History Extension Question Thread!

[katie,rinos]

I know this is really simple (and something I've gone over heaps of times) - but can someone please define the different types of history - e.g. modern, post-modern etc?? My teacher never actually explicitly taught it, so I'm trying to study but v confused!

Hey,

Medieval/Early modern: Chronicling the working out of God’s purpose in the world.

Enlightenment: A process from ignorance to truth, intellectual mood was a key feature, was anti-religious as they had a confidence in reasons. Human nature was universal, unchanging and unhistorical.

Romantic: Similar timing to the Enlightenment however a reaction against it, about free expression, creativity and anti-reason, sees history as a thing of beauty not science. See the past as exciting and different, purpose was to find out about the past as something to cherish and preserve.

Scientific (e.g Ranke): Apply methods learnt as a philologist to the study of historical texts in order to achieve objectivity. Helped establish history as a separate discipline from philosophy. Introduced methods, such as source analysis to determine whether a text was true or corrupted by later interpretations.

Empiricism: Experience, which is based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge.

Whig: A British political party whose origin laid in constitutional monarchism opposed to absolute monarchy. Presents the past as an inevitable progression towards liberty and enlightenment. Shows emotions and thoughts of the past.

Nationalist: Assumed the ‘nation-state’ was the primary object of historical study. Historians aim was to study the origins, development of states and their relations with one another.

Relativist: The ‘aspect of things’ changed with the position of the observer. Historians were guided as to what was important in the past, by their present concerns. Therefore, truth is related to the person who wrote it or the time in which it was written.

Total history: A total history of one place at one time, incorporating mentalities, the event and the long term as well as combining with other disciplines such as anthropological, econometric, demographic and more traditional political history.

Public History: Forms of historical representation which are produced outside the academy, either directly addressing a large general audience, or for public, often governmental purposes. Public historians wish to provide history that is accessible and easy to understand by everybody. Examples of public history include museums, historical films, radio, television, historical sites, commemorations, and re-enactments. Public historians believe that anyone can write history. Conversely, academic historians with degrees/qualifications in history and have written books on their subjects (not for a general public audience).

Modernism: Human reason can lead to truth/reality by a logical process. History is progressing, creating scientific laws of behaviour, the belief in morality and ‘eternal truth’. Modernism was rejected due to the horrors of the machine guns of WW1 and the atomic bombs of WW2.

Structuralism: Language reflects our thoughts and the reality around us. Language has a set of laws/structure. Words have an encompassing reality and meanings of words represent different realities for people.

Post-Modernism: A deliberate rejection of modernism. The belief that here is no objective truth, instead knowledge is about creating and maintaining power-relationships. Language is central to our understanding of anything and language is fluid where meanings change and mean different things to different people. Goes as far to say that history is fiction.

Post-structuralism: Questions the stability of meaning and recognises that signifiers and signs are not fixed. Meaning constantly changes so we can only ground our signifiers according to what they are not (e.g cat is not a dog). Therefore, this leads to a constant endless cycle of deferral.

Big History: Looks at the history of humanity as a whole and aims to explain how everything came to be and where everything is going. It is a reaction against post-modernism.

Hope this helps!! 

[penny_yee]

Hi there,
My extension major project is due tomorrow and there is a section I would love some guidance with!
I have to do a critical bibliography which includes a "critical evaluation of three sources that must explain the strengths/weaknesses of each source, its usefulness and reliability and the rationale for its usefulness to the project" etc
I'm really not sure how to approach this.

thanks in advance

[katie,rinos]

Hi there,
My extension major project is due tomorrow and there is a section I would love some guidance with!
I have to do a critical bibliography which includes a "critical evaluation of three sources that must explain the strengths/weaknesses of each source, its usefulness and reliability and the rationale for its usefulness to the project" etc
I'm really not sure how to approach this.

thanks in advance

Hey, Welcome to AN!! 

The source evaluation is on the three most valuable sources of your essay (for mine it was both of my historian's books and a YouTube video of the topic). It's 600 words max, so it's around 200 words each but one of mine was larger then the others. It isn't as big as what you would do in modern and focuses on the strengths/weaknesses, usefulness and reliability and some reasons why it was valuable to your project/argument in your essay. You need to have a strong judgement throughout the source analysis on it's usefulness and reliability to get into the A range.

Some of the things I looked at for reliability included:
Academic qualifications (one was a professor at Harvard)
Methodology (if they used a lot of sources, one was selective in their use of sources, etc.)
Biases (one had a father in a concentration camp)

What I had for usefulness included:
How it had helped me in terms of the project (what I did and didn't get out of this source for my essay)

Hope this helps!! Good luck for your major!!

