Friday, October 9, 2020

HIS 6942 Week 7 (October 3 - October 9)

 The theme for this week in Dr. Murphree was experiential learning and internships for undergraduate students to seek. The students seemed to enjoy the speaker, a University of Central Florida faculty who was a part of UCF’s experiential learning. The guest speaker, on Tuesday, discussed the use of handshake and the ability to market yourself on this website. Internships were the highlight of the website with students able to try and ascertain one from Handshake. I was very nervous about outright stating the utility of the website in regard to history majors. Upon searching through the site, I found listings for more museum curation such as Orange County Regional History Center which had been there for roughly a year. My internship spawned from my interest with teaching the course and it’s importance for new undergraduate history students. I believed my insight, given on Thursday, was more applicable for the students in Dr. Murphree’s, though Handshake and Experiential Learning should not be dismissed.

Discussions held on Thursday had students discuss the events of previous classes as little time were allocated to students previously. Students voiced their opinions on internships as they debated the utility of the lecture. Some students voiced that because they were seniors, it would be difficult to find an internship so late into the semester. Others seemed to admit interest in starting an internship which I voiced my suggestion to discuss with Dr. French who is the director for internships in the History Department. Another suggestion for websites that would benefit history majors was H-Net which had multiple job offerings at universities. Overall, students agreed that the lecture was useful, yet broad in its audience in comparison to history majors.

One point of discussion occurred on Thursday regarding a professionalization opportunity a student attended. Dr. Murphree tasks students with attending two professionalization opportunities which are lectures that can be applied to our field of history. One of these opportunities was a graduate workshop hosted by the American Historical Association. The student heard one of the speakers discussing the role of politics on the historical discourse. This graduate speaker spoke that politics always applies to our work and continues to influence future endeavors within the field. The student politely voiced their disapproval of this and further indulged the speaker to elaborate more on what they had meant.

After a long discussion, Dr. Murphree and this student brought this discussion to the class regarding politics and the field of history. Some students maintained the thesis that politics continued to shape how history is formed. For myself, I was conflicted as I immediately believed that politics, while regulating our work, does not influence it as we believe it does. The conversation shifted towards historians’ role as proactive or reactive. Should historians be writing for social changes or should historians be observers? An African American historian would seem to be more likely to advocate for social changes while a Roman historian may seem less inclined to advocate for political change. These questions are vital to how historians conduct themselves and their perception of their work. The message historians send could be interpreted as political advocacy or scholarly literature.

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