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Saturday, June 18, 2016

What is History?

Australian War Memorial

In the same vein as the blog I put together on Dr Philip SA Cummins' lecture for the HTA HSC Senior Study Day, here are my notes from Dr Paul Kiem's session on approaching the What is History? section of the Extension History syllabus, also from the same day.

Dr Kiem puts an emphasis on students adopting an 'overview understanding' of history, something that essentially encompasses the following areas:
  • Prehistory/oral tradition
  • The emergence of the organised narrative via early historians (Herodotus, Thucydides, Bede).
  • The Enlightenment and the birth of rationality (Gibbon)
  • Academia and the question of whether history can seen as a science (Ranke)
  • The crises of WWI and WWII and how this led to postmodernism in historical thought (Carr, Jenkins, Evans)
  • A broader view of history that engages with the discipline's continuing development
Dr Kiem has a relatable and easy-to-follow method for approaching Question 1 of the Extension History HSC, in which students are encouraged to look at the debates and themes of historiography as 'building blocks', and this is demonstrated in a great resource here, on Youtube:


A student's success in Question 1 is directly related to their ability to call into play various arguments that historians have battled it out over in the past or continue to contest today. Better yet, a great Extension History student will be able to draw comparisons between the same arguments made in two different eras in order to show a sense of perspective and (hopefully) their own personal position in relation to said arguments.

Some examples of the big ideas historians have debated:
  • What impact has postmodernism had on history?
  • What does Australian history tell us about history?
  • Can there be a universal history that applies to everyone?
  • Is history a science or a form of literature?
  • Is history possible or desirable? That is, can we ever truthfully represent the past?
  • To what extent is history a reflection of today's politics?
  • Will Hollywood take over if historians abandon the field? And, if so, what would be the impact of this?
  • To what extent do the stories need to be told by those who see the difference between the past, the memory and history?
  • What is the influence of metanarratives (such as national identities) on history?
  • Who should take precedence in the academic vs. public history debate on the different purposes of history?
  • Who does history belong to? The academics or the public? Or the government? Amateurs? 
  • What role does the digital revolution play? Think: source preservation, 'culture of abundance', digitisation as a tool for the democratisation of history, history becoming more dynamic and collaborative, archives also moving our understanding beyond narrative histories. 
Dr Kiem also highlights the importance of students demonstrating an understanding of history now. Things like the commemoration of ANZAC and the national ongoing debates in Australia over its purpose, value, and contestability. Remember Scott McIntyre? (follow this link for his controversial tweets about ANZAC Day).

Or what about the digital revolution and the how this is impacting on the way history is written now? Check out this recent story about an American high school student using the internet to prove a History professor wrong (follow this link).

And what of the future of history? There's the Big History project, which combines hard science with history to tell a narrative that emphases the prevalence of patterns rather than people in the ebbs and flows of historical change. And there's Francis Fukuyama, who posits a new concept of history in light of the way the end of the Cold War threw our idea of everything into doubt.

The possibilities are endless. Students need to look at a range of these debates and familiarise themselves with the ones that they understand best, and be able to use these historical arguments in relation to a range of questions.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Post-Post-Modernism



Dr Philip SA Cummins, author of Clio's Scroll, gave a great talk about post-modernism at this year's HTA Senior History HSC Study Day, essentially encapsulating the What is History? module of the Extension Course within his own philosophy in the space of just an hour.

The title of the session 'Post-post-modernism' sounds intimidating but - mercifully - the lecture was only partially focused on this, and instead students were given an overview of historiography in the broader sense. Dr Cummins made it clear from the outset that Extension History is less about 'doing' history and more about being an historian - which is to say that, as Extension History teachers, we require fresh thinking from our students about history.

One of the big questions that often comes up with Extension History is; Is there such a thing as absolute truth? The historian EH Carr summarised history as being about things that happened in the past, and our attempts to record those events. It's a process rather than an absolute truth. We can work towards this truth, but getting there is perhaps irrelevant due to its impossibility.

