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Re: when is the past historical?
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From: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas <ebonyt_at_gse.upenn.edu>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:46:58 -0500
Hello, everyone --
I have enjoyed many of the discussions here over the past few months. Presently, I am considering issues of historicity for a new research project. What Edith writes caught my attention:
"As a former History teacher, I'm used to viewing events as history if everyone relating to the event has past away. If participants are still alive, it's a current event. Granted, this perspective is difficult to maintain today, however records and documents relating to events are not immediately avaiable and with the passage of time, we're able to research events in a much more comprehensive manner as events become more a part of history."
Fascinating perspective! If this is the case, I'm curious about how events that occurred before the lifetimes of not only children, but also many adults, are viewed. I am not a historian or a history educator. However, from my perspective growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, the Vietnam War was a historical event, and all of my teachers and professors treated it as such. Moving from personal experience to the way that events are construed by and through popular discourses/metadiscourses about history, World War I has long been viewed as a historical event, although the last living combatants have just passed away, and all living contemporaries with any memories of the event are centenarians or nearly so.
Are there readings which theorize how we conceptualize recent history (as opposed to more distant history)?
Best,
Ebony
-- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Reading/Writing/Literacy Division Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216 Office: (215) 898-9309 Fax: (215) 573-2109 Email: ebonyt_at_gse.upenn.edu Website: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/faculty/thomas
"If I do not love the world--if I do not love life--if I do not love people--I cannot enter into dialogue."
--Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Received on Mon 05 Nov 2012 12:46:58 PM CST
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:46:58 -0500
Hello, everyone --
I have enjoyed many of the discussions here over the past few months. Presently, I am considering issues of historicity for a new research project. What Edith writes caught my attention:
"As a former History teacher, I'm used to viewing events as history if everyone relating to the event has past away. If participants are still alive, it's a current event. Granted, this perspective is difficult to maintain today, however records and documents relating to events are not immediately avaiable and with the passage of time, we're able to research events in a much more comprehensive manner as events become more a part of history."
Fascinating perspective! If this is the case, I'm curious about how events that occurred before the lifetimes of not only children, but also many adults, are viewed. I am not a historian or a history educator. However, from my perspective growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, the Vietnam War was a historical event, and all of my teachers and professors treated it as such. Moving from personal experience to the way that events are construed by and through popular discourses/metadiscourses about history, World War I has long been viewed as a historical event, although the last living combatants have just passed away, and all living contemporaries with any memories of the event are centenarians or nearly so.
Are there readings which theorize how we conceptualize recent history (as opposed to more distant history)?
Best,
Ebony
-- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Reading/Writing/Literacy Division Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216 Office: (215) 898-9309 Fax: (215) 573-2109 Email: ebonyt_at_gse.upenn.edu Website: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/faculty/thomas
"If I do not love the world--if I do not love life--if I do not love people--I cannot enter into dialogue."
--Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Received on Mon 05 Nov 2012 12:46:58 PM CST
