In this conversation with Rachel Fulton Brown, we undertake a wide-ranging conversation about history and liberal learning, ranging from Herodotus, Augustine, and Martianus Capella to McLuhan and MacIntyre with many stops in between. Among the questions we consider: How does the Christian approach to liberal learning—and history within it—stand both at odds and in parallel with the ancient understanding? How is history always opposed to abstraction? And what are the frames that can guide (or derail) the writing of professional history and our personal histories?

Links of Potential Interest

Brown's U. Chicago Website

Rachel Fulton Brown, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200

Rachel Fulton Brown, History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person

Rachel Fulton Brown, Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought

Rachel Fulton Brown at First Things

Fencing Bear at Prayer and here

"The Forge of Tolkein" (Lectures)

Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession

Marshall McLuhan, The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time