Willyd10's Blog

Almost the end…

willyd10 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:45:57 +0000

…Of at the semester anyway. We still have a long way to go to complete the thesis work required and Dr. Sacco definitely made me feel a little more at ease about next semester. The defend your thesis part worried me a little, because I know there are so many more experts that are far more knowledgeable of our topics that might try and literally destroy our papers after we get to the end. I am looking forward to meeting with my faculty member who will help me complete the process. I spoke with him last week and we are meeting soon to try get a more detailed topic for me to address.

As I was searching for an online primary source for our final assignment, I was really glad to see how easy is it access the information thanks to internet. Granted we still have to do the research and find the documents, but I would hate to be doing this class without the internet like in the old days. The archive searches kept making me think about other topics I could use as my thesis, which kept delaying my last paper because I would start looking at something else instead of what originally was searching for.

This semester has laid a great foundation for the work to be done over the course of the Fall and Spring and I am anxious to complete the process. This summer I hope to get some of my research out of the way.

Week 13

willyd10 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:19:47 +0000

Week 13

After attending the Orange and White game Saturday to watch Dooley’s squad, I have to say the team performed offensively, as I expected which was bad. I expected this because of a whole new system with just a few starters from last year. The reviews were mixed and it was interesting to hear the local sportscasters say it was a good day for the new team, but then the regional sports reporters say the team looked bad. A fan near me got mad about how a certain player dropped two balls, but there was another fan that defended this player, I later found out the fan defending the player was his father. The point I am trying to make is biases are everywhere and happen every day. I have noticed myself as the semester has progressed becoming more and more aware of biases and trying to more objectively discover what the real meaning behind things are. While I was reading the Che Guerava documents, it was very frustrating that some of the words and sentences were hidden. All semester long we have been on a quest for historical accuracy, and when things are blotted out it impedes our search. Che was unique in that he moved around to different countries to try and start a revolution, which struck fear in the hearts of the United States government and agencies. These documents were very interesting read about and the timeline definite aided my reading. Topics like Che have helped to broaden my historical perspective. I began to think about previous History classes that I have taken, even all the way back to high school and how some professors let their own bias’ influences their lectures. I continue to research various topics for my thesis and try to remain objective when my pre conceived ideas are brought into question.

Conquest

willyd10 — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 02:01:43 +0000

The Views on the Conquest seemed to be the middle ground that took into account the various points of views on what happened during the Conquest. There were initial claims of friendship, but the 17^th chapter included an account of Montezuma being seized followed by the Spaniards looting, raping, and killing anyone and anything in their path. Smallpox also soon followed which devastated the tribes, on top of the continuous attacks of the Spaniards who captured and sold the natives into slavery. The terminology used to describe Tenochtitlan really made it seem grand when terms such as magnificent, spacious, and astounding. They tried to relate it to places they had seen such as the stone bridges, but they cannot fully describe the city because they have never seen anything like it. Their own biases interfere here mainly because they do not know any better. The Bernal Diaz account told a different story of the Cortes and Montezuma meeting. According to Diaz both men were very cordial towards each other and Montezuma gave Cortes flowers and numerous necklaces to signal his friendship to which Cortes responded by stroking Montezuma’s hair. Diaz said there were over 400,000 conversions of the natives. In the native account the women fought in place of their dead husbands against the conquistadors, while the Spanish documents mainly omit women from their accounts. Dona Maria was a central figure in the events as she served as Cortes’ translator. In one artists’ rendering she is placed in the middle of the meeting of Cortes and Montezuma which signified the importance of her presence. This was rare for a woman to be given so much significance. Also in the drawing Montezuma is shown with a beard, but the natives did not have facial hair. The beard was power symbol for the Spanish and when the artist painted Montezuma with a beard it showed his importance and also how the artist could not avoid his own biases. Another intriguing section from the reading was when Hernando Pizzaro was imprisoned in Spain. He wrote a letter to his priest in which he was very confident of his innocence, and plotted to get money smuggled into Spain to frame his dead brother. This letter was somewhat humorous implying that the priest served as his bookie, if you will.

