Major Work Ideas

[00jitz]

Hi everyone,

I've just started Extension History and am really struggling to find a good (and easy) topic for my major work. I've looked a little bit into the IRA - but it was a little too confusing with the long time period and I struggled to find some specific historians.

I was thinking that maybe I could do something about music history as that is something that really interests me however I'm not sure that would work very well as a topic.

Any advice on what to research or how to go about getting started would be really appreciated.

[katie,rinos]

Hi everyone,

I've just started Extension History and am really struggling to find a good (and easy) topic for my major work. I've looked a little bit into the IRA - but it was a little too confusing with the long time period and I struggled to find some specific historians.

I was thinking that maybe I could do something about music history as that is something that really interests me however I'm not sure that would work very well as a topic.

Any advice on what to research or how to go about getting started would be really appreciated.

Hey,
Welcome to Atar Notes!

I also love music and history and think this would be a great, interesting idea for the major work.

I unfortunately don’t know a lot about the historiography of music but your question needs to fit one of these main questions from the syllabus:
•   Who are historians?
•   What are the purposes of history?
•   How has history been constructed and recorded over time?
•   Why have the approaches to the construction of history changed over time?

For my project one of my early question ideas was to look at the music commissioned under Hitler (or another leader) and how it was used to portray Nazi ideology and German nationalism. It could have been linked to how our history isn’t objective and I wanted to look at differing historians perspectives of the music.I think purposes of history might be interesting to look at as all music is created for a purpose (whether it be military, nationalistic, to make money,etc.) and therefore isn’t objective.

However, do you have a favourite period/genre of music that you would like to look at further? Or a favourite period of history? You could always try to incorporate that into a question. Make sure your question is something that you really enjoy doing because you will spend a whole year doing it.
To start, maybe make a brainstorm of the things you enjoy about/find interesting about both music and history and also research some historians about these to try to make a question. I found it helpful to go to one of the uni libraries (think it was Fisher at Sydney uni) to look through books on two topics I was thinking about and then come to my question.

Also, don’t worry too much if you don’t have a question yet! Mine changed at least three times and still worked out well!

Susie's also written an amazing guide on the major work here if you haven't read so already!
Hope this helped! If you have any other questions, feel free to post them here!