A most crucial lesson to learn before heading off to graduate school is the ability to read a book strategically. The higher level undergraduate history courses may have had a fair number of books to be read during the semester, but professors often choose to not instruct their students on how to read the books properly. Upon entering ones first graduate seminar, with a reading list of a dozen books, a student might start to question how they are ever going to finish each book while remembering any arguments. If one reads only the most critical portions of any book, then it is possible to complete even the most daunting of reading lists.
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Twitter is a fun means of conveying simple thoughts, but the value of such a tool is debatable. A lot has been said about the academic usefulness of Twitter, read Cameron Blevin’s perspective. It has been argued that Twitter, in its current form, has limited academic value. The web tool is able to facilitate communication amongst individuals, so why not historians? Aiding in the exchange of ideas and opinions could have a positive impact on the general growth of the field. As discussed by Cameron,
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Back in September, during my honeymoon to Mexico, my wife and I visited Chichen Itza. While visiting Chichen Itza, we experienced Mayan acoustic/engineering accomplishments as well. This was the first time either of us had seen non-European ruins, and we were in awe of the architectural achievements of the Maya. Having spent a considerable amount of time in Germany and Austria, we had seen impressive Roman ruins. But seeing comparable structures in the New World had a different feel to it. In terms of engineering, here was a civilization capable of building very advanced structures.
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Last evening, during my early American history survey course, we discussed America’s wartime trends. Beginning with the Revolution, I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of students were drawing connections between the hardships endured by Continental soldiers and our current troopers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the issue of supply, the class discussed the inability of the Continental Congress to properly feed the soldiers it was so readily relying on to defeat the British.
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Footnote.com presents itself as an online archive, geared towards helping people discover documents that one may otherwise have to visit College Park, Maryland to examine. Many of the National Archives Record Administration’s record holdings are becoming available online via Footnote, which could be a great thing to those who cannot afford to physically travel to NARA. To view such collections you can either pay a membership fee to gain access to everything, or take the free route and risk not getting access to the files you want. At first that sounds like great news for a historian. After perusing the Footnote site, however, one should be hit with the thought, why is there a fee attached to some of the record groups? Additionally, I do not recall having to pay for my NARA researchers card, so why pay to view the same files now? If this is truly about making more files readily available for historians, then they should follow the same practices as a National Archive’s facility and not charge a membership fee.
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Synopsis
The purpose of Thompson Werk is to present the musings of a US War and Society doctoral student. Discussion topics principally center around the World Wars and Vietnam.
The opinions expressed on this site are not be confused with those of my colleagues, employers, friends, family, and/or anyone else associated with me.
Contact me with any comments, complaints, and/or questions.
Responses
- Additional Dissertation Thoughts - Thompson Werk: [...] I discussed three possible [...]
- Robert: That is an interesting approach [...]
- Ross: But that cold be part [...]
- Robert: Hey Ross, I have to [...]
- Ross: Robert I prefer the first [...]