[penny_yee]

Cheers - this helps a lot!
Is there any way you would structure the evaluation in particular?  Or does it not matter?
Would you have to focus just on the source (in this case it's a quote) or would it be better to analyse the writer of the source?

Hey, Welcome to AN!! 

The source evaluation is on the three most valuable sources of your essay (for mine it was both of my historian's books and a YouTube video of the topic). It's 600 words max, so it's around 200 words each but one of mine was larger then the others. It isn't as big as what you would do in modern and focuses on the strengths/weaknesses, usefulness and reliability and some reasons why it was valuable to your project/argument in your essay. You need to have a strong judgement throughout the source analysis on it's usefulness and reliability to get into the A range.

Some of the things I looked at for reliability included:
Academic qualifications (one was a professor at Harvard)
Methodology (if they used a lot of sources, one was selective in their use of sources, etc.)
Biases (one had a father in a concentration camp)

What I had for usefulness included:
How it had helped me in terms of the project (what I did and didn't get out of this source for my essay)

Hope this helps!! Good luck for your major!!

[kristieevans]

Hey,

Medieval/Early modern: Chronicling the working out of God’s purpose in the world.

Enlightenment: A process from ignorance to truth, intellectual mood was a key feature, was anti-religious as they had a confidence in reasons. Human nature was universal, unchanging and unhistorical.

Romantic: Similar timing to the Enlightenment however a reaction against it, about free expression, creativity and anti-reason, sees history as a thing of beauty not science. See the past as exciting and different, purpose was to find out about the past as something to cherish and preserve.

Scientific (e.g Ranke): Apply methods learnt as a philologist to the study of historical texts in order to achieve objectivity. Helped establish history as a separate discipline from philosophy. Introduced methods, such as source analysis to determine whether a text was true or corrupted by later interpretations.

Empiricism: Experience, which is based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge.

Whig: A British political party whose origin laid in constitutional monarchism opposed to absolute monarchy. Presents the past as an inevitable progression towards liberty and enlightenment. Shows emotions and thoughts of the past.

Nationalist: Assumed the ‘nation-state’ was the primary object of historical study. Historians aim was to study the origins, development of states and their relations with one another.

Relativist: The ‘aspect of things’ changed with the position of the observer. Historians were guided as to what was important in the past, by their present concerns. Therefore, truth is related to the person who wrote it or the time in which it was written.

Total history: A total history of one place at one time, incorporating mentalities, the event and the long term as well as combining with other disciplines such as anthropological, econometric, demographic and more traditional political history.

Public History: Forms of historical representation which are produced outside the academy, either directly addressing a large general audience, or for public, often governmental purposes. Public historians wish to provide history that is accessible and easy to understand by everybody. Examples of public history include museums, historical films, radio, television, historical sites, commemorations, and re-enactments. Public historians believe that anyone can write history. Conversely, academic historians with degrees/qualifications in history and have written books on their subjects (not for a general public audience).

Modernism: Human reason can lead to truth/reality by a logical process. History is progressing, creating scientific laws of behaviour, the belief in morality and ‘eternal truth’. Modernism was rejected due to the horrors of the machine guns of WW1 and the atomic bombs of WW2.

Structuralism: Language reflects our thoughts and the reality around us. Language has a set of laws/structure. Words have an encompassing reality and meanings of words represent different realities for people.

Post-Modernism: A deliberate rejection of modernism. The belief that here is no objective truth, instead knowledge is about creating and maintaining power-relationships. Language is central to our understanding of anything and language is fluid where meanings change and mean different things to different people. Goes as far to say that history is fiction.

Post-structuralism: Questions the stability of meaning and recognises that signifiers and signs are not fixed. Meaning constantly changes so we can only ground our signifiers according to what they are not (e.g cat is not a dog). Therefore, this leads to a constant endless cycle of deferral.

Big History: Looks at the history of humanity as a whole and aims to explain how everything came to be and where everything is going. It is a reaction against post-modernism.

Hope this helps!! 

That's awesome, thank you so much!

[katie,rinos]

Cheers - this helps a lot!
Is there any way you would structure the evaluation in particular?  Or does it not matter?
Would you have to focus just on the source (in this case it's a quote) or would it be better to analyse the writer of the source?

Hey,
I don’t think there is a specific way the source analysis needs to be structured. For mine, I had a paragraph on each source. I started with the evaluation of its reliability with points for and against. Then the second half of my paragraph was on it’s usefulness and it’s value to my project.

I had points on both the source and the writer/historian, however I think it might be best to focus a bit more on the source.

Hope this helps!! (sorry its a little late)

[owidjaja]

Hey there,
For the annotated bibliography, are we allowed to use first-person?

[sudodds]

Hey there,
For the annotated bibliography, are we allowed to use first-person?

You most certainly can!

