Doing History, Chapter One

Wednesday August 29, 2012

Second day back with the old group!  It was quite relaxing to have the same people as last semester, group discussions flow so much easier!  Today we talked more about our papers (which we will be doing all semester).  Already, on September 10th, we need to submit our main paper topic, including 3 minor historical questions.  We will not be able to change our topic, so once we choose, that it, that topic is ours for the entire semester!  This makes me so nervous because I don't want to end up not being able to find enough information about my topic, or end up not liking it.  I find it much easier to write about things that I find interesting for/have a passion for.  I was thinking about doing something on the Titanic or Nazism, but both of those things have been so overdone that I think I would like to work on something that I haven't before (even though I already have about a 10 page paper on the Titanic that I could just vamp-up, lol).  I have made up my mind to do my paper on how the Great Depression effected Aurora.  I think this is a good idea because there are so many aspects in which I can write about: politics, education, housing, business, industry, federal and state aid, transportation, population changes, family statuses, and more!  The only thing is that I will have to choose which topics I want to focus on because I cannot do more because there would be too much information.  Butters made a comment saying that if I do a good job on this paper I might be able to get it published!  That makes me want to do an even better job!  I was also thinking that I could just focus on a few topics now for this paper and class, but then I can always add more information onto it in later years.  I do plan on going to graduate school (eventually) and most schools want to see samples of student's work, so this would be the perfect thing!  Especially if I continue to work on it even after this semester is over. 

Today in class we talked about chapter one in our book "Doing History."  The book talks about the basics of reading, writing, and researching history.  We talked about things such as making sure there is enough evidence to back up our arguments in our papers and historical consciousness (different ways of thinking).  We also went over a brief history of history, so-to-speak.  One of the things we discussed was historical consciousness.  This started to become big between 1800 and 1900.  This is was brought on by technological revolutions, creation of nation-states, universities, museums/archives/libraries, and the profession of the historian.  During this time people, began to realize that they needed to preserve history and learn from it.  By the early 19th century nationalism was playing a big role in peoples' lives.  This also led to romanticism (the thought that people are NOT rational, but are creative).  These types of ideas go against the Enlightenment which said that people were rational.  This was brought about by the World Wars and other events that caused people to take a second look at their lives and the lives of others.  We then talked about Marxist Historians.  These types of historians look at history through social classes and revolutions.  This started in the 1960s and 70s in Britain, but then gained strength.  During this time period there were several problems going on such as civil rights and other equality struggles.  Other topics were also discussed such as present-ism, the New Left, and the different types of history (political, intellectual, religious, economic, social, cultural, etc).  Professor Butters was a little all over the board when it came to writing notes and what-not because he was just trying to give us a brief history of the different types of history and why/how they came about.