Reflection by Caly McCarthy<\/p>\n
I found Gaddis\u2019 commentary on history as a tool of liberation to be the most significant part of his concluding chapter.\u00a0 I find it compelling because it offers a \u201cso what?\u201d to the entire discipline of history. \u00a0Certainly history is interesting, but is it meaningful beyond the ivory tower?\u00a0 According to Gaddis, it most definitely can be.<\/p>\n
History is not a list of names and dates.\u00a0 It is not merely chronology.\u00a0 It often examines causality and implications \u2013 certainly more relevant, but significant?\u00a0 I think that history is a powerful tool to challenge oppression, both subtle and overt.\u00a0 When leaders harken back to a rosier past, historians have the capacity to break apart monoliths and represent a more nuanced understanding, speaking up for those who did not enjoy the projected past experience.\u00a0 When those in power legitimize their harmful actions with the logic that \u201cit\u2019s always been this way,\u201d historians can demonstrate that very little has \u201calways been.\u201d\u00a0 This observation opens up space for different expressions of gender, beauty, family life, leadership styles, economic systems, etc.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Gaddis says it best when he quips that \u201cthe sources of oppression are lodged in time and are not independent of time\u201d (146).\u00a0 Unlike the molecules that natural scientists are inclined to study, humans do not act in predictable manners.\u00a0 Although this is frustrating to social scientists who seek clear causation to aid predictive models, this should be understood as a sign of hope; humans have the capacity change, and historians have the ability to help them recognize that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reflection by Caly McCarthy I found Gaddis\u2019 commentary on history as a tool of liberation to be the most significant part of his concluding chapter.\u00a0 I find it compelling because it offers a \u201cso what?\u201d to the entire discipline of history. \u00a0Certainly history is interesting, but is it meaningful beyond the ivory tower?\u00a0 According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1972,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119925],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-6-the-landscape-of-history-part-ii","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist204-fall15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}