Author: gparker77

Historical Thinking is not about History

May 10, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

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In Sam Wineburg’s article, “Why Historical Thinking is not about History” he dives into the meaning and practices of the field of History. He says that history and Historical thinking provide a basis where people can question the credibility of pieces about history and their opinions. It allows students to question articles in a way that can allow them to decide for their own if the article is credible or not and gives them better evidence for their claims or studies. In a world where students primarily get their research from online it helps students sift through the plethora of articles and ideas to find credible and factually correct pieces to learn from and use in their own papers. Wineburg’s main point is that the field of History applies to more than the narrative history and finding out what had happened in the past, and more on the examining of credible sources and Authors. For example, Wineburg talks about the time where young students were given different sources on the Holocaust with different views on the event. The students, not being trained in the field and not knowing how to look past the written material and look at the person writing it or what is actual fact, took the side of the Holocaust Deniers. He explains it wasn’t the students fault for believing this opinion of the story but blamed the teachers for not teaching the students how to dissect this piece of work.

Wineburg’s idea is practiced a lot in the articles we read throughout the semester. A good example would be Cronin’s “A Place for Stories: Nature, History and Narrative” because in this article he dissects two different authors articles are on the same subject but come to different conclusions. As mentioned by juanrosasmp “…he mentioned how two authors, Bonnefield and Worster, that were researching the same subject using the same sources had completely different conclusions.” The facts that he presents both authors sides of the argument shows Cronin’s process of determening the credibility of the two authors.

Digital History Debates

April 17, 2017 / gparker77 / 2 Comments

In Cameron Blevins’ Digital History Perpetual Future Tense article he starts off with the introduction and recent advancements of what is Digital History. He talks about how historians are given a new way of examining things through and explore. The field offers a large opening to new studies and making new ways of collecting data. The problem with Digital History integrating into mainstream Academic History is the platform of their based on. Most Academic History is based around making arguments in written works where as Digital History has moved towards the ability to digitize and centralize parts of history to make interpretations about historical events and people. Blevins then goes into the reasons that digital history created a gap from the academic side of history and how they can fix it. He suggests having the digital historians focus more on arguments because it is a fundamental for the field. Instead of focusing on the Quantitative History, which in itself had a lot of problems that helped separate digital history from the rest of the field, it needs to come back to the roots of historical thinking and methods.

The analysis of the Digital History field by Blevins’ reminds me of the way Joan Scott analyzes Gender as a Historical Theory in her article “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” As jessicabode explains in her blog post on the article, Gender can be closely related to Marxism as a theory and often intertwine. Just like Digital History and Public History are related, with Digital history using Public history as a type of template for its studies and advancement.

Gender in the Feilds

April 12, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

In Kozol’s article, Madonnas of the field, she covers Gender and its different problems during the Dust bowl. She makes a great argument about the way Photographs can skew and change the perspective on the person or place in the photo for the purpose of propaganda. In this case Photographs of women and families who lived on farms were taken to show case the well being of these people who were greatly affected during the Dust bowl and Great Depression in order to show how social programs were helping these people out. The Resettlement Administration (RA) and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) turned these photos into a propaganda machine to sell the idea of reform to the American farmers. These people were photographed in a way to make their current situations seem better than they may actually have been. Photographing women to show their maternal side and being able to care for their baby showed to the rest of America that these programs were working. By skewing and showing only one side to the story with the photos, it pictured these women living on farms as being in a family financially stable enough to take care of the family instead of finding work which was most of the case. These photos limited the women’s model to being a strictly maternal figure and leaving out a lot of other feminist qualities.
This applies to the theme of Gender theory in History because of its ability to skew gender identity and its ability to construct certain expectations and norms about women and families of the time. This relates to what cluna3 had wrote about when discussing Joan Scott’s article about Gender and how the whole study of Gender in History is about finding the constructs placed upon people due to their sex and why there is a inequality when it comes to women being portrayed in the public’s eye. Here we see just that happening with the medium of photography to portray the women who were struggling in the dust bowl to be able to sell an idea of revival.

