Cursus Honorum

Picture Finding Experience

2008-03-04T14:32:00.004-05:00

Finding pictures, thanks to the in-class tutorial on using the Library of Congress and National Archives websites, was not that hard. My project focused on U.S. involvement in World War I, from the sinking of the Lusitania to the Treaty of Versailles, so there were many images available. In addition, I did want to include a picture of Wilson leaving for Europe/pledging support for Europe, but I was not able to find one on the internet that was not Fair Use. I thought it would illustrate the story more, as in my finish product I jump from trench warfare to Versailles. I wish that there was a way to make some of the images on the LOC website larger, as many were political cartoons with indecipherable captions. Nonetheless, I was able to make a coherent narrative about the war.

2008-03-03T20:47:00.012-05:00

The sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boats was the key event that led the United States into World War I. Although other incidents, such as the Zimmerman telegram, precipitated U.S. involvement, the Lusitania was the most visible symbol of anti-American aggression.

"Remember the Lusitania." 1915. World War I Propaganda Poster. Courtesy the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

The U.S. military employed a large recruitment effort to mobilize the nation for war. Troops would reach Europe by 1918, under the command of General John J. Pershing. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g11355

"Men Wanted for the Army." World War I Propaganda Poster. Courtesy The Library of Congress, Washington, DC. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g10143

Trench warfare characterized much of the war. Compounded by new inventions such as the machine gun, barbed wire, and fighter planes, Americans were not spared these horrors of the war.

"In the trench near San Marco during action of May 12, 1917." Ca. 1917. World War I Photograph. Courtesy The Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a51388

America's contribution to the war proved decisive, and an armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918. Over 20 million had died in the war, including 117,000 Americans.

"The Dawn of Democracy." 1918. World War I Propaganda Print. Courtesy The Library of Congress, Washington DC. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b43955

In 1919, Wilson traveled to Europe to meet with Allied heads of state Lloyd George (England), Georges Clemenceau (France), and Vittorio Orlando (Italy). The Conference would determine the political future of Europe for two decades.

"Council of Four of the Peace Conference. Mr. Lloyd George; Signor Orlando; M. Clemenceau; President Woodrow Wilson. Hotel Crillon, Paris, France." 05/27/1919. Courtesy of The National Archives, Washington, DC. http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/arch_results_detail.jsp?&pg=1&si=0&st=b&rp=digital&nh=1

History of Valentine's Day

2008-02-18T17:07:00.001-05:00

As is apparent in advertising, popular culture, and bedrooms alike, the modern construction of Valentine’s Day undoubtedly revolves around invocations of amorous love. But in a consultation of various internet resources, we can identify no definitive explanation for the glut of DeBeers ads and restaurant reservations occurring in the second week in February. Yet many websites do in fact agree that the genesis of Valentine’s Day begins in Roman times.

Wikipedia, which has established itself as a sort of, if not the ultimate standard-bearer of non-scholarly internet based knowledge, postulates that Valentine’s day may have grew out of an ancient fertility holiday celebrated every February 15^th called Lupercalia. This holiday, as Plutarch, a Roman historian, tells us, featured young men walking naked in the streets, and young women would approach them and be smacked on the hands that they might become fertile. This holiday may have grown out of a tradition celebrating the birth of Romulus and Remus, according to legend the twin brothers raised by a wolf who founded Rome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day.

Suite 101.com, a website that claims “7 million readers a month,” also supposes the Lupercalia theory, but adds that one part of the practice included sacrifices of goats and dogs to the gods. Suite 101 also maintains that in the fifth century, the Catholic church translated the formerly pagan holiday, which remained popular with ordinary Romans, into a Christian context, honoring the Virgin Mary and making it a popular day for marrying young couples. Suite 101 seems plausible, as it does claim that it gathered its information from the Oxford University Press Dictionary of Religion and the University of Chicago’s Penelope Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. http://roman-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_lupercalia_a_roman_festival.

The History Channel offers a completely different explanation, saying that an early Christian priest named Valentine offered to marry young couples in secret, against a decree of the emperor, who dissolved all marriages in an attempt to get more soldiers for the army. Valentine was placed in prison for this, and subsequently fell in love with his jailor’s daughter, to whom he penned a note, “From your Valentine.” http://www.history.com/minisites/valentine/viewPage?pageId=882 In fairness, however, the HC does offer the alternate explanation that the church did try to Christianize the Lupercalia.

