oosegueda – Historical Thinking

Historical Event

November 29, 2016November 29, 2016oosegueda

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Today i went to Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. I went to checkout all the exhibits quickly since i had never been to Bowers before. I started with the Chinese Exhibits starting from the neolithic age. There were robes, jade pottery, weapons from the warring periods and even pictures of the terracotta warriors. I moved to the pacific islands exhibit full of interesting necklaces made of bones and giant masks used in ceremonies. The last exhibit i visited was the look into the first Californians and the history of the California missions, that really interested me since i am taking a class in California History. Some of the stuff i could not believe were actually made so long ago. Some of the Chinese robes looked like something on a movie set not something made and worn by people living thousands of years before I was born. On some of the war shields from New Guinea, I caught myself looking for any damage on them maybe where an arrow would have hit the shield. I even thought about using a postcard in the Early California exhibit as a primary source for a paper of mine. Before heading into the museum i thought i was gonna spend 45 min tops looking at everything. By the time i was leaving i ended up spending 3 hours in the museum looking at every exhibit and reading everything around the artifacts and the art. I was even looking into the groups that donated some of the artifacts. It was a very interesting experience.

Perceptions of Women

November 15, 2016oosegueda

Chapter Four of Typhoid Mary was very interesting. It mostly dealt with the perceptions and prejudices of Mary Mallon by George Soper. He constantly degrades her calling her unlady like and pointing out her irish ancestry as a negative thing. This chapter seems to focus on the case of Typhoid Mary through the lens of Gender History. The chapter points out the social expectations and perceptions of Women at the time. It highlights how women, expected to cook, were looked at as the most dangerous in the spread of typhoid. Male typhoid carriers were given more freedom and received less punishment even if they had killed more people by spreading typhoid. An interesting thought is the when describing the men with typhoid there was no mention of class or race, or creed. When speaking on Mary Mallon, her masculinity, her irishness, and her working class background came up several times. It offers insight into what people at the time not only thought of gender, and class.

heaven01 points out how they treated Mary, “They basically banned her from walking the streets, interacting with people and they tried to stop her from making a living off of cooking because she was too dangerous to be around.” While they enforced this on Mary, They did not enforce it on men with the same condition. Most of the time letting them free to do what they liked without a slap on the wrist or without any punishment at all.

A View into American Culture through the Titanic

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016oosegueda

Steven Biel suggests in his article, “Unkown and Unsung” that the sinking of the Titanic and the stories going around about the disaster reflect the thought of the American people. He talks about a “myth” about the rich white men aboard the Titanic saved the women and children. He says that, “Repeated celebrations of the chivalry and Christian sacrifice embodied in this act reinforced conservatives views of gender and class relations in which both women and workers were best served by accepting the authority and protection of paternalistic elites.” Conservatives used this disaster against women suffragists, to show how women depend on men. I think its interesting how Biel shows that people during the Progressive era, a time of change, use the Titanic to prove how they are right. People look at the same event, and use it to push their own agenda. That can be seen with the both suffragists and also with those against it. This is true not only during this time in America, but can also be seen now in the present. With the elections coming up, politicians sometimes use the same facts to argue their point. We can see it in the different news channels that report on the same world events, but come up with totally opposite conclusions. Joshua kinda comes to the same conclusion, ” It seems like a recurring theme in this course that a disaster can be manipulated in order to support an argument of one side.”

Marx’s Communism

October 18, 2016oosegueda

The ideas that stem from the “Communist Manifesto” have been used as the basis of how the Communists in countries such as the Soviet Union in the past, China and Cuba organized their governments. Even though it is the basis i do not think it has been successfully implemented in any of these countries. Karl Marx’s views that because of social classes there will always be a struggle between them, and that the only way to fix this is Communism, to do away with the social classes, does have some logic to it. Countries have bent the ideas of Communism and the whole thing ends up jsut not working. In the case of the Soviet Union and Cuba , these supposed Communist countries are in fact distorted into dictatorships. I do not think if Karl Marx looked into the future and saw what had become of Communism, he would not have liked it. It has been implement many times in different areas in the world and it has not been successful for the most part. This leads me to believe that it will never work and that it is an outdated way of thinking, or it has been given a real chance.

ngojoseph, seems to have come up with a similar conclusion. He says how Communism is a product of its time. I agree to a point because of the thinking back then that did not take into consideration many factors that could and that did change Marx’s Communism into something unrecognizable.

Larsen in Isaac’s head

September 25, 2016oosegueda

Isaac’s Storm by Erick Larson is a very interesting read. Its an account of true events and uses dates, facts and quotes other works like you would see in books like a history book in any other class, but it reads like a story that the author made up. It’s a bit difficult to get into at first but once i got into it it was very entertaining. Larson’s writing style makes you think you are reading a fiction novel and gets you really into the characters and that is why Larson wrote it the way he did. While writing in this style does make it more entertaining, it sometimes weirdly crosses the line of fiction and non-fiction. While this quote is not really important to the story it shows how Larson makes a claim that he might not actually know for sure happened. “Isaac received a cavalry saber as part of hi official kit. He loved its heft, and its cold hard lines, and how it evoked the stories he had heard men tell of Pickett’s Charge”(Larson 34). How does the author know for sure that thought came in to Isaac’s head in that manner. A lot of my classmates reference how writing style does a better job of letting the reader kinda step into the shoes of the people that went through the destruction of the Galveston hurricane. I do agree and would like to see more examples of this type of writing, even with the occasional step into fiction.

