historical analysis – American Disasters

May 6, 2014December 16, 2020

Takeaways

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For my last blog post I figured I would save it for the end of the semester to comment on things that I felt either stuck with me or opened my eyes to different approaches on history. I think Cronon was a perfect piece for the end of the semester as Professor Shrout explained to Wells that Cronon gave us an authoritative perspective on historical writing and narrative just as we were filled with months of thoughts and opinions. I’m not sure I’m going to have the same takeaway as Wells did, coming to have a greater appreciation for historical narrative and storytelling, but I did takeaway something I think will give me a different perspective on the last year of my journey as a history major as well as my major thesis coming up next semester.

Cronon’s work and our subsequent class discussion today made me realize that regardless of the sources I use, the historical facts in play, or previous scholarship on the topic, I alone can create my story. In essence, we have all the tools in front of us to shape history in whatever manner to provide us with the message we want to send to our audience. Whether that means picking the starting and stopping points, the type of primary sources, the certain perspective of the subject, the different kinds of voices, or even the moral questions you want to ask or answer; the story you create is entirely up to you. Many of us, I would assume, feel the need that we have to take stories of the past and comment on them now to make our point, however; I think we need to expand our commentary as young historians and realize that we can create new stories that explain the history we want told and ask the questions we want to be answered. I just hope this epiphany is in time to make my mark on history. Also, CT tremendous closure to the course. Swanson, out.

May 5, 2014December 16, 2020

The Inherent Dangers of Narrative

In his piece “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” William Cronon expertly interrogates narrative as a form of storytelling. Cronon suggests that narrative’s most impressive strengths are also its greatest weaknesses. As we saw while reading Johnstown Flood, certain narrative forms have the unique ability to convey history as a “story” (Cronon 1349). McCullough’s narrative sensationalized the history of a small town and an under appreciated disaster memorably, which ultimately enabled me to remember specific facts about the flood than I probably would not have had I learned about it from a traditional textbook. Yet Cronon also warns about the inherent dangers of narrative, asserting that “in the act of separating story from non-story, we wield the most powerful yet dangerous tool of the narrative form” and that “[narrative] inevitably sanctions some voices while silencing others” (1349-1350).

Cronon points out that the differences between Bonnifield’s rendition of the Dust Bowl and Worster’s likely are the result of the inherent shortcomings in the narrative form. Each tells a story, yet they tell their stories from entirely different perspectives and thus arrive at varying outcomes. (Cronon 1348).

In an effort to illustrate the tendency of narrative to ignore sides of each story, Cronon rehashes Frederick Jackson Turner’s history of the West. Cronon suggests that Turner created a narrative that “[made] the Indians the foil for its story of progress…[making] their conquest seem natural, commonsensical, inevitable” (Cronon 1352). Turner’s narrative illustrates the ease with which certain pieces of history are ignored in favor of creating a coherent narrative.

On another note, Betsy points out in her post the strength’s of Cronon’s article when compared to Koppes’s. Koppes’s blatant preference for Worster’s work over Bonnifield undermined the authority of his review. Cronon, on the other hand, regards both writers as “competent” and respectively presents each of their arguements (1348). His objective approach to each author’s argument creates a pleasanter read that appears more informed and believable.

January 29, 2014December 16, 2020

Historiography Persuasion

Let me begin by agreeing with AJ’s comments about reading through Eli’s post. Bringing in the Belk parking spot certainly made me laugh and made Turner’s article seem even more far-fetched, stereotyped, and prejudice. While I shared many of the same initial thoughts that Eli describes, Conon’s historiography almost justified Turner’s paper into making “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY” seem accurate and almost skillfully neglectful. Maybe I have fallen into Cronon’s trap, yet after reading the historiography Turner’s general thesis seems much more accurate, so long as you avoid the problems about democracy, national character, theological problems, and his stereotyping of frontier “types”. (171)

During my initial reading of Turner, I had many of the same feelings that Eli referenced and noted many of the critiques that Cronon brought up. I thought Turner lacked detail, failed to acknowledge many of the underlying factors of western expansion, and his “analytical shortcomings.” (170) Nevertheless, I was slowly persuaded to acknowledge Turner’s entire thesis after I finished Cronon. Regardless by how much historians reject the structure and thesis of Turner’s work, we are still reliant on the work today. As noted throughout Cronon, we acknowledge the article predominantly for the academic ingenuity to understand history through narrative. If one consider Turner’s article as more of a narrative for history as a whole, using the broad theme of the American frontier, than maybe his piece has merit. Regardless of whether Turner though of this piece as a story or strict scholarly writing is insignificant. If Turner was trying to explain why he believed the course of American history was going to take a drastic turn in the years after 1893, than his paper narrates a plausible story behind his reasoning.

