I love history; its been one of my biggest passions since I was little. If a history degree didn’t have so few options that came along with it, I would be pursuing it right now. I mention all of this because I found this podcast extremely interesting. I had heard of historiography before, but never put too much thought into it before now. I mean of course, it makes sense: there has to be a science of the history of how we record history- It just makes sense.
The comments about Great Man theory were interesting to me. It is interesting to see how the thought of leadership and history developed from years on. It is so blatantly sexist and also purely absurd to assume that great leaders are born and cannot be made, and have to be men. But of course, since our Eurocentric history focuses on the achievements of rich, white men, of course scholars are going to buy into this theory. Its certainly wrong, but can you blame them? That information was the only information that was available to them, of course that’s all they are going to talk about it. We only talk about the “great people” of history is because that is where we have the wealth of information from. They make great change (or are perceived to) and thusly get a lot of things written about them.
I very much liked the point on how much information we have and future archaeologists will have on the “common man” from our current age of social media and constant posting about their lives. If a future researcher is able to find my Instagram, Facebook, and twitter, they will be able to piece together a pretty detailed and accurate map of my life. And since I will be long dead, that is far more fascinating to me than it is terrifying. How will our study of human history change with the trove of information social media has made available about everyday people. What could we have learned if we had this wealth of information from prior history? I wish I knew.
I agree that the discussion about historiography was really interesting. I have also always really loved history and the idea of where the history we learned comes from is so fascinating. To the point of why we have the Great Man Theory, I think that almost every history textbook we were taught in school stems from the same place: white men. I’m glad that now it feels like as a society we are finally moving away from the white man’s history book.
I think the great man theory is one of the more interesting topics I have learned about in Jepson. I think that the idea that a great man will be born and define most of the century is ridiculous. I do not believe that people, let alone men are endowed with a certain “destiny” to be great. But the theory does make sense in the context of when it was created — why would scholars believe that anyone has the potential to be great if they only have information about a specific few?.
Thats so interesting on how you think your life could be accurately pieced together based off of your social media. I know that a lot of people can relate to that, however, for me there would bot be much for them to put together. And I am not sure if you have ever googled yourself but I know for a class someone had to google me and they didn’t find anything about my life besides something from grade school that was off of some parents account.
I agree that I would also be a history major if it came with more career paths! And I think you make a great point of how social media does a great job of depicting the everyday person but in an overwhelming amount.