This is non-graded writing. I want your most contemplative, experimental, far-fetched writing on this one. All you are doing is keeping a journal throughout the quarter. What will you be writing about? Sources. Each week, jot down a few notes regarding the sources that the authors are using. What types of sources produce what type of history? How do sources lead toward certain types of answers? Do sources define truth? What types of sources would you need to find to be able to access the histories of those groups whose stories normally go unrecorded(children, non-writing cultures, pets, animals, etc.)?
There are two ways to accomplish this task:
1. Type it, print it, turn it in.
--OR--
2. Just type your thoughts into this blog.
Week 2: Gender Issue Sources.
ReplyDeleteThe three readings this week discussed a gender-based approach to history and were structured differently; consequently they had their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. In the first piece, an interview of Linda Gordon, we are privy to a look into the mind of a practicing feminist historian. It was valuable to understand how she came to study this field and her own opinions on the state of the feminist movement. However I was taken aback by her comment "Women work harder at being good teachers," and would argue this to be a product of her own psyche and not any generalizable fact. I suppose this speaks to understanding the bias of this type of source.
The second article, a sort of literature review by Joan Scott, was valuable because it explained some of the central tenets of the feminism-gender movement and why it may be valuable to look at history through a gender-specific lens. I particularly liked the idea that "the writing of women into history necessarily involves redefining and enlarging traditional notions of historical significance, to encompass personal, subjective experience as well as public and political activities." Including gender as a variable in history will shift the focus of who tells history, or whose story history tells, by giving a much more prominent voice to the experiences of the"other". That said, it was difficult for me to connect with this piece, as it remained largely abstract and concerned with the history of ideas, and distant from real life.
The final piece, by Nancy Cott, I enjoyed far more than the other two. She tells the story of the roots of the modern feminism movement beginning in the late 1800s and continuing through the 1910s. She wove quotes, stories, and characters into what Dhada would call a "grand narrative," and I felt as if I had a much greater understanding of what feminism meant for those who initiated it, and what it was they were trying to accomplish. If I were to teach a unit or class on feminism, I would use this piece over the other two, because I think students would remain more engaged with this one, yet not have their understanding of feminism suffer.
The three readings this week served as an overview of the Feminist perspective. The interview with Linda Gordon helped to explain her involvement with, or more importantly, her Feminist beliefs. Ms. Gordon described her work, studying family violence. She is using the case files as her source for her project.
ReplyDeleteJoan Scott, on the other hand, uses dictionaries, books, and magazines to present a history of the word gender. I agree with David, this article was difficult to connect with. There was a lot of information included in this article.
Finally, Nancy Cott, in "The Birth of Feminism" provides examples of women's involvement in society, thus defining Feminism. I found this article much easier to read. I did not know how involved women were in the different aspects of society, from suffrage to industry to social causes.
I thought that we were looking at the sources the three authors brought up and used as their source of reference. In the first article by Linda Gordon, she used case records of social service agencies to look at the struggle between social worker and client, and the conflict between the poor and the social agency. These were Ms. Gordon's original primary sources. Also, Ms. Gordon used Rolla Tryon's book on Household Manufacturing, Feminist Studies, Alice Clark's book Women's Body, Women's Right, Marx's Capital, and articles by Richard Hofstradter and Christopoher Lasch. She also used her magazine Radical America and quotes David Gil. From her own article I had the desire to look at Rolla Tyron's book, Radical America, Feminist Studies, and her own case records where she drew her conlclusions from. The interview format with Ms. Gordon helped me situate her own agenda, background, possible biases, etc. but gave me a useful definiton of "family" as she saw it and the social/political/gender issues associated with it. One thing that stuck out at me was her quote that said, "It is the responsibility of historians to tell the truth". I wondered how that was possible, especially if the truth was viewed from different people/sexes/classes differently. She also discusses the tension between politics and academic scholarship. She also touched upon the Marxian superstructure of society and how gender order is fundamental to the "entire social, economic, and political order". Her article/interview was interesting and set up a general background to some of the tensions that exist in gender/feminist/studies/structures.
