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English 101
Heuristics for Assignment Two
1. Make a list of places you might look for historical information about the
space you visited and/or the concepts you analyzed in your first paper. Search
the library, the net, newspapers or magazines; think of people you can interview
who know something about it. Talk to people who hang out in that space; ask
them if they know its history or if they know of someone who does know its history.
2. Conduct the interviews and/or read the histories you found about the space. For this assignment, you must use at least two histories so that you can compare their accounts.
3. Read over your transcriptions of the interviews you conducted, if any, and review the notes you took while reading histories of the space you are interested in. Make a list of the events as they appear, in order, in each history.
4. Now try to answer the following questions in writing:
· Are there disagreements in the histories you've gathered? List these differences.
· Are they differences of fact (details), chronology (sequence of events)? How do you account for these differences?
· Are anyone's interests served by the inclusion or exclusion of some details? Whose?
· Are there areas of agreement in the histories? Does this suggest that the material in these areas is more accurate than material that is contested by one or more historians? Or does it suggest something else altogether?
· Does one or another of the histories you've read/heard seem more accurate? How do you know?
5. Try to figure out the historian's point of view about the space
· Does he/she approve or disapprove of the uses to which the space has been put?
· Does he/she think this space has had positive or negative effects on culture or the people who use it or are affected by it?
· Do you trust one or another of the historians whose work you are relying on more than others? Why?
· Does he or she report details or does he/she analyze the importance and usefulness of the space?
· What about the histories you find less trustworthy? Do their authors have some reason to distort their observations about the place?
· Do any of the histories you have examined have a hero/heroine or a villain? How do you know which is which?
· Is the history told in straight chronological order? If not, why do you think the historian chose to alter the flow of events?
· Do any of the narratives put forward a point of view? To determine this, look for places where information has been suppressed or downplayed, or where the historian has made evaluations of characters or events (such as "this behavior was honorable" or "things went badly that day").
· Whose interests are served by the point of view adopted in each history? Whose interests are excluded?
· Does the historian include any events that seem incredible or contrary to what ordinarily happens in situations like those being described?
1. Write a history of the space that synthesizes all the histories you have studied.
2. Now reflect on your writing. Was it hard to write a synthetic history? Why? What did you learn from your attempt to write history? Did it teach you anything about the composition of stories told about the past? Is your understanding of history different now than it was when you studied history in high school? How so?
3. Using the material you have developed so far, try to answer these questions: Why are some stories valued (and hence retold) and others not? What factors allow a dominant story to emerge? How do non-dominant cultures and their values get erased in history?