Dr Cummins goes a little further in specifying that historians more or less ask questions about three things:
  1. Agency - how things happen and who does them?
  2. Causation - why things happen and to what effect?
  3. Relative merit (significance) - how important are things in determining agency and causation?
And in order to get there, historians explore the following:
  • Can we escape our contexts?
  • Can we capture the past accurately?
  • Can we express an individual truth or interpretation?
  • Can we find ourselves in the past?
  • Can we exist free of our past and present?
  • Can we express our own views?
  • Can we impose an individual mark on history?
  • Can we discover our heroes in the past?
  • Can our heroes help us to be heroes?
  • Can we be heroes ourselves?
  • Can we capture the truth about past events?
  • Can we determine any meaning from these events?
  • Can we tell the story of the past in order to communicate this meaning?  
So using this as his jumping-off point, Dr Cummins segmented his story of history into four broad areas, and I've used his lecture and framework to discuss his ideas in my own words below (mainly for my own Extension History students - hi guys!).

1. The Enlightenment - the Empirical and Liberal traditions
The Enlightenment period began in the latter half of the 18th Century. In most understandings of the term, it's considered to be a Western/European tradition (although there are dissenting voices who make strong arguments for the emergence of the Enlightenment in other parts of the world, such as Japan) and for the intents and purposes of high school Extension History it's best to consider it in tandem with all the Eurocentric -isms that we tackle in Modern History. Meaning that the Enlightenment is easiest understood within the context of the rise of the West as the pre-eminent power of the modern world - emerging alongside (or just prior to) industrialisation, liberalism, nationalism, Eurocentrism, and imperialism.  

In terms of History, the Enlightenment prompted the 'celebration, categorisation and recording of orthodoxies'. It was a movement of intellectuals who came to prominence in the context of the same environment that produced the French Revolution; challenging the old feudal Church-run order in which information remained clandestine and elitist, and bringing education to the masses by applying structures to knowledge in previously-unparalleled detail. As part of this vanguard, historians such as Edward Gibbon brought to bear a more rigorous kind of inquiry to retell the past in narrative form for everyday people.

This is what is known as the empirical tradition - a primary source-based approach that dominates historical method from the 18th Century onwards. History was seen a truthful depiction of the past, and this led to the famous 19th Century historian Leopold Von Ranke and his assertion that history is a science - one in which the historian utilises a scientific methodology to locate and use primary sources to tell history 'as it essentially was'. That is, Ranke believed that it was entirely possible to present history objectively.

French Revolution
During this time, empiricism became the 'gold standard' for historical work. Historians adopted Ranke's model and attitude in elevating primary sources to centre-stage and asking the following generic questions to bring the past to the present: What do primary sources say? What happened? When did it happen? How did it happen? Why was it done?
    2. Modernism - the Relativist Challenge
    The rise of modernism as an intellectual movement is sometimes misunderstood and misinterpreted as something that exists only in relation to what came after it; post-modernism. It is, nonetheless, worth examining on its own terms as a set of ideas that developed across the turn of the 20th Century within the framework of the Fin de siecle, a period characterised by the relative peace and optimism that prompted European growth between the 1890s and the breakout of war in 1914.

    This was a time of social progression and celebration, and although WWI interrupted it in a rather brutal fashion, the revisionist and anti-traditionalist ideas that influenced the art and literature and historiography of the period continued unabated into the 1920s and 1930s. This can be seen in concepts as diverse as psychology, art deco, fascism and early feminism. There was a new focus on subjectivity (IE. The self). Intellectuals asked, what are the real structures of our society once we do away with notions of imperialism and Western superiority? If each person is a product of their social, economic and cultural upbringing, then how can an objective vision of the past be presented?

    The relativists of the modern age, represented so memorably by the anti-empiricist journalist and historian EH Carr, said that the past only exists in one form or another because it's what we agree happened. What we know is relative, and is not the same as what someone else knows. Therefore, facts exists because we want them to exist. Facts are subjective because they have been selected by the historian.

