Week 2

On class Wednesday night we discussed many different things from the difference between HTML format and XML text formats, the advantages and disadvantages of using digital history, and how a historian studies and views history. People wonder how historians see the information they are given and how they make sense of it. Historians have to immerse themselves in the world and culture they are focusing on and it’s more important to focus on the value of information instead of quantity. In high school and even the years before that I was taught history in a bland, dry manner. However after learning more in our Wednesday night class into about the true process behind understanding history in a subjective way, I was quite surprised in how much it differed from my high school experience. Perhaps most surprising to me was how many factors can affect the way history is thought about. A person’s bias towards a certain opinion is of course an obvious tip off but things like time, place, and education are much more specific issues. With so many different factors affecting the credibility of history and just as many historians and people placing their own opinions on the topic the truth in it all can be difficult to find. In fact I find it somewhat confusing. At the end of the day it seems history is not a simple fact beyond the time, place, people there, etc. The credibility of actual happenings and intricate details in history are left to personal judgment following a detailed analysis of the various factors mentioned earlier.  Especially for when we begin to study our own soldier for our main project. There are a lot of details and factors that go into each and every life that we will be studying. My goal is to portray my soldier’s life in the most factual way possible without including my own bias. It’s interesting to see the views of each historian and the characteristics they value most during their research.

February 1, 2014.     Category: Uncategorized.   No Comments.