As a survey of numerous websites will illustrate, the history of Valentine’s day does in fact credibly trace its origins to the Lupercalian myth and the subsequent Christianization. Yet not every website does this. For instance, Wikipedia’s explanation does not omit that Valentine’s Day is named after two potential early Christian martyrs, but never definitively discusses how or why these names became attached to the holiday, as Suite101 and HC do.

Generally, this experience revealed the inconsistency of historical information on the Internet. Because each user can function in relative anonymity and slick graphics can misleadingly function as a substitute for substantive content. This process was in a sense discouraging. So many websites had varying explanations, and were often poorly written For instance, on a Google search of “History of Valentine’s Day,” the third link leads to a UK website which offers four very different theses on the origin of Valentine’s day. Not only is the website’s legitimacy completely undercut by a pink color scheme, usually reserved for all things germane to a pre-pubescent teenage girl, but each account is anonymously authored. Furthermore, if the user accessed the address of only the text before the host country domain name in the web address http://www.pictureframes.co.uk/pages/saint_valentine.htm, it redirects to a British picture frame store. How in the world is this site supposed to maintain any semblance of accuracy? Ultimately, information on the internet has to be weighed against several criteria, most importantly if it is cited in a scholarly book or not. While Wikipedia does have many articles that are thoroughly cited, many other articles are not. In the future, we can hope for the internet community to give these articles some legitimacy, and in the process hopefully deliver a death blow to other, less accurate sites.

History Website Review

2008-02-12T16:41:00.000-05:00

The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook is a reference website, hosted by Fordham University, which provides information about ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Persia, Greece, Rome, Late Antiquity (ca. 300-600 A.D.). and early Christian writers via both primary and secondary source material. The site was conceived of in 1999, and its stated goal is to, "provide and organize texts for use in classroom situations." http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/ancient/asbook.html#Introduction. However, I have found this site very valuable while researching my senior thesis, as it does feature partial texts, whole texts, and guidance to scholarly resources. Originally conceived of by Paul Halsall, a professor at Fordham University, the website is the preeminent resource for educational material related to the ancient world on the Internet.

The website is broken into the categories mentioned above, with each category broken down into more precise themes, for instance, under "Rome," there is "Roman Law," "The Army," "Empires and Provinces," and many other categories, with primary sources for each theme listed. http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/ancient/asbook09.html.

One fringe feature of the site is a section devoted to "Ancient History in the Movies," which lists and critiques for historical accuracy a number of movies set in the ancient world. This page links to IMDB, which is a great website to link to for getting a second opinion on the movies.

The "Help" Page is also valuable, offering a myriad of websites for evaluating history websites on the internet, a list of writing and citation guides, and other history websites which are valuable for looking at.

What makes this website so good is undoubtedly the presentation of primary sources. While not trying to be the definitive compendium for knowledge of antiquity on the Internet, it often comes off feeling that way anyway. For instance, it does offer 9 complete texts of major Roman historians, including Tacitus, Livy, and Caesar. In the Ancient Greece section, Herodotus, Thucydides, and others are represented. In an age in which classical learning is almost vanished compared to previous generations, it is refreshing to consider the wealth of knowledge about the ancient world available to us at our fingertips.

Yet despite the vast amount of red meat learning on the Ancient History Internet Sourcebook website, it is neglecting on presentation. It is obvious that the site is made by an amateur, Halsall, and nobody has bothered to remedy that. The lone pictorial graphic on the website is a cheap, clip-art picture of Ionic columns flanking the "Internet Ancient History Sourcebook" heading. The entire site is blue and black text on an off-white background, and Times New Roman font.

Navigating the site is easy enough, but should be better. A sidebar sits on the left side of the page, directing the user to the different topics of study he or she is interested in. Once the user accesses the main topic (e.g. Rome, Egypt, etc.), the subtopics are presented in outline format, which is good, but then once clicking the relevant link it merely scrolls down the page to the subtopic of interest, and the featured sources open in a new page. The result is that with everything bundled together the user feels somewhat overwhelmed. This site is in desperate need of an overhaul. The lack of color, art, and graphics, as well as a subpar yet valiant attempt at organization certainly detract from this site. Moreover, there is no content such as message boards, quote of the day, videos, etc. to keep the user coming back. If I didn't have to use this website, I would have no reason to return. This is unfortunate, because it offers such an excellent array of neglected knowledge that has potential to gain a wider audience.

