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Assignment for 9/28
HIS 4104 - HISTORICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

CRN 81180

Self Evaluation:

Beginning with this class, you will be required to self-evaluate both your written and oral assignments, as well as special assignments. The link to the evaluation forms is on the index.htm page and will be included on each day's individual assignment. For class on September 28, you will need to bring a self-evaluation form and evaluate your participation in class discussion. For October 5, you will need both the daily evaluation form and the Daughter of Time evaluation form.

Click here for evaluation forms

READING ASSIGNMENT:

*Modern Historioraphy*	Pages 137-160
*History in Crisis*	Pages 111-139

Remember: Your disk with your webpage is due tonight in class. Do not worry if it is not "fancy"! You are all learning.

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT:

This assignment will be discussed on Tuesday, 28
September, but the written assignment is not due until
October 5 when we conclude discussion on the above
readings. Please also view the assignment page for that
date.

1. Do you agree with the MH authors reasoning for the changes in the study of history in the 1970s? Explain why or why not and, if the latter, what you believe contributed to these changes.

2. Define, as you understand them, the following terms: postmodern, poststructuralism, deconstruction, postcolonialism, world system, hybridity, gender as a historiographical category, new historicism, new cultural history, and literary criticism. Give an example of each, if possible, that you believe you have read in yhour study of history.

3. Give a bfrief explanation of your views on each of the above methodologies. Include in your answer arguments that support your position.

4. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, in their book Telling the Truth About History, state:

The move toward the most radically skeptical and
relativist postmodern position inevitably leads
into a cul-de-sac. Dismissals of history, politics,
and narrative as hopelessly modern ideas, now
outmoded in the postmodern world, might seem
up-to-date, but history, politics and narrative are
still the best tools available for dealing with the
world and preparing for the future. A similar kind
of crisis that foreshadows a turning away from the
postmodern view can be seen in almost every field
of knowledge or learning today. Postmodern art
often consists of critiques of the function of art
and especially past art (the mounds of shopping
carts piled around the statue of Mozart in
downtown Salzburg, for instance, in the year of
the Mozart bicentennial) rather than new art.
Similarly, postmodern history too often seems to
consist of denunciations of history as it has been
known rather than of new histories for present and
hence future time. Periodic exercises in theory
have an undeniably useful function as criticism of
unself-conscious assumptions about art or history
or science, but postmodernism cannot provide
models for the future when it claims to refuse the
entire idea of offering models for the future. In
the final analysis, then, there can be no
postmodern history. . . . (236-237)

Analyze this statement. Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not? Should histories provide models for the future? Why or why not. If yes, what do you think the authors mean by "models"?

5. Appleby, et al, also state in their conclusion that

Fundamental to our own engagement with reality
has been a conception of women and men as
creatures driven to know and to chart their lives
by what they believe to be true. History can help
here, for it offers a variety of tools for effecting
liberation from intrusive authority, outworn
creeds, and counsels of despair. Historical
analysis teaches that members of society raise
structures that confine people's actions and then
build systems of thought that deny those
structures. It also suggests that all bodies of
knowledge acquire ideological overtones, because
their meaning is too potent to be ignored. What
is to be concluded from myth-dispelling
disclosures . . . .? We think they point to the
power of a revitalized public, when operating in
a pluralistic democracy with protected dissent,
to mediate intelligently between society and the
individual, knowledgte and passion, clarity and
obfuscation, hope and doubt. Telling the truth
takes a collective effort. 308-309.

First, what do the authors means by this statement? Do you identify any type of bias included in it or not? If so, what bias do you see? Do you agree or disagree with the statement itself? Why or why not? Do you believe that this "collective effort" includes all of the methodologies outlined in #2 above? Explain your answer?

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Copyright (c) 1999 by Jacquelyn Briggs Kent and Florida Gulf Coast University