Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
When I previously would think about historiography, I would imagine a group of sunlight-deprived historians debating eagerly about the most boring topics ever known to mankind. Yes, I always loved history, but I was more enamored by the story-like quality than the analysis of it. However, after reading the preface and first chapter of From Herodotu to H-Net: The Study of Historiography by Jeremy D. Popkin, I have the slight understanding that I was largely mistaken about my preconceived notions about historiography. Popkin goes straight in to the definition of historiography and the necessity of this study to understand the past deeper and more insightfully. He also says that historiography challenged “historians to look at the past from new angles” because “historiographical disagreements help keep the discipline alive” (Popkin 8). This was probably the most eye-opening sentence for me in this chapter. History isn’t dead. Yes, it may be a study of the events of the past, but these events are studied in the context of the present. The state of the present is constantly changing, with new perspectives, angles, biases to analyze past events. These ever-changes present times also allows historians to present their work in a way that is more readily available to the public. Traditionally, historical reasearch was published in books and scholarly articles, modes that the average person wouldn’t be able to understand. However, nowadays historical research is being presented in “museum exibitions, films, websites, historical theme parks, and even historically based video games” (Popkin 11). The reason I want to be a history teacher is to present history to students in a way that is engaging and fun. It would disappoint me so much whenever my peers would complain that history is “useless” and “boring”. History is so relevant and useful to the way humans live now, and “good history is interesting” (Popkin 18).