    EH Carr
    We can see the edge of post-modernism here. For those of us with the hindsight of 21st Century historical thinking, it's not much of a leap of thought to say that facts are selected not just by historians but by those in power.

    In his lecture, Dr Cummins presented this quote by Carr, "When we attempt to answer the question 'what is history?' our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question of what view we take of the society in which we live". This drives home the idea that caused so many to break from Ranke's view of history as a science - history can only be understood in relation to ourselves.

    Therefore, the modern relativist historians ask: Who is the author? What is the motive of the author? How reliable is the text? How do we relate to the text? How can we manage our understanding of the author's and our own biases to create a use for the text?

    Dr Philip SA Cummins said that he uses this as an opportunity to remind history students that bias is not the 'bad' thing they've grown up thinking it is. In his words, and I paraphrase here, "Bias is good because it helps us identify the debates that fuel the approach to history an author has taken".

    3. Post-modernism - Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction and the Voice of the 'Other'

    Ah yes, post-modernism. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate? I'm going to drop the hyphen from this point on because, well, in the framework of postmodernism there's no right or wrong way to present it in terms of grammar.

    See what I did there?

    A goodly amount of students (and adults) become incredibly discombobulated at the mention of postmodernism and, I have to say, as much as I probably see myself as a postmodernist, it doesn't matter how many times I hear people define it - I always feel like it I would be quite happy to hear someone else talk about it. There's always more for me to learn about it. Or perhaps it's just that it's still yet to truly be defined, and never will be.

    All that Extension History students need to know about postmodernism is that it was the wholesale rejection of truth and objectivity that followed the emergence of relativism. It is relativism taken to its extreme; an identification of the power relationships that gave birth to each version of history that we're presented with. And the recognition that history is always a version of events, and that there is no possibly truthful way to present the past.

    Postmodernism exists as a criticism of the middle class/capitalist rule of the world, and as a celebration of 'the other' in the latter half of the 20th Century - the 'other' being those marginalised by the dichotomies of the Cold War, and those brought to the fore by the process of decolonisation that rapidly changed the political landscape of the undeveloped and developing worlds of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The postmodernist historian wants to deconstruct historical narratives to de-centre the powerful elites that these narratives reinforce. Postmodernist histories represent ethnic minorities, women, lower social classes, non-binary sexualities... all those who have been disadvantaged or discriminated against by the mainstream elements of Western society.  

    Under this model, history is therefore seen as a political text, and a discourse of social construction and personal perspective, in response to which we should ask: cui bono, which translates as: for whose benefit was the text prepared? History is no longer a search for truth, it's a dismantling of lies. The postmodernist historian should therefore also ask: How does this deconstruction help us to understand the relationship of the historical text to the power structures that created and authorised it? To what extend are we bound to accept the perspective of the author? Is there a better way f looking at the past? Have we made sure that we have noticed the 'other'?

    So if postmodernism makes it impossible for us to ascertain the truth of the past then what's the point of it? Well, Dr Cummins joyfully asserted that, whilst he is the first to concede that postmodernism is hard to read, it is still incredibly valuable as a tool within the context of analysing history and its historians. Things that Dr Cummins wants us to consider in regards to why postmodernism should be important to us:
    • We can recognise the influence of "narrative, metanarrative and myth" - people want to write stories and usually these conform to conventional story structures and cultural icons, myths and legends.
    • We can understand that these stories are often if not always framed around ideas and structures of power.
    • We can acknowledge that histories are written for someone's benefit, and that this is usually the person who authorised and supported the production of the history, as opposed to the 'other'.
    • We can recognise that a historian's method and training can inherently privilege one or more perspectives from within the cycle of these power relations.
    • We can use tools of analysis to deconstruct the work of other historians, and;
    • We are reminded of the voice of the 'other'.  
    Jacob de Wit's 1754 painting depicts a naked Truth keeping a watchful eye over those who write history.