As I re-read the last portions of Turner’s article (after reading Cronon who caused me to ignore some of the obvious flaws) the general ideas seemed to make sense. If we ignore some of details, the American frontier has a unique and possibly accurate parallel with the Mediterranean. Maybe, in 1893 when Turner wrote the article, the idea of expansion had been lost. Without the idea of free land and the frontier, maybe Americans felt forced to modernize. Without the possibility of horizontal expansion, was the vertical expansion (urbanization and industrialization) the next logical chapter in American history? Certainly, I do not agree with everything that Turner is saying, but his thesis, at the most basic level, is hard to ignore. As Cronon points out, a logical story is hard to ignore. If we compare the expansion of American history to various country histories and the interaction with American landscape, maybe Turner was right.

My biggest take away from these two reading’s lies in my drastic openness to Turner’s argument. Can a good historiography like Cronon’s change your mind on even the most farfetched ideas? Certainly this will not be true for every article, but I was struck by how logical Cronon’s approach was to an article I had nearly dismissed.

January 15, 2014December 16, 2020

What’s it’s place?

The name of this course first interested me because of its seemingly ambiguous connection to historical thought and traditional historical research. The definition of disaster, the category of disaster and the scholarly research of disaster were all foreign to me and until Bergman’s reading, very unclear in their applications. Bergman spikes my mind when he claims that the study of disaster was carried on by a variety of disciplines, including geography, anthropology, ecology, meteorology, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, history (935). It immediately took me to the beginning of class on Tuesday when we were all introducing ourselves and our interest in the course. Unlike more traditional history classes with possibly more distinct and popular topics and curriculums, this class garnered a much different response. These responses directly reflected Bergman’s overview of the history of this study and the intrigue behind the study of disaster.

These student responses garnered interests from historical perspectives, anthropological perspectives, environmental perspectives, and health and international relief views. The unclear nature of this study and its defined role as a certain discipline, lends itself to so much study and comparison. These differing interests in class represent all the different ways disaster can be interpreted and therefore, studied. Because disaster has no common creed currently, it is relatively up in the air and has the ability to lend its research to many different fields of study. My point is that this class opens up a whole new way of thinking about disaster. Because this field is so multi-dimensional, it can enhance so much research in so many different fields of inquiry. The potential for this field is massive and probably why is it getting so much attention as of late.

However, as a history major, I must explain the interest it stirs in the field of history. Beyond its role as a category of analysis is it’s even more important influence on the study of history, its use as a tool of historical study to enhance conventional historiographies and shine a fresh light on traditional topics (940). This field could have an enormous effect on new historical scholarship. This new angle of research will allow historians to go and view topics that have been somewhat exhausted and write about it from a new perspective. History is all about how you view it and perspective, this new category allows historians to delve into a very different and unique subsidiary viewpoint. It could even continue into a new sub-category is history which has yet to be named. Atlantic history or disaster history have been mentioned and, in my opinion, deserve some serious attention and seem like pretty cool inquires of new study.

January 14, 2014December 16, 2020

Defining disasters and their study: a topic of multidisciplinary interest

In this week’s readings, both Bergman and Hewitt ponder the characteristics of disasters: how are they defined? What are their prominent elements? What are their implications? How do they fall within the delineations of academic inquiry?

I found Hewitt’s analysis succinct and focused, and therefore more useful. Perhaps most usefully, Hewitt distinguishes between the routine–highway, smoking, lifestyle related deaths–and the more unexpected ‘extreme events’ (Hewitt 5). These fall into the major categories of natural, technological, and war-related disasters. He also suggests some important characteristics of disasters such as their concentrated death and injury; their wont to catch individuals or societies unaware, and perhaps represent a new, previously unknown, threat; and their natural tendency to overwhelm previously functional societal and governmental systems.

Bergman’s work, more so than Hewitt’s, is a historiographical analysis. Analyzing, or at least mentioning, a wide variety of historiography on disasters, Bergman asserts clearly that disasters are necessarily social and human. Furthermore, he argues that those analyses which separate the human from the exogenous cause of the disaster are incomplete. Indeed, I believe this to be true: in their history of the disasters and upheaval in reformation Europe, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell argue the illogic of trying to find every early modern disease’s contemporary counterpart. Convincingly, they write that the disease is no more the bacterium or virus that causes it than it is the experience of the disease itself. For example, syphilis in 2014–many years after penicillin–bears little resemblance, in terms of experience, to syphilis in 1500. Likewise with disasters: the greatest earthquake or flood is no disaster without the human experience, regardless of its other effects.

Compellingly, one might argue that this definition is more inclusive than it might seem at first. Human compassion may include many disasters which cost no human lives, directly or otherwise: the Exxon-Valdez spill comes to mind.

Eventually, it seems the definition of a disaster will lack some specificity, such that it may include the wide variety of events which the humans who experience them deem disasters. I believe that to be acceptable: historians (and geographers) can continue their study of those events that they, or others, deemed disasters in their own experience.