Day 4 was Historiography, soon you should sense a pattern as to what classes happen on what days so I probably wont have to specify as often.

My professor started the class by talking about the presentations that we will have to do. While we have to read the whole book, our main goal isn’t to analyze the events talked about but more so the methodology the author used when writing the book. The presentation is supposed to be around 5-10 minutes so we have to be concise with what we show the class. In the end I chose Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States for obvious reasons. I will also be working alone, mostly due to my need to practice lecturing since professors tend to do so solo. You could call me out as using that as an excuse for my social anxiety but I feel like it’s a bit of both. I don’t know how to approach a partner for this project and I need practice with being on my own, I could also realistically just rely on my partner doing most of the talking.

Before I get into the lecture material I will just say that this part will probably not interest any of you as it does not talk about Marxism. If you want to read something interesting I suggest going near the end to read about my meeting with my professor as we talked about quite a bit and it might mean more to you all, both for getting to know me more and what my school life is like outside of lectures.

With that out of the way let’s get into the lecture material. After talking a bit about how the presentations should go he then asked us a question related to the reading: why are we forced to take this class? And while the students gave various answers the main idea was students who take a historiography class need to learn how to be historians, thats also why these classes are required for history majors, although other majors can take it as well. Next we talked about the different “species” of History, the three we talked about were political, social, and cultural history although there are many more. With political history students gave examples as to what that entails: party political statements, minutes of diplomatic meetings, government documents, military, etc.; for social history students tried to distinguish it from the political by saying it was studying people without politics which was a bit confusing to me in some regard because politics effects the lives of people even if we don’t know it. Economics, diaries/journals, census/police records, and oral history also fit into Social. Cultural history has o do with religion, traditions, art, materials (tools, clothing, etc.) differences in standards, pop culture, and while it wasn’t said by anyone I wrote down language, should I have said it? Sure, but I was too nervous.

After that we looked at what makes History distinct to other disciplines. There was comparison to other disciplines, like philosophy, classics, literature, social sciences, and hard sciences. The main ideas shared were that historians deal with real people, they focus on specifics vs the philosopher on the general/universal, they look at how the “truth” has changed over time, different questions are asked, and history is diachronic. Historians also don’t use the scientific method, but use empirical research. That essentially ends the lecture, this class is only 50 minutes long, vs my European classes that are both over an hour.

After class I went straight to his office to discuss the presentation, paper, and other things that I needed to set straight before I could comfortably move forward with this class. Not that I was going o drop out but more so that I could continue going to lectures and doing the assignments without a feeling of dread. First thing was telling him about wanting to do the Howard Zinn book for my presentation and that I’d like to do it on my own. I already detailed that in the first paragraph so I will skip it. I then talked about the book chapter we had to read for this class and that it got me thinking about dialectical historical materialism and how maybe that could be a form of analysis that fit well. He talked a bit about how Marx is a lot more complex than the stereotype of him (which was nice to hear) and that he makes his analysis based on economics as the main issue, class analysis and all that. He mentioned that it was mainly based in the 19th century. I pushed back, not in a rude way, just in a curious manner, that there are recent people that have used dialectical historical materialism like Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, and others. He agreed with me and talked about how many Marxist historians do turn their focus on to Africa as materialism has been very prominent there. I was a bit worried at this point, because my tone and questions may have come off weird, so I made sure to say that I was only asking these questions out of curiosity and understanding rather than me just being a dick, no matter how my tone sounds. He told me he understood and gathered that, so I was worried for nothing.

Next I asked him about the critic he called an asshole, he said this on day 3 if you’re confused. He laughed and specified that he was joking, which I knew, but he said that because it was a negative review that was unfair in its assessment as it focused very heavily on elements of his book that he only mentioned briefly, elements that were not the main theme of the book. I will not name the critic as it would out me, but my professor said that Mr. Critic was angry with him because while my professor referenced the Soviet Gulags, according to Mr. Critic this referencing was not good enough and my professor should’ve been a lot harder on the USSR which was a baffling statement to me because, while I have not read the book, my professor is not friendly to the Soviets (he is soft on Trotsky). I asked him to remind me of the name of the critic and where I could read the review, I clarified that I only wanted to read it due to curiosity and not because I will agree with it and become an enemy. He laughed and said he was sure that him and I would agree on quite a lot, while the critic would not. When it came to the presentation I asked if I could briefly outline the background of the author to add a bit of context to how they might analyze certain situations, and he said yes, as long as I don’t use it as filler since apparently some students will do that. I assured him I would not and in a PoliSci class I gave a brief background on John Mearsheimer, so I had a bit of experience. So far this meeting was going fine, and since I didn’t need to be home right away I decided to discuss more with him.

