Song Of History

This paper deals with ways history can be interpreted and influences different interpretations have on society and individuals. This is explored through

The idea of the exclusion of important narratives is a common theme amongst many of the historians involved in the discussion. The omission of such narratives would only stand to present an unfinished version of history from which one cannot grasp the lessons history intends to teach. Catherine Emerson would be the first to

The study of history and the teaching of history has come under intense public debate in the United States in the last few decades. The “culture-wars” began with the call to add more works by non-Caucasians and women and has bled into the study of history. Not only in the study of history or literature, this debate has spread into American culture like wildfire.

“The Strange Death of Silas Deane” by James West Davison and Mark Hamilton Lytle creates a new perspective on what people see history as. Although many people would define history as something that happened in the past, through “The Strange Death of Silas Deane”, the authors demonstrate that this everyday view on history can be profoundly misleading.

Throughout time, there will continue to be a considerable divorce between academic and popular historians. As Margaret Conrad argues, popular historians have established the tension, by recreating “historical films without the involvement of trained historians”. This underscores the troubling gulf that sometimes separates public academics approaches to the past. Academic historians have been “too long focused” on professionalism, and discarded “generating” a “dialogue” (Conrad) with their contextual audiences. The substantial dissolution between academic and popular historians is evident in a range of sources, essentially from Michelle Arrows to Herodotus and Thucydides to Bury.

Throughout time, history has been recorded from the perspective of the victors. It is this bias within the archives that shape the views and motives of the groups involved. As a result of this influence the general way of thinking, and recollection of historical events has been altered to a certain degree to conform to the conqueror’s ideals. Society turns a blind eye to the horrors of the past, preferring to plead ignorance than to face the reality of the cruelty humans are capable of. There are parts in history that conversely cannot be ignored, such as the genocide in Rwanda, 9-11, Terror in Paris and the most historical, the holocaust in World War II, where the true extent of human vindictiveness came to light. In spite

History engages me like no other subject. History is unrivaled in complexity and depth compared to other areas of study, but many do not realize this because we choose to gloss over the vast majority, reducing entire sagas into little more than a footnote on a single page. The American revolution, while celebrated in the US, is little more than a paragraph in European history, overlooked because of the more relevant Napoleonic era. My passion for learning encourages me to read into these footnotes and discover the lessons and ideas that are ignored by the common curriculum.

Allison, Graham, and Niall Ferguson. “Don't Know Much About History.” The Atlantic, Sept. 2016, pp. 28–29.

In the reading, Who Owns History? , by Eric Foner, the preface, made up of primarily James Baldwin’s thoughts, creates an argument about the passage of history, and in particular, who has claim to such at any given time. The question of ownership over what is essentially just memories, relates to how we learn, and grow, as well as shapes our culture. By having ownership over history, the particular group of people are able to have most influence over what parts of history are most important as well as the actual way we study history. These elements may seem trivial but they are exactly how we, as youth, are able to grow with and around our culture. History belongs to everyone, the originators of prominent events, those who pass it on to remember it, and those who continue to pass the information long after those in play have passed.

The people who go down in history are the ones who break free from the mundane and make a change. The history within literature and film photography has shown this over the years since they have been in our culture. Puritan poetry and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible show that individualism, in any time, is fundamental in worldly interaction because it keeps everyone from becoming an army of indistinguishable drones.

This text analyses the complexities in writing and interpreting history. Mark Damon claims that historians encompass at least three different ways of accessing the past; remembering, recovering, or inventing. The texts states that no history is the full unvarnished truth and that memory is usually what many must result to, making the facts potentially flawed. It also discusses how evidence and artifacts aren’t complete without context and some historians result to fabricating the story behind it. Throughout the text it glances at two very different historians, the Roman Tacitus and the Byzantine Procopius, and shows the range and difficulty inherent in the study of the past.

History is dead. And it tells of remembrances of the past. It speaks of lives that were once led, breath that was once breathed. In her book, The World Of Columbus and Sons, Genevieve Foster rejuvenates that breath. She brings to life the people who have added a stitch to what the world is today. She delves into the lives of historical figures from the mid fifteenth century to early sixteenth century, and sheds light on all aspects of their lives. She paints a picture of not only famous events, but also the people that made up the events.

Burke’s picture of history uses the chaos of the French Revolution to frighten readers into valuing tradition over progression. Kant’s relatively abstract picture of history argues that society is progressing towards a utopian state. Tocqueville’s argument in Democracy in America argues for a balance of the two.

“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”

It is no wonder that how advanced the world may be, there are still a number of human beings, who struggle a lot for their survival; These are the human beings, who are pushed to the margins for the reasons unknown to them, these are the human beings, who are denied a secured place in the world for the mistakes which are not committed by them. These are marginalized people and just like them, their history too is marginalized. Being neglected by the mainstream history, this marginalized history, sometimes has to transform itself and settle in fiction in order to come into light.