Event Title
Plenary II: Crafting Narratives from Historical Sources
Location
Moakley Auditorium
Start Time
15-5-2013 1:15 PM
End Time
15-5-2013 2:15 PM
Description
This panel will investigate the means by which historians craft a readable narrative from a diversity of sources. Brian Payne illustrates how historians can use seemingly “cold” statistical data from business records and census data to gain insight into the daily struggles of the working poor in the United States during the years immediately preceding the Great Depression. Ethan Sanders explores how historians write the narratives of global intellectual history. By taking a transnational approach, he traces out the various strands of international thought that African intellectuals drew from in the 1920s and 1930s and how they created political ideologies that looked beyond the traditional boundaries of nation-states. Paul Rubinson investigates the questions of exploitation in crafting narratives about human rights. When people write about human rights, they often play up the violence and suffering of the victims. But it borders on being sensationalist by using this person's suffering to grab readers’ attention.
Plenary II: Crafting Narratives from Historical Sources
Moakley Auditorium
This panel will investigate the means by which historians craft a readable narrative from a diversity of sources. Brian Payne illustrates how historians can use seemingly “cold” statistical data from business records and census data to gain insight into the daily struggles of the working poor in the United States during the years immediately preceding the Great Depression. Ethan Sanders explores how historians write the narratives of global intellectual history. By taking a transnational approach, he traces out the various strands of international thought that African intellectuals drew from in the 1920s and 1930s and how they created political ideologies that looked beyond the traditional boundaries of nation-states. Paul Rubinson investigates the questions of exploitation in crafting narratives about human rights. When people write about human rights, they often play up the violence and suffering of the victims. But it borders on being sensationalist by using this person's suffering to grab readers’ attention.