Mid Semester Reflection

March 15, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

Looking back on the posts that our class has done on the various disasters it is very interesting to see the different styles we write in and also the various themes we all pick out of the readings. Many of us started off using a one paragraph style post such as JOHNKANE‘s post, but then we started to break down the posts into a two or more paragraph style like JUANROSASMP‘s post. The class is getting good at spotting themes in the readings, Whether it is Racism like in cluna3‘s post, a missunderstanding like in JESSICABODE‘s post, or Prejudice towards Immigrants like in PETERROSSI1‘s post, the class had something to say about it and had found why that existed in each case. You can also see the development the class has gone through in regards to the content included in each post. The posts as a whole all slowly started to include more in depth insight to the readings and also in how we dissect each reading to make connections to others blog posts. While looking at other’s posts, I notice that mine also fall in the same pattern with starting off unorganized and odd, but then with help and discussion they started to pull together. I do wish I could have added more insight and theory based material into my earlier posts. Overall I think the development of the classes has been very good and has shown the progress from post to post towards being able to break down each readings to a simple paragraph each week.

Historical Presentation – The Eighties

March 14, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

For my historical event i chose to watch a documentary series on Netflix called “The Eighties” by CNN. The series covers a wide variety of important events and topics that are central to the decade’s history. As a history student i got to look at this documentary series from a different angle than i could have before. I really took note of the people they brought in for their perspective on the event or the topic, such a the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the AIDS epidemic. For the most part the documentary had stayed true to the events and displayed them as non biased. Where my history student experience came into play was when they started to give their own opinions into the subject and talk about how great or how terrible some events were. Between Tom Hanks, An Actor, and Tim Naftali, the former Nixon Library Director, there were countless other people who lived through the decade and tell their stories of what they remember. Being a history student I researched the people who had been on the show to see their political stand point or personal associasion with the event or person to see how and why they would respond he way they did. I let me understand why they would present it that way and show me how i could look at the event or person in a different way to fully understand it. Being a History student has really opened up my eyes on how to research and understand how people interperet things in history and in everyday life.

The Rebuilding of Galveston

March 13, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

In Patricia Bellis Bixel’s “It Must Be Made Safe” she gives a good insight into the aftermath and rebuilding of Galveston after the storm of 1900. In the wake of the storm leaders of the city had thought that Galveston’s future was all but over, considering the city was on an island, in a path that storms could come through like they did just months before and ruin the city again after rebuilding. They had worried there would be no investment into the city after the storm and did their best to try and reinforce the city and prevent another catastrophe. Many plans of protecting the city had been submitted to the state legislature for funding but they weren’t persuaded enough that these plans would save the city from another storm. Finally with the help of some engineers, one named James B. Eads, they got a plan together that could help limit flooding and destruction, a group was assembled called the Deep Water Committee to see if the deepening of the Galveston channel would help save Galveston in future storms. Although it didn’t go as planned and backing from legislature did not come through, it was the first attempt at finding a solution towards saving Galveston from floods and bringing in investors to spend money on rebuilding a safe city. Finally with the help of civil engineers and U.S. Army Corps engineers, and the selling of bonds to fund some of the proposed seawall, financing was secured. We have multiple sources saying that a seawall was an early idea in trying to protect the city. It is even talked about in other books like Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson, JUSTINROD717 had posted that ” Soon the town was being rebuilt, along with added defenses against future storms including a seawall and the rising of Galveston itself up a predetermined amount of feet.” As well as a seawall, a grade raising of the city’s height above sea level was implemented.

Bixel’s account of the plans that failed and then the plans that were finally agreed upon is an interesting way of showing us the process towards Galveston’s revival as a potentially booming city. Her use of Engineering records and personal accounts gives a good and convincing background to her story. Overall this was a good piece on the aftermath and revival of the Storm that wrecked such a up and coming town and had trouble regaining the financial interest it once had.

