re: When will the history books be rewritten?

"Those who refuse to remember the past are condemned to rewrite it". -- Mort Sahl

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take the stance of not going full melt down mode? yeah, you shouldn't be surprised

I wish I could say I was surprised that you would choose to go full hysteria

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It’S oNlY cOnFeDeRaTe StAtUeS!!!!1!!1!1!!1!1!!

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Thankfully, the field is so atomized that serious historical work avoids the 'grand narrative' impulse. The downside to that is the historical arguments in the mainstream end up being decades behind the ones in the academy, and that also presents opportunity for backlash.

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I'm so happy that I ignored my family that encouraged me to become a history academic. All this shite sounds miserable. I'll keep it to a hobby.

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I'm so happy that I ignored my family that encouraged me to become a history academic. All this shite sounds miserable. I'll keep it to a hobby.

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It does take forever to compile information. Thank god I've had a decade of database access and the ability to speedread. Integrating historical information with other disciplines is also doubly time-consuming, as now papers draw from multiple disciplines, which requires more and more background work to understand.

They won't be rewritten. Information contained in books will simply be buried in the digital network while easily available information will be the new history.

The 1619 project is a great example. The new history will be taught in schools. Hell, there's going to be an entire generation that thinks Alexander Hamilton was black

It has been going on for a long time.

The 1619 Project is an open attempt to do just that.

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I disagree. 1st person sources are highly regarded, and have been since history became a discipline, but understanding and contextualizing a source is part of a historians job. 1st person sources, without broader context, can miss key elements, since lived experience of a single person may exist outside of understanding the context of that experience within broader cultural movements.

I always use as many sources as I can until I get a handle on the time period, at which point I can reanalyze and question sources, and refine ideas, repeating that process over and over.

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i think his point may have been that a synthesis of primary sources is preferable to secondary or tertiary sources. of course, it takes someone who can contextualize those primary sources to produce a secondary/tertiary source. not everyone can do archaeology, read linear b, or negotiate a special collections library.

that said, historians do tend to fetishize the primary source without acknowledging that the process of preserving a document or an archive or artifact is highly mediated. but then again most historians aren't too self reflective about what they do

@crazy4lsu have you read carolyn steedman's dust: the archive and cultural history it does a great job of underscoring what we can expect to be present and absent in archives.

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It does take forever to compile information. Thank god I've had a decade of database access and the ability to speedread. Integrating historical information with other disciplines is also doubly time-consuming, as now papers draw from multiple disciplines, which requires more and more background work to understand.

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You must have an insane energy level to be doing medical school and still have even the most remote amount of time to give a frick about this.

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Or has it already started?

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History has been rewritten since it was first written. Whether it be by a monk or a secular humanist, whatever. So considering the prog infestation of academia, many history books are likely to take that slant.