ReplyDeleteThe second article by Joan Scott was a very analytical philosophical piece. Her article used many thinkers from philosophy (Derrida, Lacan) and Critical Legal Studies (Mackinnon, Gilligan) as well as historians or politicians like Lenin's Origin of the Family. Her article discusses the three positions that Feminist historians take and examines some of the work in that field like scholarship from Mackinnon and Heidi Hartman. Another book she discusses is Powers of Desire by Ann Snitow, Chistine Stansell and Sharon Thompson. She describes this work as the "most far-reaching exploration of sexuality by American Marxist feminist. It does sound like a book worth exploring. (continued...)
The limits of this theory is that "the concept of gender is has long been treated as the by-product of changing economic structures: gender has had no independent status of its own. Then Ms. Scott discusses the psychoanalytic theories that have also shaped some of the "gender" discussion. She highlights that Nancy Chodorow's work The Reproduction of Mothering Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender argues that "if fathers were more involved the oedipal drama might be different." This I would really like to hear more about. In what way? And how would that work in families without fathers on the scene at all? Ms. Scott continues to give us some of Lacan's theory regarding subject-object "symbolic order". Lacan discusses that "through language gendered identity is constructed". She also quotes some other scholars like Sally Alexander who concludes that "anatagonism between the sexes is an unavoidable aspect of the acquistion of sexual identity." Ms. Scott then discusses Derrida and gender as an analtyical category. She herself defines gender as "a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes and gender is a primary way of signifying power over the other." She brings in Michelle Rosaldo's critique of Anthropolgy and Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality. Another area she examines is socail institutions and organizations and kinship. The last aspect of gender she examines is subjective identity. She uses the work of Gayle Rubin to explain this idea. Ms. Scott's article was very theoretical and analytical with traces of Philsophy and Psycholanalysis, using classic works as well as many modern scholars in various disciplines such as Anthropology, Philosophy, Marxism, Feminism.
ReplyDeleteThe last article was the most interesting and palatable as it seemd more "factual" than "analytical". It described the various groups of Feminist, both in America and Abroad that sprang up during the early 1900's. It discussed labor movements, feminist/sufferage leaders, and the fight for equality. I would use this article as a starting point when teaching students 12th grade and under as the story comes to life through the examples and situations presented.
Week Three: Marxist Theory
ReplyDeleteThis week's readings, presented a challenge for me. As I was reading the material, I had to ask myself, What is the author saying. In the Thompson piece, it is clear that he consulted a few different sources. Among those sources are poems, encyclopedias (his history of the clock and clock making), diaries, and catalogs (the price of watches in England). Thompson weaves an argument that an awareness of time causes inefficiency. Thompon notes that there are too many festivals, holidays and "fairs." This is found in section IV near the end.
The second piece is the interview with Eric Hobsbawn. This was another challenging article, as I was looking for maybe a definition of Marxist theory. A statement that stands out for me is "It seems to me that it is important to write history for people other than pure academics." He highlights the differences between British and American Marxists. I am not sure what sources he used in his argument. Is he using personal experience or readings?
The final article, The Critique of Capitalism, had me scratching my head. I am not familiar with Fitzhugh or why Genovese would be criticizing his work. I honestly have to say that I did not finish this piece. However, what I did get from it was how we can take one of our sources and critique it against a theory, whether it be feminist or Marxist or labor. I am interested in knowing more about these literary works (like the authors, the context of the writing)so that I may reread them with a deeper understanding.
The first article by E.P. Thompson was very clever and very long (I guess he has no sense of time--just kidding!). His sources were very eclectic and even poetic. He quotes many poets and what they have to say about "time" and "labor". For instance, in a poem by Stephen Duck, "The Thresher's Labour" he describes the 20th century work conditons. "No intermission in our Works we know; The noisy Threshall must ever go." He also uses "diarist" as a source to describe their clocks or watches. For instance, a diarist in 1688 writes, "This watch shewes ye hour of ye day, ye month of ye year, ye age of ye moon, and ye ebbing and flowing of ye water; it will goe 30 hours with one winding up". Thompson also uses petitions and official records. There was a petition that was used against clock and watch makers to assess taxes in 1798 that he used as a source. Also, he uses a table from the Chancellor of Exchequer where clocks were exempted from taxes. He quotes traditional historians like Dr. Dorthy George and Richard Jeffries. He uses books of time for lawyers that are given to an accountant from the 1700's. He uses a pamphlet from 1827 that describes the English system of working "from 6 o'Clock in the morning to 6 o'Clock in the evening. He uses some secondary/comtemporary sources like P. Bourdieu, E.P. Salis, Keith Thomas. It was refreshing to see so many different sources. Although I found the article a bit long and a bit difficult to get through I was happy to learn that there are many "everyday" sources out there such as "diaries, pamphlets, records" that could be used to give us an idea of what took place during a certain time frame. Also, the use of poetry as a source was very innovative and droe the point home about some of the conditions of industrialization.
