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The Millennium in History:
Memories of the Way We Are

In 1960 at Terman Junior High in Palo Alto, California, I had Jean White for seventh grade history, which provides an overview of Western Civilization. On the first day of class, Miss White drew the simplest of maps, a semi-circle, on the black board. She pronounced it, her voice a drum roll, to be the fertile crescent. Miss White said that nearly everything important began on this spread of land. As the weeks went on, the curved line on the board was filled in with wonderful names like Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Hammurabi, Nebuchadnezzar, and Sumeria. Then we trekked to Greece. By 1066, we were far north. Studying what King John signed Km) in 1215 was nearly as breath-stopping as grieving Socrates' early death had been a few months prior. And so, 1960 became one of those unforgettable yearsÑthe year we all loved history.

Sitting in Lawrence Bryant's office the other day reminded me of being in Miss White's class. Bryant, Department of History chair, was telling me about the Friends of History Lecture Series he has sculpted for 1999-00, "The Millennium and the Historians' Understanding of Culture and Society."

Bryant has been at Chico State for twelve years. He was trained as an intellectual and cultural historian and specializes in early modern European and Renaissance history. He has published on French history in the Renaissance, has had fellowships at Harvard and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and received a number of grants for private and public research. In 1993, as part of the French Historical Society, he brought 300 scholars from around the world to a conference on the Chico State campus.

"In these series, we want to illustrate how historians are thinking," Bryant explained. "We want to present current views, scholarship, and timely topics to the community, both on campus and off." Then Bryant told meÑwith Miss Whitian conviction -- "Historians are not quaint antiquarians who know the facts. On the contrary: History is never fixed. It is in constant flux. The past itself doesn't exist, but rather the memory of the past, of which history is the most trustworthy guardian. Therefore, history helps us understand all the diversity and conflict in the present world. Historians are nothing less than the guardians of the future." Whew. I was converted -- again.

So, I asked, "what's all the excitement about the millennium?" Bryant clarified that beyond Y2K's being another excuse for a media event, it really does have significance for those of us who are products of Western culture.

"It's human habit," he said, "to measure things. Measures suggest conclusion. We in the Western world measure by the Christian calendar. The zeroes in any number like 2000 mark an end -- and a beginning -- something quite magical.

"Some cultures, Buddhist culture, for example, don't look to an apocalyptic end. But in the West, approaching God is in time. Things happen in time. The millennium marks either the last judgment or the beginning of a golden age. "Furthermore, Western culture especially loves dramatic change. A new world came about in Christ's time, in the Renaissance, with each revolution. While some cultures value continuity and articulate morality based on tradition and a given order, it is deeply engrained in the West to embrace change." This year's series on various aspects of the millennium through historians' eyes promises to be particularly exciting:

 
October 7
Cliff Minor, "Decadence, Decline, and Fall: Rome, a Case Study"

November 4
Kate Transchel, "Hard Currency: Russia Faces the Millennium"

February 17
Jeffrey Livingston, "Triumph, Decline, and the Rapture: America at the Millennium"

March 12
Donald Heinz, "Thomas Muentzer: Millennianist, Protestant, Revolutionary, Marxist Hero"

April 20
Hassan Sisay, "The Effects of the Slave Trade on Africa and African Americans on the Eve of the 21st Century"

 
Each lecture, to be held in the Rowland-Taylor Recital Hall, PAC 134 at 7:00 p.m., will be followed by a question-and-answer period and then a reception. A reading list will be distributed at the lecture, and, on the following Monday during the noon hour, the lecturer will coordinate an informal discussion open to the public in the new Humanities Center, Trinity 126. Call the Department of History, 898-5366, for more information.

"Memory is the theme of next year's Friends of History Lecture Series, which Bryant is already planning. "Memories," he said, "are determined by our existential experiences. We create the memories of the past."

My own memories -- now forty years old -- of historian Jean White are kept alive because of her passion for teaching, because she fashioned an intense "existential experience" out of several thousand years of Western culture for her group of inchoate students. The role of historians, as professional caretakers of our collective memory is crucial to our informed embarking upon the next millennium. Find out for yourself at the Friends of History Lecture Series beginning this October. -- Thomasin Saxe, College of Humanities and Fine Arts