Offman is Skeptical

March 8, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

Craig Offman, in his article “A Tempest around Isaac’s Storm”, has a few words to say about the accuracy and depiction of Isaac Cline and the Galveston storm of 1900 in the book Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson. Offman describes how Larson while writing the book must have been interpreting the sources he used to better his argument and make his book a little more dramatic. One example is the dramatic falling apart of the Cline brothers. Larson has read both memoirs of the brothers and concluded that they had not talked at all after the storm in Galveston. Offman thinks otherwise as he feels that the memoirs don’t provide concrete evidence that this falling out occurred. Offman also says that he thinks Larson selectively pulled his sources or had missed a period article shortly after the storm that had the brothers talking fondly of each other. With a few facts being questioned on solid terms it makes you wonder if other facts that he stated like the quote REBEKAHBENNINGER1 sited, “Isaac had later felt a sense of guilt for not having thought the storm would be so severe,” Who knows how Isaac really felt and if he how he came to that conclusion. The Offman article is written to try and poke holes in the book Isaac’s Storm and has so evidence that can back up why Larson may have either interpreted the sources wrong or just bent the truth to make his story more exciting. I buy into what Offman is having to say because there is evidence that can make Isaac’s Storm seem skeptical on top of how the book was already written. Overall the article has some good insights into how a book can be factually skewed and still get good reviews and be a great seller.

The Galveston storm aftermath

March 5, 2017 / gparker77 / 0 Comments

In the final two chapters of Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm he finds a interesting way to wrap up his book on the Galveston Storm of 1900. The book starts off the morning after the storm has passed and gives vivid detail of the wreckage throughout the town. It follows a couple story lines which one of them being Isaac Cline and his account of the town after the storm. He writes about the dead bodies and how landmarks had been all but washed away and destroyed. He began his search for his wife who he had lost the night before in the flooding. Soon the Army had arrived bringing shelter, food, and other supplies to help start rebuilding the city. The body count had risen by hundreds every week and seemed to go on forever. The book talks about the smells and sights of the dead bodies in detail in which I think Larson does this to get you more emotionally invested in the story of Galveston and the storm he is telling. The point he is trying to make is that the people in the path of danger generally don’t take precaution or the warnings of danger as seriously as they could. By telling the story of the crews rounding up the dead bodies floating in the ocean or in the mud it really gives a perfect example of what happens when you don’t prepare for things as serious as the power of nature. There is always someone or something to blame for loss of life when it could be prevented and it was well put in the post by peterossi1, “I think that ignoring the warnings of a storm, is a form a negligence that can be blamed for the loss of life in the storm. In the same way that in the modern era the government/metrologists not letting a town know a disaster was coming, would be held partially responsible.” Whether you blame the meteorologist Isaac Cline or you blame the people for not taking the warnings as they should, there was a large number of lives lost that day and we should take this example as warning for the future.

What is Historiography? By Popkin

February 8, 2017 / gparker77 / 3 Comments

Popkin begins his book, From Herodotus to H-Net, with a preface that explains the history and beginnings of historiography. After his short preface, he starts off chapter one with explaining how historiography can help answer important historical questions. Popkin defines historiography as “the critical assessment of the ways in which historians try to reconstruct past events as distinguished from the statements they make about the past”. In other words it is a way other historians try to take a new angle at another scholar’s work or to try and disprove what their statement is with their own facts and interpretations. Historiography is the practice of historians asking questions, like how or why, about historical events to make new statements or perspectives on the event to try and find the true reason. Popkin goes on to explain why students hate historiography and want to focus more on the historical narrative that they have a fixation on for whatever reason. He also says that even though professors all hear about the complaining that they all can come to an agreement that students need at least some exposure to the style to be able to grasp the concepts it brings. Historiography can be used to help push “truthful history” versus the emotional and motive driven history that has been told in the past. Popkin wraps up his chapter with listing the different feilds that use historiograpghy alot, from social history to poltical history, and also cultural history. Popkin’s main idea, that historiograghy is important to the feild of History majors because of the way it allows for new discoveries and ideas to be formed to help get the closest truth about why, or how, something happened, is very important to students and how important it is to get a grasp as early as possible.