• Home
• Listing of Notes
• About
• Add Notes

HIST - 4385 Exam Review Guide

0

By Professor: Dr. David Blanke
October 19, 2009 | Subject: History

.doc

363
views

Part I  Identifications (40 pts.)

Eight of the following persons, events, things, terms, concepts, or schools of thought will appear on the exam. You will be required to briefly identify and give the significance of four of those identifications. Use Gilderhus as your primary point of reference (showing how he explains the significance of these terms).

• Herodotus
• Thucydides
• St. Augustine
• Dualism
• Historicism
• Presentism
• Annales School
• Consensus History
• Materialism
• Giambattista Vico
• Functional History
• Cliometrics
• New Left
• Whiggish history
• Teleology
• Karl Marx
• Arnold Toynbee
• Reinhold Niebuhr
• Causation
• Objectivity
• Progressive history
• Charles A. Beard
• Smithsonian Institution controversy regarding the Hiroshima exhibition
• National History Standards Project controversy
• poststructuralism
• Oswald Spengler
• postmodernism
• Michel Foucault

Part II Essays (50 pts.)

Two of the following essays will be on the exam. You will be asked to answer one of those two essays. Your essays should include relevant material from the class lectures and the assigned reading (Gilderhus and Storey). When writing your essays, you should strive to:

a) be thorough and specific, giving names of historians, schools of thought, and theories whenever possible;

b) include materials from the lectures, Gilderhus, and Storey;

c) answer all parts of the question;

d) demonstrate that you have thought about the question in broad terms (a good way to do this is to relate information to more general themes, often in an introduction or a conclusion [or both]);

e) establish the proper context for the issues you discuss;

f) organize your essay effectively.

With those things in mind, here are the questions:

1. According to Mark Gilderhus, what should historians do? What, in his view, are the six aims and purposes of good history? In your discussion, use the work of one historian, school of thought, or theory to illustrate and illuminate each of these themes (each of your examples should be different).
2. How should good history be done? Discuss this issue, incorporating the arguments of six different historians, schools of thought, or theories into your essay.
3. Gilderhus divides his text into an analysis of speculative and analytical approaches to history. What is the difference? Using the arguments of at least six different historians, schools of thought, or theories, show how these differing approaches demonstrate the history of history.
4. Historians are often affected by the events occurring in the world in which they live. In light of this phenomenon, discuss the works of Thucydides, Christian historians, Arnold Toynbee, the Progressives, New Left historians, and postmodernists. Whenever possible, link their ideas, subjects, and approaches to the contexts in which they occurred.
5. Many social scientists, postmodernists, and poststructuralists have challenged the notion that historians can ever recover how things really happened. Discuss their criticisms of historians in general, and of claims that historians must try to be objective in their work. How would more traditional historians respond to these criticisms?
6. Discuss the controversies stemming from the Smithsonian Institution's proposed Hiroshima/Enola Gay exhibition and the National History Standards Project. What do these controversies say about notions of collective memory, objectivity, politics, and the role of historians in modern American life? How do they reflect recent challenges to traditional notions of history?

Part III - Bibliographic citations (10 pts.)

I will provide information on three unique sources. Your job will be to properly cite these sources using the proper syntax (Turabian or Chicago Manuall of Style). Use can use Turabian's Manual for Writers to complete these citations.

Dr. Blanke Disclaimer: all exam materials are taken from lectures and the assigned reading (not just online sources) and these vary over the semesters