SPACE

willyd10 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:04:15 +0000

The Great Fire burned for 49 hours, destroyed nearly 280,000 homes, and claimed the lives of over 40,000 people while destroying 2/3 of the city of Istanbul. Thousands more died from the plague that followed the fire. Churches were originally allowed to remain standing, because Islamic law forbids them to tear down existing structures. But things changed when the Ottomans saw an opportunity to use space to enhance their goals of reasserting their dominance through spatial power. The Jews were in the way when the Ottomans wanted to expand and build a mosque, so they crammed the Jews into a smaller space and said it was a “space where they could exist peacefully. The Ottomans were running low on money, had poor leadership because the ruler was too young to rule so his mother had to rule in place of him. The building of the mosque signaled power and prestige by using the power of symbolism. The Ottomans ended up tearing down numerous Christian churches. The Jews lost the powerful positions in the castle and Arabic sayings were place on seemingly everything throughout the kingdom.

Kohler Village also used spatial relations to assert an image by creating the, “garden at the factory gate.” The factory was the place of the man and the home was the place of the woman. Kohler Village used the homes of the workers to show that their workers use and love the appliances made by Kohler, you should too. The city was designed where nice two storey homes that the foreman lived in would be right next to basically a shack that a factory worker lived in to try and hide the class distinction. Strikes in the 30’s were useless by the workers and they lost, but in the 50’s the workers gained more ground and accomplished more of their goals although it was not a total victory. It was interesting to read about the kids of the non striker’s bullied the kids of the strikers. Kohler Village was an example of spatial relations used to hide class levels.

week 10

willyd10 — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:28:56 +0000

It is clear that Tikoff used many of the themes used in historiography to identify and describe his points in the piece he wrote, “Not All the Orphans Really Are,” that we learned of from “The Emperor’s Mirror.” Tikoff used a synchronic time period in which he studied the “Long Eighteenth Century,” by examining the orphanage in Seville. I was a little torn between etic or emic, but I believe the piece is emic because it takes a look at factors such as if you were rich or had some more important status you received easier access to the orphanage. With the story centering in Seville it could be seen as particularist, but it compares other orphanages in Seville which makes it nomothetic. Tikoff examined various records that showed data which used the quantitative approach, but he was careful to include valid points regarding that the records might have left certain things out. Tikoff looked at records that showed how the orphanages were run and planned, also Tikoff wanted to show the identity of the kids there, such as how and why they were there. This article mainly focused on social forces for example, some parents even placed their kids in the orphanage because of the orphanage’s money and resources, due to their inability to care for the children according to the reading. Tikoff also focused on the materialst approach by showing how the school became a training facility for naval cadets, but it focused on ideationalist ideas too by looking at the culture of the day. There was an obvious consensus that the orphanage was a great place for your child if you could not provide for the child, but there was also conflict as it became harder to get in unless you were rich or important. It became a conflict when the orphanage stopped meeting the needs of the truly less fortunate and started to become selective based up bloodlines. I do not think Tikoff really used a stochastic or a determist approach.

E.P. & Quito

willyd10 — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:47:53 +0000

E. P. Thompson looked at riots and how the mob mentality legitimates their claims for rioting by examining several cases. Thompson starts by showing the how nobles used a paternalistic model and the fear of riots often influenced their decision making. The mob’s main objections were that items were not being sold at a fair price and they had limited access due to the “backdoor deals.” The mob wanted the goods to be sold at market price in the market and not from someone’s doorstep. Thompson dove into the larger issue of the moral economy and looked at the consumers reactions when prices changed. It was interesting to note that most of the riots were not when food supply was empty and people were hungry, but when the prices went up, the price changes cause the customers to become angry. The riots were not violent displays of anarchy, the price changes were a common cause the customers collectively were against. Thompson uses the example of the baker that did not actually set the prices, but the baker had advice from the nobility. This mob mentality soon faded out as the paternalistic model gave way for capitalism. In the Quito reading about the Era of Prosperity, the author looked at women in society and a different kind of economy. Women were often more involved in the textile industry, which was the most profitable activity in the region. The other regions were reliant on silver production. Women played an active role in the market, which the author based her claims from old criminal and notary records due to the fact that almost everything was recorded due to the societal demands. These types of records are very valuable to a historian by aiding in all types of research. Obviously both essays focus on economic issues that were facing the people of that time, so it is in a way the economic pop culture of that era. It was refreshing to read an economic piece that did not just tell you economic theories and facts. Both of these pieces portrayed economic issues in ways that did not just tell the reader this economic theory is correct, but it showed an economic problem mixed with issues that plagued the people in their region.

