What does the Pundit do?

[Mystery Man]

Great gravy!  Illustrious company indeed!  Double major here, History/Art History.  I was part of a focus program dealing with the U.S. Civil War & Reconstruction, my favorite era by far.

Fine Arts/Art History here. One of these days I'll actually get my degree....

[joewolz]

Switch over to South American history, so that you'll have an excuse to come visit Uruguay!

RPGPundit

That shouldn't be a problem, I've actually always wanted to see Montevideo, it's how I found out about your blog in the first place...I was loking for game stores there.  I never did find any.

[RPGPundit]

That shouldn't be a problem, I've actually always wanted to see Montevideo, it's how I found out about your blog in the first place...I was loking for game stores there.  I never did find any.

There aren't really any stores in montevideo that sell gaming books; but for most things we could hook you up, don't worry. I don't suffer from any lack of gaming material over here.

RPGPundit

[Erick Wujcik]

My specialty was in religious history.

RPGPundit

As it happens, I ended up taking quite a bit of religious history myself. One of my favorite teachers at Wayne State University was Professor Milton Covensky, a specialist in the history of religion (who had the amazing ability of being able to enunciate like a deity, with an old testament voice, in any language, in every religion he described). No surprise that I ended up taking every class he offered.

Finding a spectacular teacher is how I ended up deeply exploring a lot of different subjects, following them through their entire teaching catalog. I ended up with a good foundation in British History (Goldwin Smith), Japanese History (T.F. Mayer-Oakes) and Ancient History (Findlay Hooper).

Erick

[JamesV]

Wow.
BA History '02. I didn't really emphasize though I did coincidentally do a lot of study about Great Britain and a class on NZ/OZ. I also really enjoyed architechtural history.

[joewolz]

a class on NZ/OZ.

"We are the ANZAZ Army!
The A-N-Z-A-C!
We cannot shoot,
We don't salute,
What bloody good are we!?"

One of my favorite WW1 tidbits...a marching song from the ANZACs on their way to Gallipoli.
That class had to rock pretty hard.  I'd love to get more of an opportunity to study australia.

edited to add stuff

[Sigmund]

Historians and RPGs seem to go together My current gaming group has 2 history majors, and my previous group had a history major who now teaches high school history.

[Spike]

That makes me the big loser here... I only like history for fun and amateur study, not for a degree program.

Still... at least this thread serves as adaquet notice that I should NOT attempt to comment in the least bit authoratatively on ANY historical topic.  God forbid that I forget the Hittites had pointed toed shoes or something...

[Sigmund]

That makes me the big loser here... I only like history for fun and amateur study, not for a degree program.

Still... at least this thread serves as adaquet notice that I should NOT attempt to comment in the least bit authoratatively on ANY historical topic.  God forbid that I forget the Hittites had pointed toed shoes or something...

HA! Same here. Hittites had pointy-toed shoes? :confused:

[The Good Assyrian]

God forbid that I forget the Hittites had pointed toed shoes or something...

Just for clarification, I believe that pointed toed shoes were more characteristic of the Middle Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1500–1430 BC).  The New Hittite Kingdom (the Hittite Empire proper, ca. 1430–1180 BC) saw the rise of the square toed shoe in the ancient Near East.  By the period of the Neo-Hittite city-states of the of the 8th century BC this process was complete, and the wearing of pointed toes shoes had died out...

Naw, I'm just fucking with you. People who get too serious about the trivia of history annoy the living shit out of me.  I have known far too many Napoleonic miniatures wargamers who argue about button colors...


TGA

[Sigmund]

So did Hittites have pointy-toed shoes or not?

[The Good Assyrian]

So did Hittites have pointy-toed shoes or not?

Fucked if I know!  And I'm an Assyrian...we ate those guys for breakfast.  :pundit:


TGA

[Spike]

Yes, teh Hittities were famous for their pointy toed shoes (the elf ones that curl up at the end), though they used the same design element in things like swords too, so I think they just had a thing for curly points..

And pointy toes are STILL popular in Turkey, well some areas anyway...

[mythusmage]

I'm a dropout. So my knowledge of history comes from self-study, and tends to be eclectic. Being a wargamer back when helped. I do know enough to know that the official records are not always an accurate account of what happened.

[Akrasia]

Wow -- lots of historians here!  That's not too surprising, I suppose, as I can imagine how an interest in history could lead one to be interested in RPGs (and vice versa).

I'm a political philosopher myself (BA in political science from U of Toronto; MPhil in political theory from Oxford; and PhD in philosophy from U of Michigan).  

Currently I teach in the philosophy department at Trinity College, University of Dublin.  

You historians might already know that Trinity was established by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592.  Famous alumni include the philosophers George Berkeley and Edmund Burke, and the writers Jonathan Swift and Samuel Beckett.  As a Protestant institution, Catholic Irish were for many centuries suspicious of Trinity.  Until the mid-1960s, Catholics who attended Trinity could be excommunicated by the Church unless they received special permission to attend.  That's all in the past, though, as today most (80 percent) of the students are Catholic.