ReplyDeleteThe second article was an interview with Eric Hobsbawm. In the interview Hobsbawm describes his intellectual history and how he got involved with Marxian thought. He discusses his books, Industry and Empire, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and several articles he has written. He discusses how he started writing Primitve Rebels after travelling in various Mediterranean countries and being in contact with social anthropologist such as Meyer Fortes and Max Gluckman. He points out that "Marxist history was not an isolated truth to be defined by how different it was from everything else, but the spearhead of a broad progressive history that we saw as being represented by all manner of radical and labor traditions in British Historiography." He also goes onto to describe his main line of work in Primitive Rebellions as "one that arises because of the transition from precapitalist or preindustrial societies to capitalist societies, and the basic problrem of how capitalist society developed out of feudalism". He also discusses the work of Althusser and Grasci.
The last article is a scholarly work that critiques the work of Fitzhugh. He describes Fithugh's attack on capitalism always with a moral ground. Fitzhugh uses the works of Adam Smith, and is (perhaps) influenced by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas' moral arguments against slavery. Genovese also challenges whether Fitzhugh even read Marx. He writes, "Fitzhugh did not quote the phraseology of The Communist Manifesto and almost certainly never read it." He points that Fitzhugh does not use key Marxist terms like "surplus value", etc. Another critique lodges against Fitzbugh is [his (Fitzugh's)]"view of history included classes but not class stuggles". The article continues to point out the weaknesses in Fitzhugh's arguments and works and tries to separate his work from what Marx himself was doing or Marxian critics. It was a good article.
As I was reading this week, I thought of this project. In the Midwife Tales reading, I saw history being told from different perspectives. In the discussion of scarlet fever, I could see the history being told from a bio-history perspecive. In From Front Porch to Back Seat, I could also see the history of dating being told from different historical perspectives. For instance, the whole book is a gendered perspective. There is also labor history, in that, men had to be working or have money to be able to take a girl out on a date. In "Unconventional History," Brian Fay presents the argument that history is open to interpretation. In the beginning of this course, the question was posed, can history be objective? Fay would argue that history is "dry" without some subjectivity. He writes: "Historians can dismiss questions such as these as outside their professional competence to answer, but there is an evasiveness here that is unsettling."
ReplyDeleteI am going to post my source list here. It covers Week 4 through 7.
ReplyDeleteLabor History: Ava Baron uses magazine articles, books, the work of male authors who have studied labor history, female authors, articles on women's unionization and participation in the labor force, studies, and the work of sociological theorists, feminist anthropologists.
Jeffrey Adler uses Chicago crime statistics, other literature on law enforcement, magazines, newspapers, hospital records, and police reports.
Environmental history: Nash uses historiographical essays, the work of other historians, magazines, and legal records.
Worster uses the work of John Wesley Powell, Continental Congressional writings (the writings of David Ramsey), possibly the diary of Powell's travels, statistics, and maps.
Bio-History: McNeil consults the World Health Organization, authors of books on AIDS, statistics, history of the Spanish Conquest, and other books on disease.
Crosby uses written accounts and history of diseases that affected North America.
Crosby, in Weeds, studied the land, looking at the plants. He used the lists made in the 17th and 19th centuries as sources of what plants were growing where. He also used reports from people who lived during 17th through 19th century to see what plants were growing in their yards.
Oral History: Ritchie uses the records of the Greek and Chinese scribes. Ritchie also discusses the work of other historians who have created oral history archives. Journalism plays a big role in his discussion.
Studs Terkel: His work is his interviews with men and women during WWII, who are now a mountain woman, an apartment manager, a music teacher, a film critic, a proofreader and a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and an architect.
A bit more on the From Front Porch to Back Seat: Beth Bailey uses magazine articles, advertisements, newpaper columns and interviews to construct the book.
Schoolbook Nation: Joseph Moreau uses textbooks, newspaper articles, and books on textbook writing to present the history of textbooks in America.