Re: Art History Debates

thefool75 <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Wed, 26 Feb 2003 06:00:56 -0000

Are you a new M.A. student?  I did a fair amount of historiography 
in my M.A. program but even much of that was primary source work 
while virtually all of my Ph.D. history work was primary source 
related--you read historians in seminars of course--but more as a 
sounding board and context for one's own work--as well as for 
comps...I would have to say that it completely misstates the case to 
say that grad students in history primarily study other historians--
most of my time was spent rummaging around in revolutionary war era 
British colonial documents and in various Puritan publications..that 
sort of thing pretty much goes for every other history grad student 
that I've known as well....

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, dargan_w <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> In thinking about what Guy and others have said about art history, 
> I'd like to point out that it applies to history in general.  
We've 
> had this discussion on here before -- Upper level and grad 
students 
> in history study events almost as an aside, what we mainly study 
are 
> other historians and their ideas and theories.  Modern historians 
> (as opposed to Herodotus or Edward Gibbon) do come up every once 
in 
> awhile, but it's rare.  I personally think Peter Brown, James 
Scott, 
> and Ian Kershaw (just to give a couple examples) are as relevant 
as 
> Cindy Thompson, but let's face it, most rooms would give me blank 
> stares on those names.  
> 
> Anyway, it is very interesting that science questions often tend 
to 
> ask about practitioners of science, which angers the science folks 
> because that is not what they study... while at the same time, 
> history questions (as opposed to questions in the social sciences, 
> which I emphatically believe history is not) almost never ask 
about 
> our practitioners, historians, which is what we actually study at 
> least in graduate school.  I really am not sure what relevance 
this 
> has to the way questions should be written, because I think for 
the 
> most part questions should reflect the desires of the players, and 
> even most history players would rather hear a tossup on Hitler 
than 
> on Kershaw.  Anyway, this was a pretty random rant, but I think it 
> does point to a basic difference in the way we ask about the 
> sciences and the humanities.
> 
> peace and collard greens,
> Dargan