Hello Smita,
This semester, I took a history class called “History Today: Debates and Practices” for my history minor. Throughout the semester, we discussed various ‘houses’ (or approaches) to studying history, and the various benefits and drawbacks of each. Historians and political scientists both get to decide what time span – as well as what scale (micro to macro) – to study. Although both political scientists and historians study evidence to construct a narrative about what is going on, historian’s writing reads much more like a story than political scientist’s – because who wants a story about chi-squares and P-values and regression analysis?
Of course, this means that historians have to decide what counts as evidence as well, which was …show more content…
Originally, women’s history was justified by saying that women and men are biologically different, and thus have fundamentally different experiences. This reminded me of the study of black politics, and their assumptions that 1) the election of more black politicians would contribute to the material lives of African Americans in the United States and 2) that black elected officials would pursue policy initiatives to improve the lives of African Americans. While these assumptions have been called into question because of the Obama administration, they are founded on the belief that the experiences of African Americans are fundamentally different because of their race, and this distinction needs to be acknowledged and studied. Of course, in gender history we talked about how gender is socially constructed (surprise!) and how that may be why men and women (and non-binary individuals) experience the world differently. By acknowledging that women are different than men – either biologically or socially – and including them in narratives, we get a better sense of how they used their autonomy and what their sphere of influence …show more content…
We have four subsections of political science, and majors choose one of those as their concentration; mine is American politics. That provides the model for future studies. In history, majors pick a country/global region, and then focus on a particular time period – they can also pick a thematic concentration, such as gender or class. This makes comparisons trickier. While comparative history (closest to comparative politics) is growing in popularity, historians often have to do much more additional research to learn about how an institution functions outside of their focus country. International politics also has an equivalent in history: transnational history. However, the international institutions that historians study are often temporary, though long-lasting, such as the slave trade, and tend to be more fluid than things like the UN, which has had the same five countries on the Security Council since said council’s inception.
My experiences in this class have shaped how I will study both history and political science in the future. In history, I will be more critical of what historians are using as sources, and whether they actually develop the argument of the paper or if the historian is simply trying to make up connections where there are none. In political science, I will try to expand what I use as a source in the study of political science. This way,
This semester, I took a history class called “History Today: Debates and Practices” for my history minor. Throughout the semester, we discussed various ‘houses’ (or approaches) to studying history, and the various benefits and drawbacks of each. Historians and political scientists both get to decide what time span – as well as what scale (micro to macro) – to study. Although both political scientists and historians study evidence to construct a narrative about what is going on, historian’s writing reads much more like a story than political scientist’s – because who wants a story about chi-squares and P-values and regression analysis?
Of course, this means that historians have to decide what counts as evidence as well, which was …show more content…
Originally, women’s history was justified by saying that women and men are biologically different, and thus have fundamentally different experiences. This reminded me of the study of black politics, and their assumptions that 1) the election of more black politicians would contribute to the material lives of African Americans in the United States and 2) that black elected officials would pursue policy initiatives to improve the lives of African Americans. While these assumptions have been called into question because of the Obama administration, they are founded on the belief that the experiences of African Americans are fundamentally different because of their race, and this distinction needs to be acknowledged and studied. Of course, in gender history we talked about how gender is socially constructed (surprise!) and how that may be why men and women (and non-binary individuals) experience the world differently. By acknowledging that women are different than men – either biologically or socially – and including them in narratives, we get a better sense of how they used their autonomy and what their sphere of influence …show more content…
We have four subsections of political science, and majors choose one of those as their concentration; mine is American politics. That provides the model for future studies. In history, majors pick a country/global region, and then focus on a particular time period – they can also pick a thematic concentration, such as gender or class. This makes comparisons trickier. While comparative history (closest to comparative politics) is growing in popularity, historians often have to do much more additional research to learn about how an institution functions outside of their focus country. International politics also has an equivalent in history: transnational history. However, the international institutions that historians study are often temporary, though long-lasting, such as the slave trade, and tend to be more fluid than things like the UN, which has had the same five countries on the Security Council since said council’s inception.
My experiences in this class have shaped how I will study both history and political science in the future. In history, I will be more critical of what historians are using as sources, and whether they actually develop the argument of the paper or if the historian is simply trying to make up connections where there are none. In political science, I will try to expand what I use as a source in the study of political science. This way,