Author: aaronfelix10

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I feel like this reading basically justifies the reason why we have been studying disasters this semester. Bergman explains to us how disasters have become relevant in the field of history, once being thought as uncontrollable acts of nature but now linked to human behaviors and being relevant to certain themes come up in history such as progressivism, sensationalism, and spirituality. Justinrod717 describes the Biel’s book American Disasters as a compilation of works that describe and give theories based on and around numerous disasters throughout U.S. history. Disasters are essential because they offer unique opportunities to apply old theories to something new in order bring something different fresh out of traditional topics, especially in the topic of historiography.

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In this reading Cronon attempts to argue how and why there are different arguments regarding the dust bowl in the United States. First type of narrative that Cronon writes about is the one of settlers making the land into their own during the initial settlement and how the dust bowl was the test of their faith, resolve, and character. In this type of narrative it tends to frame it as humans being resourceful and showing ingenuity in being able to make best of the situation they were in; they were dealing with a natural disaster. The other narrative is one that focuses on who was at fault for making the dust bowl as severe as it was with the blame shifting to the farmers for overworking the land. According to sanchezron13 it was more of man made disaster and like Cronon he also points to the capitalist system of boom and bust as another factor. However is Cronon is referencing another scholar’s argument thats turn capitalism into a force of nature rather than an economic system. But what Cronon wishes to find out is why exactly these arguments are being made in the first and why they chose the framing that they did, which I believe is the one of the most important elements of historiography.

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In “Scaling the Dust Bowl” we really get to see what digital history is exactly. Through the use of GIS the author is able to illustrate his argument in a much more effective away. According to gparker77 digital history gives historians new ways to interpret and explore historical happenings through the data analysis. I assume that the author was able to access all the data of dust storms, crop land, and drought prone areas but he was able to use GIS, which is a new technology used by geographers, to add a new dimension and reinforce his argument. Now the article basic argument is that the dust bowl was not this unique event that has been immortalized in history and what we thought we knew about it has been dramatized. Through the maps the author provides us we are able to see that plowing for crops and the strength of dust storms didn’t actually have as much of a correlation as expected. The author does still however use more traditional methods with the use of primary and secondary sources to reinforce is his argument.

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The Great Depression was one of the most traumatizing periods in American history but how does historical gender theory manage to join in on the conversation. Gravity21 makes mention of the three different theoretical positions and I believe the one that is applicable to Kozol’s article is would be the one pertaining to the establishment and explanation of patriarchal societal structure and also object-relation theory referring to the photographs to support her argument. Through her application of gender theory to the Great Depression she makes the point that many of the public policies passed during the  this time were passed to maintain the patriarchal family structure and keeping the idea of the American nuclear family alive. She brings up radical literature from the time such as the Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to make the point of women taking up different positions of leadership within families because of the demasculinization of men due to their inability to be the breadwinner of the family. Kozol also make mention of the intent of the government’s legislation by referencing labor laws that discriminated against married women(pg 10). Kozol brings new interpretation to the many of the pictures that were published by the RA/FSA as far as their role in perpetuating the image of women in the home and how that role that they have as the emotional, nurturing  pillar of the family. The Great Depression did challenge the traditional gender roles of  America but they would be further challenged in the next decade through the United States’ involvement in World War II.

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Historical theory is quickly becoming more interesting as I learn more about its applications and this most recent article explains to the reader how the word “gender” can different functions when using in to explain historical theories and analysis and certain events. The word gender when it comes to theory is usually synonymous with the word women when comes to its application to theory and gender studies. But can also be used to understand historical events under a different lens such as the way chriscobar referenced talked about how his ideas of chivalry might have been harmful to the women’s suffrage movement and how it was an interesting connection. Another connection that fascinated me personally was the connection of  marxist and  feminist theory and its discussion  of sexual and well as socio-economic roles of women in the contexts of production and reproduction. The connection seemed especially interesting because it seems to be in contradiction of Marx’s own theory of class being the only factor starting social movements.

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I figured from the name of the class that we were going to focus on thinking about history in this class, not just a competition over who can regurgitate the most information, but it didn’t hit as to what the class was meant to teach you until cluna3’s class presentation on the Last Samurai and Jeremy Popkin’s Herotodus to H-net reading. For me the purpose of this class has been to make us start thinking like historians through the analysis of multiple articles and change the way we look at history to take in mind different perspectives which was the purpose of why we did class presentations. For the blog posts, as far as I’ve seen have been successful in teaching us in how reference each other’s work the same way historians do to legitimize our arguments.

The presentation by peterrossi1 mentions the idea of different perspectives to historical events and why their aren’t certain accounts for historical events to get the account from a new source that was never thought of before like how he mentions the lack of representation of those who were actually in the battle. This idea of challenging sources looking from a different angle comes back to the purpose of the class. Also rebekahbenninger1’s blog on the Tempest Around Isaac’s Storm mentions author intent and how Isaac’s Storm doesn’t stand firm when it comes to historical accuracy. This brings up fact stretching to suit the narrative of the story and whether this can be considered good history from a research stand point. This issue of inaccuracy is again brought up by zhedrick with his blog post about the inconsistancies of Larson’s work in regard to stick true to the facts and embelishing others and there is evidence of this within the notes of the book itself. Zhedrick’s other blog on the Faith and Doubt article talks about the importance of having different accounts of different historical happenings to understand themes, circumstance, culture and societies of the time period in general and how this can aid in coming up with an argument that you may want to push in a paper you’re writing.

 

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Through the many accounts of the residents of Galveston that appear during the portion of the book in which the storm is happening, we the readers get some context and see that they now have the grasp of the reality that death is a possibility for some of them. The account of Louis Hopkins, who was a child at the time, expresses how a child might have processed all of the things going on around, from the sadness she felt about the flooding of her mother’s garden  to her mother’s frantic scramble to get everyone and everything of value to the 2nd floor of the house. We also get another account of Louisa Rollfing who we had met  earlier in the book. She too faced the reality that this storm was now a danger to her family hastily grabbing things all over the house. Through this we see the more a of fearful human perspective of the victims of the storm because personal and Larson is trying to add emotional conflict and empathize with these mothers and children. zhedrick states in his post “Leave Isaac Alone” that the weather bureau was at fault for the massive loss of life that could have been completely avoidable and that Isaac’s and the rest of the residents of Galveston were going to pay a hefty price for putting their confidence in the wrong people some of them with their children, some of them with their lives.

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I decided to watch rewatch the film The Imitation Game since i saw that it had recently been added to netflix. I would say for the most part that the film stays true to the actual historical facts but I’m sure Hollywood might have taken some liberties with the source material. One of my favorite thing about learning history is how we can look past at a certain point in history and compare to other parts of history or even the present day and we can look at how much progress and regress we’ve made as a society since then. In the film we see that Alan Turing, the man who is responsible for the invention of the modern computer, breaks the Enigma Code which was a cryptographic code used by the German military in world war 2 to conceal their radio messages. Turing, through the use of a computer he built was able to solve the Enigma Code which allowed the British military and later the allies to intercept the German radio messages. Statistically speaking, the breaking of this code shortened the war by 2 years. However, one of the subplots of the film which takes place years later is on Alan Turing and his homosexuality. Until 1967 it was considered illegal to be gay in the United Kingdom and he was convicted on a charge of gross indecency and received hormonal treatment and later committed suicide because of the affects of his treatment. To look back at this it almost makes you shudder at how much progress we’ve made as a society and i feel like this idea of looking back at history to see how far we’ve come can be applied to any movie that’s a period piece, novel, or textbook.