[Never.Give.Up]

Hey there,
Just wondering- should I use footnotes or endnotes for my major work?
thanks heaps 

[katie,rinos]

Hey there,
Just wondering- should I use footnotes or endnotes for my major work?
thanks heaps 

Hey,
I don't think it matters too much either way. I did footnotes for my essay because that is what my teacher asked us to do, however I think if you are hoping to enter your essay into the HTA prize they expect endnotes.

Hope this helps!! 

[jeremyquigg]

Hey!
I'm struggling with the initial stages of essay writing for extension. Any chance this source could be annotated with some talking points because im not too sure what i can pull apart and link.
Any help would be much appreciated!
thankyou


Among the distinctions historians customarily invoke when describing their
discipline is the difference between history and the past. The past is conceived to
include everything that ever happened, recorded or not; history, in contrast, is what
historians represent the past to have been …
Parallel to the distinction between history and the past there exists a second, less
frequently noted distinction between evidence and the remains of the past. The
remains of the past comprise what survives of everything that ever happened;
evidence consists of those remains that historians use in making histories …
But unlike the past, remains constitute an actual, not a virtual, reality and are thus
subject to the effects of time. Not everything in the past has left traces, and not all
traces have survived. In the absence of remains, there can be no evidence, and in
the absence of evidence, there can be no history.
But what constitutes evidence? This question has evoked two contrasting responses
from historians over the past half century. On the one hand, the definition of
evidence has expanded dramatically. From a heavy reliance on written documents,
historians have graduated to a more latitudinarian* approach that welcomes
scientific data on climate change and crop yields, medical records on health and
disease, anthropological data such as peasant tales, and material culture such as
pots and plowshares, not to mention elements of popular culture such as movies,
perfumes, and rock lyrics. Written documents, too, have been subjected to new
analysis …
Yet as the breadth of the potential evidence has grown, so have doubts about its
interpretation. The hypertrophy** of data has coincided with the realisation that
their meanings remain elusive, conferred by the interpreter rather than imposed

by the evidence. Never have historians had so much evidence at their disposal;
never has there been so much mistrust about what the evidence shows. How do the
multiple pieces of the past cohere***? What is the common thread linking literary
texts, religious art, popular songs, marriage customs, and farm implements? That
human beings created all these things may not be enough to confer an integrated
meaning on clues that are not clearly linked or on witnesses of uncertain authority.
This difficulty is particularly characteristic of the realm of values, beliefs, and
attitudes — culture in the broadest sense …
The desire to push history to the very edge of documentary evidence has produced
both exhilarating vistas and a significant unease at the prospect that the ground
where historians stand, gazing into the past may suddenly give way. On the one
hand … historians currently enjoy a bracing sense of adventure; on the other, they
are struggling to impose coherence on what threatens at times to become nothing
more than a … tale.

[katie,rinos]

Hey!
I'm struggling with the initial stages of essay writing for extension. Any chance this source could be annotated with some talking points because im not too sure what i can pull apart and link.
Any help would be much appreciated!
thankyou


Among the distinctions historians customarily invoke when describing their
discipline is the difference between history and the past. The past is conceived to
include everything that ever happened, recorded or not; history, in contrast, is what
historians represent the past to have been …
Parallel to the distinction between history and the past there exists a second, less
frequently noted distinction between evidence and the remains of the past. The
remains of the past comprise what survives of everything that ever happened;
evidence consists of those remains that historians use in making histories …
But unlike the past, remains constitute an actual, not a virtual, reality and are thus
subject to the effects of time. Not everything in the past has left traces, and not all
traces have survived. In the absence of remains, there can be no evidence, and in
the absence of evidence, there can be no history.
But what constitutes evidence? This question has evoked two contrasting responses
from historians over the past half century. On the one hand, the definition of
evidence has expanded dramatically. From a heavy reliance on written documents,
historians have graduated to a more latitudinarian* approach that welcomes
scientific data on climate change and crop yields, medical records on health and
disease, anthropological data such as peasant tales, and material culture such as
pots and plowshares, not to mention elements of popular culture such as movies,
perfumes, and rock lyrics. Written documents, too, have been subjected to new
analysis …
Yet as the breadth of the potential evidence has grown, so have doubts about its
interpretation. The hypertrophy** of data has coincided with the realisation that
their meanings remain elusive, conferred by the interpreter rather than imposed

by the evidence. Never have historians had so much evidence at their disposal;
never has there been so much mistrust about what the evidence shows. How do the
multiple pieces of the past cohere***? What is the common thread linking literary
texts, religious art, popular songs, marriage customs, and farm implements? That
human beings created all these things may not be enough to confer an integrated
meaning on clues that are not clearly linked or on witnesses of uncertain authority.
This difficulty is particularly characteristic of the realm of values, beliefs, and
attitudes — culture in the broadest sense …
The desire to push history to the very edge of documentary evidence has produced
both exhilarating vistas and a significant unease at the prospect that the ground
where historians stand, gazing into the past may suddenly give way. On the one
hand … historians currently enjoy a bracing sense of adventure; on the other, they
are struggling to impose coherence on what threatens at times to become nothing
more than a … tale.