Leslie Reagan and Doug Rossinow

willyd10 — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:43:43 +0000

Leslie Reagan took a look at the issue of abortion and used the city of Chicago as her testing site. Reagan made a strong argument that abortion was more common than originally believed in every day society. She uses Chicago as local story to tell a national story, much as Doug Rossinow used the University of Texas at Austin as the setting to tell the national story of the New Left Movement. Reagan’s arguments are based upon court records, newspaper articles, and coroner reports, while Rossinow’s arguments are based more on secondary sources. Reagan illustrates the differences in the classes pertaining to birth control through abortion. It is often overlooked according to her that the middle and upper class women also participated in abortion. Gender played a role, in that traditionally the woman and her relatives or friends were responsible for finding the doctor or medical supplies to carry out the abortion and the man’s role was to provide the monetary funds for the abortion to be carried out. The woman’s friends or relatives often took care of the daily household chores until the mother who aborted her child was healthy enough. There was also a seemingly subtle battle of the doctors versus the midwives as theme throughout the book, that was interesting to follow. I think if she would have compared Chicago to other cities it would have held more significance. I was surprised to learn how abortion was such a common term that was thrown around, I gathered from the reading that people loosely used terms often minimizing the whole situation such as “going to get fixed or straightened out.” I detected a subtle reference that Reagan believed the media made the issue of abortion worse than it should have been. Rossinow takes on a similar approach in his narrative by telling a different side of the 1960’s compared to the space race, cold war tension, hippie free love days that we were taught in school. The youth of the new generation felt alienated by the insincerity or lack of authenticity and turned to religion, in what he calls “Christian Existentialism.” Rossinow said, “Americans-left, right, and middle- now look for authenticity , for reconnection to the divine and to communities that seem ancient and organic (pg.340). These religious ideas were formed primarily from the German theologians who formed their ideas based on the aftermath of World War II. They also turn to politics as a way to get there voice heard due to the alienation they experienced. In this case, I feel that Rossinow similarly to Reagan should have used more than just one example. Although, I can understand his point of using a typically conservative area to illustrate how desperate these youth were to look further Left than their normal views. Rossinow’s case is based more on secondary sources and at times his arguments were a little confusing in comparison to Reagan. I do not completely agree with the views held by either author, but Reagan’s book was far more interesting to read. She offered points of view that I failed to consider and did not seem to force them on the reader like Rossinow did.

Sorry my notes got wet!

willyd10 — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:50:14 +0000

Sorry my notes got wet, I had another blog that I will try to attempt to rewrite exactly as I did to match the original document.

The American Historical Association issued a statement on standards of professional conduct in order to address some issues facing the historical community and provide a framework to provide “honor in their work.” The standards state the “trust and respect of one’s peers and of the public at large are among the greatest and most-hard won achievements that any historian can attain.” This trust is easily broken when one’s work is found to be full of plagiarism and can harm, if not destroy the person’s career.

Stephen Ambrose’s career and reputation have taken a large hit due to plagiarism complaints against him. His book “The Wild Blue” contained nearly exact statements to Thomas Childers’s book “The Wings of Morning.” This lead to further investigation and it was found that this was not his first, nor his last plagiarized work. The AHA characterizes plagiarism as “the expropriation of another author’s work, and the presentation of it as one’s own…” The best solution to this problem is to be as thorough as possible and cite everything. Something I failed to consider about sources and footnotes was the fact that it aids future historians and researchers to continue on and further develop your theories or ideas.

A case that stood out to me from the reading was the Allen Weinstein case. His first transgression was he paid former KGB agents for “exclusive” rights and access to the archives of the KGB. This action was a clear violation of the “integrity of the profession” as the Standards call it. Then to further tarnish his image Weinstein went to withhold the documents from allowing other historians to have access, as he promised. The standards set by the AHA state that historians favor “free, open, equal, and nondiscriminatory access,” to archives. Weinstein was further confronted with Navasky who tracked down his sources and sent them copies of the portions of their input that were used in the book. All of the sources agreed that they were misrepresented or misquoted in some way (pg.40).

