2. What is History?
Goals for this week (September 13/15, 2022)
By the end of the second week, what should you know, be able to do and understand?
You will learn about History as an academic discipline and as a field of study, including some key terms and ideas foundational for understanding the learning we will do in this course.
You will practice reading academic writing and will learn strategies for engaging productively with ideas in text – turning them into your own words/ thoughts. We will discuss the concept and practices of making annotations and "smart notes".
We will go over using Teams and Perusall - digital tools key for this course.
Students must sign up to submit classnotes once a term by end of day, September 13th. Sign up here.
If you have a laptop/tablet that you will be using this term, bring it to class so that you can work with it on Friday (September 15th).
Overview:
The class introduces you to the discipline of History, major concerns and questions, as well as debates about the nature of history.
By Wednesday's class, students will need to have read, Danielle Kinsey's "Three Points About History, Especially for Non-Historians." Canadian Journal of History 54, no. 1 (2019): 1-20. https://www-utpjournals-press.proxy.library.carleton.ca/doi/full/10.3138/cjh.ach.54.1-2.01 and posted on Perusall.
In Wednesday's class, we open with a quick game of Timeline to get us thinking about how popular games represent historical topics (in particular the idea of chronology). When you play that game try to think about:
how the game offers a selective representation of the past
how the game tries to teach you about the past, not just by words, but also by its images/ aesthetic.
This initial game play on Wednesday will move into a discussion of the question, "What is History?" I will introduce students to different debates on the topic. We will explore how historical learning and knowledge of history is important (or not important) in our society. We will spend some time talking about the Kinsey reading, which we will return to again on Friday. Be prepared to come talk generally about how history seems relevent to your lives. We might consider such questions as:
what is the difference between the past and history?
what is the nature of History, as practiced in university vs. what we consider popular or public history?
where does the idea and the academic discipline of history come from?
what is the use of history? how can history be misused?
where do you get your 'history' from?
Do you think games can be "History"?
On Friday, we will introduce students to Perusall. In class, we will practice using the platform to reread and annotate the Kinsey article together. Your annotations (and those of the class) will provide the raw material for our discussion.
Read/Watch/Listen
(on Perusall) Danielle Kinsey's "Three Points About History, Especially for Non-Historians." Canadian Journal of History 54, no. 1 (2019): 1-20. https://www-utpjournals-press.proxy.library.carleton.ca/doi/full/10.3138/cjh.ach.54.1-2.01. On Perusall.
Optional reading:
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes : One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking - for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. 2017. (posted on Teams)
Practice
By 10am, Tuesday, September 19th, you need to create a profile for yourself. On Teams, each student is asked to create a folder for themself in the "Student Work" folder in the general channel files. Over the course of the term, students will upload student work there (or links to it).
Students will be expected to complete this exercise on their own time. Instructions here.
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