History of Historiography

September 18, 2016oosegueda

While reading From Herodotus to H-net by Jeremy D. Popkin, I realized how far historical writing goes back. When i think of people in the past, and their accounts of significant events in time, i almost do not trust what they are writing. I have this idea that these people were too primitive in their thinking because they believed in gods and goddesses, that they mixed fact and fiction, because they did not know any better. I see now that their were historians in the past that analysed and asked questions about events of their time. One example that Popkin uses is the historian, Ibn Khaldur. He like us asked questions regarding historiography. He questions, “partisanship toward a creed or opinion, ‘over-confidence in one’s sources, a failure to understand a sources true meaning…” (Popkin 42). These are some of the metrics historians today use to figure out primary sources and what they have to offer. In @daisysolorio post she says, “Popkin mentions that both Herodotus and Thucydides are important to modern history because without them the format of history would have been very different”. She mentions another example of historians of the past developing what we call historiography. Without historians of the past like Ibn Khaldur, and both Herodotus and Thucydides we would not have the same understanding of history that we do today. The story of how historical writing developed into what we know today is very interesting. From Europe to Asia and all throughout time historians would ask the same questions historians of modern times would ask.

Chicago vs. nature

September 13, 2016oosegueda

I find it interesting how the railroads had a very important role in the growth of Chicago. From the invention of time zones, to the making Chicago a huge center of trade and connecting the west to the people of the east. Cronen mentions in Nature’s Metropolis, “The boosters spoke much about ‘natural advantages.’ Resources, waterways, and climate zones loom so large in their writings that one can almost forget that people have something to do with the building of cities.”(Cronen 55). This got me thinking about the focus question, and how these boosters knew and understood that this could be a very important location for the future and so they used what the cite offered for their advantage. When there was a disadvantage the people warped the landscape to fit their own needs, like the canals. Cronen makes a point saying “…but there can be no question that the railroads acted as a powerful force upon nature…” (Cronen 93). the more civilization grew the less “nature” there was, as if nature was being swallowed up to support the city. In response to the post by armando35, “This sort of made me laugh, not because it was funny that thousands of dollars were wasted to build the harbor but because it seemed as if nature was trying to stop them from buidling the harbor,…”(armando35). While i can see the point i saw it more as the determination the people of Chicago had in order make the city successful. Even if there was a disadvantage, like the building of the harbor, they were going to be successful either by building the canals and the railroads. I do agree with the nature vs. urban comment though.

Why study History?

September 6, 2016oosegueda

I like how Popkin, in his book From Herodotus to H-net, goes right in to the question of why study history. I got into it in the same way that he described it, we start to be interested by it through text books and documentaries that spew out exciting dates and information that hook us into history. This initial thinking about history is what is taught early in school that most people gloss over the true and real reasons why history is important. Popkin describes historiography as,”a ‘narrative about narratives’ whose subject matter is other works of history, rather than than historical events themselves”(Popkin 5). Thinking about history in this way is what moves the study of history forward and provides us with more answers than what dates can do. I like the little comment that Popkin makes about a professor wanting to get into a fist fight with a student over a historiographical dispute they had. Arguing about different approaches and ideas concerning the same event may not be the reason why history has become an interest in my life but it will grow and fuel my interest in the more important questions and aspects of history. In the blog post of ngojoseph, he comments, “Although it is too early to say that I already hate history, it does make me think about why I chose to switch to history in the first place “. I to echo this same question in my head. While i dont hate history either, Popkin has opened my eyes to the question if i am committed to this field of study, and if i am, am i ready to take that “right if passage” that is historiography.

Looking at disasters in History

August 30, 2016oosegueda

While reading this weeks articles i found it interesting how both Jonathan Bergman’s article “Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” and Biel’s introduction in American Disasters. Both ask the question of how to define a disaster and how it has an affect on the way we look at history.Whether you think a disaster is a “natural” occurrence or not, looking and analyzing the way people react or try to prevent a disaster helps us understand what big change either social or physical occurred in the area, and its impact on history. Biel suggests that “Disasters are the antithesis of everyday life…catastrophic disturbances of routine actually tell us a great deal about the ‘normal’ workings of culture, society, and politics”(Biel 5). This relates to our class discussion about writings in history and how we should look at how things change over time and how it interrupts continuity. Bergman reinforces this notion in his article saying, “…disaster offers a unique lens with which to examine history”(Bergman). I think both authors are trying to say that whatever kind a disaster is being talked about, looking into either the reactions of the people that lived through it or even looking at the aftermath to the disaster helps us analyze and better grasp the times of the event. There is a cause and effect to everything and looking at this with both the perceptions of the people that lived through said disaster and people’s opinions of the event now help us view history in a better light.

Historical Thinking – Fall 2016

Author: oosegueda