If you remember from day 3, you’ll recall my anxiety surrounding my previous class back during winter term with this professor and how stressed I’ve been. My opening was talking about how he called me reticent, he clarified that I was reticent in my unwillingness to speak in class. I told him I wasn’t offended by it because at the time I didn’t even know what it meant and that when I looked it up it was incredibly accurate, we both shared a chuckle at that. I then explained that I wasn’t always reticent, while yes I am shy in the beginning, once I get comfortable I do open up quite a bit but recent circumstances forced me to be that way. Either I will get yelled at, not at school but at home, or I get an email. I told him I knew he was trying to be helpful with said email and that he already apologized which is fine but it still bothered me and stressed me out enough that the paper I wrote about the Donbas turned out really bad. I did sense he was about to speak but I really needed to finish what I was saying before anything else, so I just signalled that I needed to keep going and did just that (I did try to be polite about it). I told him that the email caused me to question a lot and made me scared to write in a specific way, so I ended up screwing myself over by handing in a paper that was not up to my standards. I would’ve used many other sources, like Donbas newspapers that would require translations, but I rushed my paper and was too paranoid to write what I know would’ve made for a compelling paper. I just didn’t want him to take what I wrote in that paper and think less of me because of it since other papers I have written for other classes have done quite well. He told me that there were good elements of my paper and problematic ones, I guess he gave me some comments on it but I said I didn’t look at them because whatever he could’ve said, I’ve said much much worse about myself and I just don’t have it in me to check those things. He seemed a bit concerned about that but continued on that he could sense that I had a political axe to grind while writing and that statement freaked me out, he may have sensed this because he said that many historians and authors have their own political axes. I didn’t want to show my axe in the paper, of course I have one, but I guess my fear in revealing my axe made it inevitable that it would show, which sucks. He also said that the only reason why he talked to that guy (with regard to the email) was because I had raised concerns about a subject he is not an expert in (Ukraine), so he went to one without revealing my identity, he only did it for guidance purposes and not to alienate me. He remembered that I had expressed my fear of being arrested and that I shouldn’t have these worries as university is a place for growth and learning and for multiple opinions to be shared and challenged. I replied that I was worried about my standing at the university because even though that may be true on paper, it isn’t in reality, I did not want to provoke anyone and that fear caused my paper to be subpar at best.

I confided that I wanted to rewrite that paper but much better one day and maybe I’d even consider retaking the Genocide class if I have the space in my schedule, because even though I passed and got the credits, I know I can do better. And he believes me. I don’t want him to think less of me and he reassured me that he teaches hundreds of students and I am in the higher cut of them, which did make me feel better. Although, I did say that I was going to prove it anyway, because he can say that but I need to materially show it as well with a good grade for this class. During this whole discussion I, unfortunately, was crying. Not openly sobbing like last time but the tears did fall. Even writing this part of the post is making me tear up, which is so stupid.

Talking about writing a good paper for this course naturally led into more questions about it, like could I use a work by a non-historian if the methods fit what is required. The paper has to be a peer reviewed monograph, so primary sources must be used by the authors and that my idea of non-historians could work but he would need to watch books first before I could proceed. As examples he brought out a few books from his shelf, two of them about the Soviet Gulags and how each could be used in a paper because their themes are the same but are apparently analyzed differently (I apologize but I don’t remember which two he showed me). Another book he brought out was one by Orlando Figes called A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924, which is a book that uses mostly secondary sources so it would not be good for the paper. He then said that Figes actually got into some recent controversy so maybe there are things to avoid there. I wrote down his name in my notes because of that comment and when my professor sat down he specified that the controversy was that Figes was writing his own amazon reviews and we both expressed how embarrassing that was. He then made a brief comment that Orlando Figes is not hard on Marxism, and in a lighthearted tone I said I didn’t know why that would matter to me, and he replied that he’s just making comments. He then laughed because, in his words, we keep doing this dance around politics, which is true and I laughed too. The meeting essentially ended there and I went home with a renewed sense of relief. I am not stressed about his feelings towards me anymore since we got all of that out of the way and I feel a bit more confident in writing what I want without fear of being penalized. One thing I still worry about is the presentation, but that’s mainly due to public speaking.