    A way to separate these three approaches to history is to think of them in these terms:
    1. Empirical - there is a truth. Fact plus opinion will equal a history, and a definitive history is entirely possible. "History is the servant of the past".
    2. Modernism - there is a struggle between truth and the bias of the historian. "History is the servant of the present".  
    3. Postmodernism - there is no truth. Ever. "History is the servant of an idea".
    4. Post-Post-Postmodernism

    And that brings us to a contemporary perspective. What comes after postmodernism? The answer isn't a movement but an opportunity; the 21st Century presents the historian with an opportunity to remove old ideologies and political theories and instead map out and claim a genuine historical methodology that is integrated with other disciplines and concepts. There are still critical arguments about whether a historian can achieve authenticity or determine the truthful nature of things. Are there any absolutes? Where role does the post-Cold War, post-9/11 rise of fundamentalism play? Is relativism morally bankrupt? Can pluralism (political and cultural diversity) replace the 20th century Eurocentric model of historical understanding?

    Dr Cummins took the opportunity to highlight a whole range of debates and issues that have arisen in this new arena of "intense social and technological change":
    • What is the impact of technology, social networking, complexty, ubiquity, globalisation, and supermodernity?
    • What of the supposed 'end' of history and triumph of the West vs. the rise of China, Islam and global decolonisation? 
    • Neo-conservatism vs. the 'third' way? (A reference to the ongoing search for a more socialist vision that doesn't go down the path that communism went down in the 20th Century)
    • And what of the seemingly inescapable victory of democratic power structures and improvements in living conditions vs. the entrenched inequities of wealth, capital and international corporate power?
    • Or the history wars that play out ongoing battles between orthodoxy, revisionism and counter-revisionism? 
    • How do we embed the voice of 'the other' within traditional history?
    The questions that post-post-modernists find themselves asking are: Can we tell an authentic and valid story about the past?What philosophies of history should inform our perspectives? How can we free ourselves from thinking politically and imposing ideology on history?Are there patterns or are historical contexts unique? Can we represent the authentic voice of history? How do we do it whilst entertaining and holding today's audience's attention?

    The lecture finishes with Dr Cummins sharing some philosophies of post-postmodernist historians. Here are two that I found interesting:
    1. Bernard Bailyn says that historians are just trying to get as close to an accurate representation of the past as possible. The result is less important than the process.
    2. John Lewis Gaddis says (and I really love this) that history is like drawing a map. The most accurate map is a 1:1 map, but we need to shrink it down to make it practical. History is like this too - we have to be careful about selecting the features of it while we 'shrink it down' so that it looks the same as what it was.
    Dr Philip SA Cummins, founded of CIRCLE

    Dr Philip SA Cummins' Recommended Reading List

    Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft
    EH Carr, What is History?
    Richard J Evans, In Defence of History
    Geoffrey Elton, The Practice of History
    John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History
    Berverly C Southgate, What is History For?
    Barbara Tuchmann, Practicing History
    John Vincent, An Intelligent Person's Guide to History
    Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth
    Mark Buchanan, Ubiquity
    Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel
    Ian Morris, Why the West Rules... For Now

    Monday, June 13, 2016

    Comparative Study: Elysium Comprehension Questions


    In this post I outlined my thinking for teaching a Comparative Study on Animal Farm and Elysium. Whilst there isn't much point in presenting resources on Animal Farm (there are plenty of activities on Orwell's fable already out there), I do think there is a niche to fill on Elysium resources. My previous post detailed the contextual elements that Elysium draws on, so the next logical point from here is to have students work through some study guide questions that get them to engage with the text on a more immediate level. 

    The resource below presents a mix of comprehension and visual analysis questions, and requires students to interact with the film on literal, figurative and contextual levels.  I recommend projecting it onto the whiteboard so students can see the screenshots in full colour.

    Resource - Elysium Student Guide (click to download).

    I've also included a teacher version for ease of delivery, which gives possible answers. If you use this, please don't feel restricted by my answers. I actually composed most of these answers via whole class discussion with my Year 11 Advanced English students, and there are no doubt a whole bunch of other interpretations that would work in response to the questions as well.