Jon Wiener’s, “Historians in Trouble” provided great insight into the mistakes that historians fall into and the damage that can be caused to one’s career. The AHA’s standards set in place are strong on the integrity of one’s work. Historians face constant scrutiny anytime they uncover something is potentially controversial, it is vital the we have all the bases covered as historians in order to avoid embarrassing shame for failing to follow these standards.

Week 2

willyd10 — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:12:47 +0000

Last Thursday the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot forbid political spending by corporations in elections. The seemingly split court voted 5-4 on a politically charged issue that has angered many Democrats. This case is another example of the United States placing an emphasis on structure over agency. The agency of an individual vote is now diminished as whomever has the most money holds the power. The case also clearly demonstrates language changing reality.

We also talked about the impact of the 24/7 media that has been greatly impacted thanks in large part to technology. But it is interesting to point out that the industry that first brought about information to the masses is now dying, the newspaper business. If people still read the newspaper, the majority of people read it online or get their news from blogs. As soon as some event happens we no longer have to wait until the next day to read about it in the newspaper, we have instant access via television news, internet sites, or even through our cell phones. As a local example, as soon as Kiffin resigned people were texting me before it even broke on the news. Several minutes later the story was all over the news and the internet. Many people seem to think the newspapers are more objective as was Von Ranke’s goal, but they forget about Yellow Journalism. I think it is harder for people to discern biases in writing compared to television stations such as FOX News or MSNBC. However the internet holds a negative problem in that anyone can post anything he or she desires, which threatens credibility to numerous sites. As a historian, one has to be excited about the great advantage that the internet provides in the unlimited amount of archives that are now available. Capitalism thrives on technology and we are certainly in the technology age. One can now shop, date, take classes, bank, and on and on the list goes about the things one can do online. All this access is supposed to make our lives easier by alleviating the stress caused from our hectic schedules, but it seems there is never enough time in the day for some reason.

Historiography

willyd10 — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:01:02 +0000

Historiography

By Georg Iggers

Iggers begins his book by briefly highlighting some of the different ways in which history was studied or viewed. History underwent a change in the nineteenth century to where it became “professionalized. (p.23)” Previous universities just taught facts and dates, but the new university focused on research. No longer was the university using teachers who taught a subject they liked as a hobby, but the professors were expected to teach, research, and publish work in their field that they were solely dedicated to. Leopold Ranke was the first to look at History with an almost scientific approach, he combined his goal of objectivity with the critical method. Ranke wanted historians to “refrain from judging the past,” instead, “show how things really happened (p.25).” Karl Lamprecht further questioned this method and had two major focuses: the role of the state and the focus on people and events. History soon replaced philosophy as the subject that provided a look at meanings of the world. Max Weber viewed Lamprecht’s ideas published in his book, Deutsche Geschichte, as “speculative nonsense.” The Schmoller School held similar assumptions with an emphasis on the central role of the state and the insistence that historical study must keep close to the archival sources (p 36). This school was used to investigate the conditions of industrial workers for the first time and brought about the foundations for social history. Weber called for “objectivity and detachment,” because he felt sociology and history were blurring together. Then a new history developed where Charles Beard saw economic and social conflict as the two decisive factors in American History. However it was interesting to me that psychology also played a small role in the New History. As America continued to become the giant melting pot, a new outlook was in place by the New Historians and they became aware of the vast differences that divided the country, while keeping in mind the essentials that worked together to make a national community. A new understanding of America in the minds of the New Historians proved a contrast to Europe in which America was a, “classless society, free of ideological divisions (p.43). Another shift was brought about by the New Historians in which they used quantitative methods and applied them to social phenomena (p.43). Data records were aided by improving technology that allowed behavioral patterns to be studied. The economy now played a role America’s social and more emphasis was placed on the economy’s role in the social sciences. One thing that continued to stand out to me throughout the first few chapters was the call to remain impartial and objective. Too often today our history is influenced by political views or personal tendencies that may distract one from the true meaning. I think this has become a problem in education, one may have a strong political views expressed throughout a lecture or even throughout the textbook that takes away from the facts. This is extremely apparent on the news which spin stories to help their conservative or liberal agendas be expressed.