a source that you think might yield interesting results, the question is what analytical tools can be used to find the relevant evidence? Like having the correct eyeglasses prescription, finding the right lens through which to look at your material is critical. I like to borrow the technique of close reading from literary studies. Close reading is just what it says: you take a text and read it over several times with the proverbial fine-toothed comb looking for linguistic patterns, inconsistencies, contradictions, explicit or implicit points of tension, anything that might give you an insight into the mental world of the author. This is labor intensive to be sure, but to produce well thought out and responsible historical studies it is necessary to first understand what your sources are telling you.
   To give an example, for the seminar I am examining two texts, one a pamphlet and the other a play, both written and published in London in 1607. Both ostensibly deal with the travels and travails of the three Sherley brothers in their efforts to form an alliance between the Christian princes of Europe and the Muslim Shah of Persia against the Ottomans. What scholarly attention the brothers have garnered in the last half-century, and that is not much, has been radically bi-polar. Historians have focused solely on the pamphlet as documentary evidence, often not even mentioning the play. Literary scholars have focused on the play as an example of early modern English depictions of Islam. To my knowledge, no one has looked at the two works in relationship to one another. I have set this as my task. I have read through the play and pamphlet several times, examining each one’s internal character as well as closely comparing one to the other. It has been a great learning experience.
   For many literary scholars, that could be the final product of their labors. For the historian, however, it is but the jumping off point for the larger work of placing the sources in their historical context. In the case of the Sherley brothers I am just now beginning to turn my gaze outward from the texts themselves to the larger social, political, and religious milieu in which they were produced. I do not yet know where this journey with the Sherley brothers will take me, much less my larger study of travel literature, but with the powerful tools of the literary scholar and the historian at my disposal, I feel well prepared for every eventuality.

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