But in this class I'm really
00:33
focused on teaching you about historical methods.
00:35
And as you're gonna see, I've organized
00:38
our exploration of historical methods
00:41
around the theme of disaster,
00:43
and I'm excited about the chance to read and think
00:44
about that theme with you in the coming ten weeks.
00:47
But first off, I just want to explain where I am.
00:51
So this is my living room and I
00:53
will be coming to mostly from this space.
00:56
As far as I know, we'll see what the quarter brings.
01:00
And I also just want acknowledged,
01:03
even though we're getting used to this,
01:05
it's a little bit strange.
I want to turn to just talking a little bit about history
02:10
100 and kind of what this class is designed to do.
02:12
So sometimes we will call it Bootcamp for history majors.
02:16
And I think that's kind of accurate.
02:19
We're really going to be working through some of
02:21
the nitty gritty dimensions,
02:22
becoming historians from footnoting nobody's favorite,
02:24
but I'm going to try and convince you
02:28
a deeply important practice.
02:29
But also the kind of conceptual questions.
02:31
How do we think about the past?
02:34
What are the tools we have available
02:36
to us to understand the past?
02:37
So that's definitely part of
02:40
what we're going to be doing is really
02:41
making you feel in command as a historian.
02:43
So I have three big goals then for this class.
02:47
So one is to deepen
02:50
your initiation into the Guild of historians.
02:52
That is really making sure that you
02:55
have a deep understanding of how historians.
02:58
And tried to understand the world what it
03:01
means to think historically.
03:03
And we're gonna kind of get
03:05
into the mechanics of
03:07
evidence and how we develop problems.
03:09
But also some really kinda
03:10
philosophical questions about how it
03:12
is that we think we can understand
03:14
the past and why we bother to do so.
03:15
So this is really a kind of deep exploration of
03:18
what it means to be a historian and to
03:22
help you feel confident as a historian.
03:24
And the other more kind
03:26
of maybe prosaic objective of this class
03:29
is to prepare you for the exit seminars that are
03:32
the other major requirement for all history majors.
03:35
So if History 100 is
03:38
the only class that every single history major takes,
03:40
every history major also will complete
03:43
a major research project in an exit seminar.
03:45
And part of the objective of this class is to
03:48
make sure you go into that research seminar really
03:50
confident in your command of
03:52
the basic process of research from
03:55
coming up with a topic or research question,
03:57
executing a research strategy and then formulating
04:00
a really excellent research paper where you have time to
04:03
work on the skills of writing with great attention.
04:06
So that's part of,
04:10
that's the second big goal.
04:11
One the esoteric one getting you
04:13
to feel yourself to be a historian.
04:14
The second one is to get you feeling really prepared
04:17
and to kind of recognize
04:20
your own expertise going into that exit seminar.
04:22
And, and I think the third objective is to
04:25
give you an opportunity to actually get
04:29
your feet wet and doing some research.
04:31
Some of you will have done
04:33
research projects in other classes.
04:34
Some of you may have not.
04:36
But together over the course of this quarter,
04:37
you will each be developing your own research project
04:40
where you will undertake all of
04:42
the steps from coming up with a topic,
04:44
formulating a problem, gathering sources,
04:46
doing basically everything that you would do in
04:49
an exit seminar short of writing the final paper.
04:51
And we're going to be focusing
04:55
on developing that project
04:57
over the course of the quarter through doing
04:58
a variety of tasks together,
05:00
but also some of the things that you're
05:02
gonna undertake on your own.
05:03
So if that's the kind of the overview of what I really,
05:06
I'm hoping for you to accomplish
05:09
over the course of this quarter.
05:10
And the last thing I want to talk about briefly in
05:12
this introductory video is to say a
05:16
little bit about why I chose the theme of disaster.
05:18
And lots of different faculty teach
05:21
this course and we
05:23
each approach it a little bit differently.
05:24
And I selected the theme of
05:26
disaster for really three reasons.
05:28
I mean, one is pretty obvious, one,
05:30
this feeling that we are bombarded by
05:32
disasters at every turn and the sense that this
05:34
has been a reality for some time and is
05:38
likely to continue being reality going forward.
05:40
And so as a historian,
05:43
I kind of responded to that anxiety producing experience
05:45
by turning to the tools of history to try to
05:49
understand why is this happening now?
05:52
What does this look like in the past?
05:55
How have people understand disasters in the past?
05:56
They even think of them as disasters.
05:59
And all those kinds of questions are ones
06:01
I've been asking and I thought it
06:02
would be a really useful pathway into thinking about
06:04
historical methodologies to consider
06:08
the category of disaster in historical context.
06:11
So that's one reason why that's the theme of this class.
06:14
But the other two reasons is that I think that
06:17
disasters as a historical subject really
06:21
illustrate the two fundamental features of
06:24
historical inquiry that I'm going to
06:26
keep returning to over the course of the quarter.
06:28
So one of them is that trying to understand
06:30
a disaster requires analysis.
06:33
The first question we asked in
06:36
the wake of a disaster is Why,
06:38
why did it happen?
06:40
Why did it happen now?
06:41
Why did it happen here?
06:43
And in order to answer those questions,
06:44
you have to pursue a series of
06:46
analytical engagements to get
06:48
to an answer that's meaningful.
06:51
And so why is the kind of
06:52
question of first resort for historians?
06:54
And I feel like disasters really
06:56
kind of put us right away down that path.