    Resource - Elysium Teacher Guide (click to download).

    Happy Dystopias!

    Saturday, June 11, 2016

    Breadth and Depth

    This is my third year now taking my students along to the HTA Senior History HSC Study Day that's held annually at the University of Sydney, and one thing I've noticed (in comparison to previous years) is the emphasis on breadth and depth when instructing students on the best strategy for tackling Modern History essays. 

    It makes sense, and it's not particularly revolutionary in concept, but I really like the use of these terms to bring clarity to the art of writing an extended response in the History topics. I have a tendency to sometimes think of Modern History essays as a poor cousin to the kinds of essays we have students write for Standard and Advanced English, but in the adoption of a model that emphasises breadth and depth it becomes a bit more specific to History. 

    At the HSC Study Day, the presenters Jonathon Dallimore and Michael Molkentin both spoke in some detail about this essay model in a periphery sense. Here's an example given by Molkentin in relationship to Part A of the Personality Section of the HSC Modern History exam (for our comrade Trotsky, of course):

    Let's say there's a question about Leon Trotsky's rise to prominence (and it's fairly likely, as this is one of the four major dot points of the Trotsky syllabus).

    In order to achieve breadth, the student will need to cover at least three different aspects of Trotsky's rise to prominence, with good examples being:
    • Trotsky's role in the 1905 Revolution
    • Trotsky's writing between 1906-1917
    • Trotsky's role in October 1917  
    These act as themes for students to hang their response on. You could also call these 'ideas', and it wouldn't be a bad thing at all if a student structured their response as a paragraph per theme or idea.

    Of course, it isn't enough to just have breadth. That doesn't make for a very long essay. In addition to breadth, there needs to be depth. That is, there needs to be detail or elaboration on the points that have been made about the themes.

    Here is what Molkentin offers as depth for the examples given above:
    • Trotsky's role in the 1905 Revolution
      • Belief that workers should be involved in the revolution (which contrasted with Lenin's belief that the Party should act as the vanguard of the revolution).
      • His role in the Petersburg Soviet as its leader before his arrest.
      • Speaking for the workers in the General Strikes (which acted as a prelude to the revolution).
    • Trotsky's writing between 1906-17
      • Results and Prospects (1906) and its expression of the theory of Permanent Revolution.
      • His work as a war correspondent in the Balkans in 1912-13, and on the Western Front.
    • Trotsky's role in October 1917
      • Making amends with Lenin and the Bolsheviks during 1917.
      • His role in the July Days and his continued disagreements with Lenin.
      • The seizure of power in October. 
    Pretty good, huh? There's more than enough there to fill approximately 17 minutes worth of writing in the HSC exam (17 minutes being the projected time that students should limit themselves to in completing Part A of the Personality Section of the paper).

    So, in summation, students are asked to come to terms with questions in the Modern History HSC exam, whether it be the National Study, Conflict Study, Personality Study or even an extended response at the end of the World War I section (the extended response draft structure above is just one example). In doing this, students need to demonstrate both breadth and depth of understanding. This means constructing a response that makes use of multiple themes, and with each theme backed up with sufficient detail. 

    That's one way to do it, and I reckon its worth getting your students to give it a try, especially if they're struggling with structuring their responses in exam conditions.

