Faculty Publications

Jesse Spohnholz’s The Convent of Wesel: The Event That Never Was and the Invention of Tradition and other publications

Dr. Jesse Spohnholz’s new book, The Convent of Wesel: The Event That Never Was and the Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2017), centers on a mystery that has perplexed historians for centuries. Purportedly, the Convent of Wesel was a clandestine assembly of Protestant leaders in 1568 that helped establish the foundation for Reformed churches in the Dutch Republic and northwest Germany. Spohnholz shows it was a myth perpetuated by historians and record keepers since the 1600s. Appropriately then, his book offers not just a history of the Reformation but a reflection on the nature of historical inquiry itself. The Convent of Wesel begins by offering a detailed microhistory that solves the mystery, and then traces knowledge about this document over four and a half centuries through historical writing, archiving and centenary commemorations to show how historians and archivists created and shaped the mystery.

The distinguished historian Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks calls the book, “as gripping as any murder mystery” and adds that “In our era of fake news and fabricated traditions, The Convent of Wesel provides both a cautionary tale and a defense of the practice of history.” Another prominent historian, Mary Lindamann, has called the book “a must read for all historians and not just for those interested in the Reformation or religious history.”

About the same time, Spohnholz’s coedited collection, Archeologies of Confession: Writing the German Reformation, 1517–2017 appeared, just in time for the 500-year-anniversary of the German Reformation. The book carefully reconstructs the politics of remembering and forgetting elements of the Reformation over centuries, and offers ways of reconstructing the fascinating and often surprising histories of plurality that have otherwise been lost or obscured. The book appeared in the Berghahn Books’ Spektrum series, published under the auspices of the German Studies Association.

In the past year, articles by Spohnholz appeared in the scholarly journals Church History and  The Bulletin of the German Historical Institute on the topics of the memory of the Reformation and religious toleration during Europe’s Age of Religious Wars.

Charles Weller edits the 21st-Century Narratives of World History: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

In late 2017, Dr. Charles Weller announced the release of his latest work, 21st-Century Narratives of World History: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Find out more about this well-received collection of historical research and dialogue. Included below is an “about” excerpt from the publishing company.

“This book makes a unique and timely contribution to world/global historical studies and related fields. It places essential world historical frameworks by top scholars in the field today in clear, direct relation to and conversation with one other, offering them opportunity to enrich, elucidate and, at times, challenge one another. It thereby aims to: (1) offer world historians opportunity to critically reflect upon and refine their essential interpretational frameworks, (2) facilitate more effective and nuanced teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom, (3) provide accessible world historical contexts for specialized areas of historical as well as other fields of research in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, and (4) promote comparative historiographical critique which (a) helps identify continuing research questions for the field of world history in particular, as well as (b) further global peace and dialogue in relation to varying views of our ever-increasingly interconnected, interdependent, multicultural, and globalized world and its shared though diverse and sometimes contested history.”