06:58
And so that's part of why I think it's
07:00
a really useful tool or kind
07:02
of point of entry into historical research.
07:05
So it engages us right away in
07:09
the analytical process of historical research.
07:11
But the third part of this story is that I think
07:14
disasters also require us to think about narrative.
07:17
This is the other fundamental tool of History.
07:21
Historians tell stories,
07:24
but we tell stories within certain parameters.
07:26
Rules of evidence, rules of veracity and
07:29
truthfulness, rules of legibility.
07:31
That as we're speaking to other actual people,
07:34
we want to understand what we're saying.
07:36
And so in order to make sense of a disaster,
07:38
historians don't just kind of
07:42
gathered data or put together tables.
07:44
So they might do that.
07:46
They think about how it is that
07:47
once you've gathered all this evidence,
07:49
we can pull it together into a story
07:50
that other people will be able to understand,
07:53
that other people be able to respond to and grapple with.
07:56
And so part of the way we deal with
08:00
the traumatic experience of a disaster is to use
08:03
the tools of narrative to try
08:06
to make it make sense to figure out
08:09
that story of what happened and why it
08:11
happened and be able to offer it in
08:13
a coherent form that other people can encounter in use.
08:15
So I think my hope is that
08:19
in working together around this theme,
08:22
we can really think about
08:24
those two fundamental features of
08:25
historical work and analysis and narrative.
08:27
And we're gonna see that as we look at
08:31
disasters in different places and times and
08:33
also as you embark on your own research projects
08:35
in that direction.
08:37
So I think I'll leave it there.
Video excerpt 2
And I just wanted to tell you
00:03
a little bit about the readings that
00:04
you'll be doing this week in the first week of class.
00:06
So the first two readings that
00:09
are due on Monday and the ones you'll be
00:11
writing a discussion post about
00:13
our two readings that I hope will kind of orient you
00:15
to the topic and give you a sense of how it
00:18
is that some historians approach the study of disaster.
00:21
So the first article
00:24
is by the journalist Catherine Schulz,
00:25
published in The New Yorker,
00:28
which is a popular interest magazine
00:29
that publishes all kinds of reporting on politics,
00:32
culture, as well as fiction and all kinds of things.
00:34
And this article which won quite a few prices,
00:37
Schultz is writing a kind of history
00:40
of an event that has yet to happen.
00:43
And so in some ways,
00:45
I think it really illustrates how it is that
00:47
we look to the past
00:50
and some ways to understand the future.
00:52
And so one of the things I want you to keep your eyes out
00:54
for as you read this article is
00:56
the different kinds of evidence that Shultz
00:59
relies on and integrates in developing this,
01:02
basically an argument that
01:05
the Pacific Northwest is going to be
01:07
hit by a massive earthquake.
01:09
And that it's a matter of when not whether it will happen.
01:11
So, so think about how she
01:15
uses different kinds of evidence to tell that story.
01:17
The second piece is a short article,
01:19
really an interview with
01:22
three historians who write the history of disasters.
01:23
And it's published in
01:27
a magazine called The American historian.
01:29
And its primary audience is really academics.
01:31
It's the publication of
01:34
the Organization of American Historians,
01:36
which is a professional organization
01:37
for historians in the United States primarily.
01:39
But it's a useful article because they
01:42
really are laid out in very explicit terms
01:45
how they think about disaster and how
01:47
the category of disaster has changed over time.
01:49
So really think about the way they
01:52
define disaster and how it
01:54
might be useful for you as you
01:56
think about your own research topics.
01:58
So if that's the kind of content reading,
02:00
the other readings that I've assigned for this week
02:02
are focused on the skill of reading.
02:05
Now, I know you all are all excellent readers, right?
02:07
You've gotten into the University of California.
02:11
I know you're literate,
02:13
but I want to argue that to be a historian,
02:14
you have to be able to read with unusual skill.
02:17
And part of the skill that historians bring to
02:21
reading is a very nuanced understanding
02:23
of the different kinds of texts that they work with
02:26
and the different kinds of readings those texts require.
02:29
So part of what
02:32
these different and brief essays about
02:34
reading layout are different techniques for reading.
02:36
So one article by my friend and
02:39
excellent historian Caleb McDaniel,
02:41
that's really oriented towards students.
02:43
Some are really about reading
02:46
specifically academic articles which
02:48
you're going to be doing a lot of.
02:50
They have their own kind of peculiarities.
02:52
And so it gives you a sense of how to
02:54
tackle an academic article.
02:55
But we're also, I'm also having you read
02:58
about how to read visual sources.
03:00
So we're gonna be thinking about the idea
03:02
of reading as something you can apply to texts,
03:04
but also to objects, to visual materials.
03:07
And so I want you to read these things
03:11
carefully and think about
03:13
your own approach to reading, you know,
03:15
what are skills that you
03:16
already feel like, you know, are,
03:17
what are things that are new
03:19
that might be useful to hold onto.
03:20
And I'm going to ask you to reflect on how it is you're
03:22
going to approach the work of reading for this class,
03:24
which is going to be kind of
03:26
fundamental mechanism by which you're
03:28
going to be extracting information.
03:30
So I want you to become
03:32
really sophisticated, savvy readers.
03:33
And these articles are designed to help you
03:37
think about approaching that task.
03:39
Alright, so that's it for getting started for this week.
03:41
And I look forward to hearing
03:44
what you make of these materials in
03:46
your discussion posts and when
03:47
we meet in person, thanks, bye.
subaru93
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