Hey, Welcome to AN!! 

The way I planned my essays and tried to pull apart the source was by first reading over the source a couple of times. I then highlighted the main points/arguments that would refer/link to the question (around 3/4 points) and state if I agreed/disagreed with them. I would then link the historians to my points and briefly explain why.

These are the arguments that I got (although you definitely could have got different ones).
To what extent has the changing nature of 'evidence' influenced approaches to history over time?

Among the distinctions historians customarily invoke when describing their discipline is the difference between history and the past. The past is conceived to include everything that ever happened, recorded or not; history, in contrast, is what historians represent the past to have been …

Parallel to the distinction between history and the past there exists a second, less frequently noted distinction between evidence and the remains of the past. The remains of the past comprise what survives of everything that ever happened; evidence consists of those remains that historians use in making histories …

But unlike the past, remains constitute an actual, not a virtual, reality and are thus subject to the effects of time. Not everything in the past has left traces, and not all traces have survived. In the absence of remains, there can be no evidence, and in the absence of evidence, there can be no history.

But what constitutes evidence? This question has evoked two contrasting responses from historians over the past half century. On the one hand, the definition of evidence has expanded dramatically. From a heavy reliance on written documents, historians have graduated to a more latitudinarian* approach that welcomes scientific data on climate change and crop yields, medical records on health and disease, anthropological data such as peasant tales, and material culture such as pots and plowshares, not to mention elements of popular culture such as movies, perfumes, and rock lyrics. Written documents, too, have been subjected to new analysis …

Yet as the breadth of the potential evidence has grown, so have doubts about its interpretation. The hypertrophy** of data has coincided with the realisation that their meanings remain elusive, conferred by the interpreter rather than imposed by the evidence. Never have historians had so much evidence at their disposal; never has there been so much mistrust about what the evidence shows. How do the multiple pieces of the past cohere***? What is the common thread linking literary texts, religious art, popular songs, marriage customs, and farm implements? That human beings created all these things may not be enough to confer an integrated meaning on clues that are not clearly linked or on witnesses of uncertain authority. This difficulty is particularly characteristic of the realm of values, beliefs, and attitudes — culture in the broadest sense …

The desire to push history to the very edge of documentary evidence has produced both exhilarating vistas and a significant unease at the prospect that the ground where historians stand, gazing into the past may suddenly give way. On the one hand … historians currently enjoy a bracing sense of adventure; on the other, they are struggling to impose coherence on what threatens at times to become nothing more than a … tale.
My arguments were:
Beliefs about evidence and it's ability to uncover the truth affects our interpretations [Carr, Ranke, Postmodernists]
Evidence has expanded, opening up new histories, interpretations and analysis. [Annales, public history]
Changing evidence means mistrust about what it shows [Carr: 'history is what historians make of it']
Old Accepted forms of history are now giving way/dying and changing how history is produced [Academic v. Popular history?]

Hope this helps 

[vic321]

Hi,

I need some help for my case study: Elizabeth I, does anyone happen to have any notes on her?? Also i don't really know how to structure a section II essay about her.... tips plzzz

Thanks!

[katie,rinos]

Hi,

I need some help for my case study: Elizabeth I, does anyone happen to have any notes on her?? Also i don't really know how to structure a section II essay about her.... tips plzzz

Thanks!

Hey,
Unfortunately, I didn't study Elizabeth I, and there doesn't seem to be any notes in the notes section about her.

For my section 2 essays, I mainly did paragraphs on each of my main historians context and methodology and then linked this to how it affected their interpretation of events. I also tried to have links between the different historians and to the question throughout my essay. However, it can also be written thematically by looking at some of the main themes between your schools of history and relating them to the question.

Hope this helps!! 

[EmzieRose]

Has anyone else handed in and received their majors back from marking yet? I recently got mine and was warned that she marked harshly due to her students last year getting dragged down because they were marked easy. I received 39/50 where I lost marks linking and also my log book was quite "detached" (Which I 100% understand because I didn't really put effort into it).

There were a few bits and pieces here and there where I should have also linked to science (My project question was "Assess the Justifiability regarding the Myth of Atlantis being a Critical part of the Historical Past) but overall my teacher said that I handed in a thoroughly researched project with excellent historiography.

Any advice I could give to future students - just because a section is 5 marks doesn't mean you can slack off. DO EVERYTHING TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY!!!