Wonders & Marvels began humbly as a website related to an undergraduate course on the “History of Medicine: From Aristotle to the Enlightment,” taught by Holly Tucker in fall 2008 at Vanderbilt University. Originally hosted on Blogger, the website was a place where Holly and the students could post links and articles of shared interest. Students created original articles based on their research and final presentations. You can read some of that amazing work here.
And then suddenly and with little warning, it all morphed into something much bigger and wonderfully unexpected…
First other professors started coming by and offering up their insights on the past. They were followed by equally talented writers of historical fiction. It soon became too much work for one person to handle.
Just when Prof. Tucker was ready to throw in the towel and return to a solitary non-technological life in the Ivory Tower, help arrived in the form of student interns, web designers and, beginning in 2014, a Managing Editor.
Wonders & Marvels is now a place for specialists and non-specialists to revel in the stories of the past. It also offers learning opportunities for interested Vanderbilt students to work with Professor Tucker on building the site. Student interns have a chance to interact regularly with scholars and other experienced authors, and even write a few posts of their own.
Wonders & Marvels is proof of the enduring links that exist between teaching and research, readers and writers, past and present. We hope you will enjoy this site as much as we do!