    Sunday, June 5, 2016

    Comparative Study: Elysium and Animal Farm


    Concept art for the film Elysium
    This term I'm teaching Animal Farm to Preliminary Advanced English as part of a comparative study. I had every intention of teaching it alongside V For Vendetta (which is how I've usually seen it paired) but, for a couple of reasons, I changed my mind when I was programming/planning. Here are the reasons:
    1. I like V For Vendetta but I hadn't seen it for a long time, so it wasn't all that 'big' in my mind.
    2. A recent bit of professional learning with the delightful folks at Into English reminded me that, if I have the option, I should jump on the opportunity to teach a dystopian text of my own choosing. 
    3. My choice of text was Elysium - which I feel is much more current and relevant than V For Vendetta.
    4. I had recently read Alan Moore's dense and highly literate graphic novel V For Vendetta, which only served to highlight the ways in which the film betrays his vision of post-Thatcherite fascism. I have no actual problem with the film version an an entity of its own, but what I do find problematic is the idea of teaching a text that has a sense of conflicted duality (a film version vs. the original version), especially when I'm already seeking to compare it to another text altogether; Animal Farm
    5. Elysium, on the other hand, is an original film with a context entirely of its own - it's not an adaptation or an appropriation. It's a film that reflects the now and isn't beholden to a graphic novel. It's that rare thing - a modern sci-fi film that isn't based on another text.
    6. I really like Elysium. It's not without its flaws, but few texts are.
    The world of Elysium looks very familiar to anyone who's visited or seen images of Latin American slums.

    The starting point for looking at Elysium is introducing the students to some of the context. The basis of my comparative study is 'Texts in Time', the comparative module used in the HSC 2009-2014 syllabus. This involves first examining Animal Farm and the political and social context that fuels Orwell's powerfully allegorical satire. The comparison then moves to Elysium, where students are required to recognise the way an entirely different dystopian society reflects a more contemporary context. By the end of the module, students will be assessed on their ability to compose an essay that ties both texts together as reflections of their times. 

    The Elysium part is kicked off with a PowerPoint that introduces and familiarises students with the political ideas and events that shaped Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. As the film is incredibly current (filmed in 2013, it was interpreted at the time as a direct partial allegory for the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011), it can be difficult to pull the various influencing threads out of it. Hindsight is, after all, something that can only truly be achieved with some degree of distance. I have therefore done my best to track backwards from the film's release to show a possible line of contextual cause and effect.

    The PowerPoint covers the following:
    • Neill Blomkamp's South African background and his previous film, the similarly satirical District 9.
    • The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011-2013.
    • "We are the 99%" - the idea that influenced the Wall Street protests, and continues to fuel economic and political debate today.
    • The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 that highlighted economic injustice and brought the '99%' debate into sharp focus for most Americans.
    • The Arab Spring - not as important as most of the other things here, but still an influential factor for the Occupy Wall Street movement - the term 'Arab Spring' refers to the series of social media-led revolutions that radically changed the political climate of Northern Africa and the Middle East in 2011.
    • Obamacare - the Affordable Care Act that made public healthcare an issue of debate in the U.S. from 2010 onward.
    • Asylum Seekers - a worldwide issue that has continued to grow from 2001 to the present day, with increasing security in Western countries seeming to contravene the civil rights established by the United Nations.
    • 9/11 - the 2001 tragedy that reflected and continues to shape America's strained foreign policy, and links to larger ideas of the West's impact on the Third World (particularly Africa and the Middle East), such as Nigerian bank scams and data theft, African mercenaries and war lords, use of drone technology, international commercial exploitation by large corporations, puppet governments, imperialism, and terrorism.
    There's a lot there and I like to make the point to students that they don't need to know all of it. What they do need to know is some of it, and in well enough detail to draw links between the text and the real world, and then again from text to text. 

    The PowerPoint ends with a couple of thinking questions on terrorism and how this phenomenon can reflect unequal power relationships, and then a prediction activity where students are asked to imagine how a science fiction film could allegorically represent all these points of context. Ideally, students will have seen Elysium before they work through this PowerPoint and can try and draw links themselves, but the activity should have some merit either way.

    A good follow-up activity is to then reinforce student knowledge (or teach it to them for the first time) about the Left and Right wings of politics. This involves getting the students to draw a line and then plotting a series of ideas and events on the line from left to right - things like private healthcare, the Occupy Wall Street movement, drone surveillance, etc. Of course, some of these things are debatable in where they would sit on the spectrum, but then - that's half the fun, right? If you can get your students arguing about this then you've succeeded in engaging them in becoming more aware about politics and political context.

    Resources:
    1. Elysium - Context (PowerPoint)
    2. Spectrum Plotting (Activity sheet)