History Website Review

2008-02-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

History Websites

2008-01-29T16:32:00.000-05:00

The four websites visited all represented a broad spectrum of the presentation of history. In representing the past on the internet, we are confronted by the question of how to translate the complexities of history into a syntax that often relies on peppy design and user adaptability to preserve its relevance.

The first website, The Valley of the Shadow, is a primary-source based site for casual and professional historians alike, allowing the user to survey newspaper records, civil government statistics, soldiers records, church records, and other commonly used primary sources relating to several small towns in the Civil War. The main strength of this website lies in its clean indexing of topics, allowing the user to navigate with ease across the main groups of sources. This website, which I found to be highly useful, presents the study of history on the internet as an egalitarian pursuit. In the first place, the main introductory page depicts the portraits a white man, a white woman, and a black man above a small hill town. This seeks to reinforce to the user that this site is a very inclusive approach to the Civil War which will leave no part of society unrepresented.

In contrast, the History Channel’s website seems to be lacking in actual history content. On January 27^th, the center of the main page features upcoming program on a recent UFO phenomena in Texas. In the “Video” portion of the website, the featured videos were mostly video of graphic car accident, ferocious animals, and an ad for a Hyundai Sonata. The “World History” (http://www.history.com/media.do?action=listing&sortBy=1&sortOrder=A&topic=WORLD%20HISTORY) section of the “Video” site mostly featured some video on modern police gear, though it did contain some videos tracing police gear through the ages. The general World History section of the website (http://www.history.com/topics/worldhistory_) was mediocre at best, presenting some stock “Mysteries of the Bible” content which generally reflects the dribble found in the DaVinci Code, and even referring to the post-Roman centuries as the “Dark Ages,” a term I completely abhor. In the “World War II” section of the history site (http://www.history.com/minisites/worldwartwo/), the content was very basic, although it would be a solid background for someone who really did not know anything about the war. I was dissatisfied with the “Key Allied Figures” and “Key Axis Figures” of the website. For the allies, HC failed to mention Marshall Gregori Zhukov, considered the greatest general of the Soviet war effort, or Harry S. Truman, who made the fateful decision to drop the atomic bomb which induced Japanese surrender. On the Axis side, there was no mention of Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or Heinz Guderian, the wellspring of the “blitzkrieg” attack. I believe that the History Channel, in this sense, has eschewed presenting either Harry S. Truman or Yamamoto for the sake of preserving a politically correct approach to history which seeks to downplay Japanese involvement in the war. Moreover, the HC channel site is all about luring in users with expressly non-historical content. Very much like TV in that it is designed for mass consumption, doesn’t respect the viewer’s capacity for new. Ultimately, HC sacrifices depth of content for the sake of commercial viability, but you will learn something along the way if you are a novice. Unfortunately, the history channel does not explicitly talk about historical scholarship itself, so by their standards, they want history to come to you.

The Do History Website was on the same level as the Valley of the Shadow site. This site, which unmistakably is a resource for women’s and gender history presents a rape case for not only illustrating the dichotomy of truth in differing historical accounts, but is also concerned with underscoring the disadvantages of women in bygone years. Most of the links on the site to other sites are concerned with women’s history. Unfortunately, the site is messy and unfocused, unlike the Valley site that focused on primary sources that is more cleanly organized. Has a nice little guide to using primary sources in the history toolkit section, this is an overall great site for people just beginning to do history and the example provided is great for understanding how history can be controversial. Overall, the site is not so much concerned with the subject as it is illustrating how history is done.

The National Museum of American History website is a colorful, well-designed site that is user friendly. This site depicts history as a story of objects, as the main page features things like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, a World War II helmet, and a locomotive. All of these artifacts are indeed treasures and do tell the story of America. In addition, the site’s purpose is to persuade viewers to visit the museum itself. The website does this by presenting objects that almost all Americans can identify in some sense with. As a result, this sense of nostalgia personalizes history, and makes you relevant to what the museum is presenting. For the MOAH, history is not just “us,” it is also “you.”

The Chosen Blog - englishrussia.com

2008-01-22T00:03:00.001-05:00

My chosen blog is called englishrussia.com, a blog devoted to all things Russia. I have always had an interest in Russian affairs so this came naturally. What drew me to this blog was their use of imagery as a primer for written commentary. For instance, it is common knowledge among Russiophiles that the roads in that country are in deplorable condition. To best convey this, for instance, there is a photo, posted January 16th, of a car which was swallowed up by a road which had fell into disrepair. This more powerfully illustrates the neglect of the Russian transportation than mere words. Each photo is accompanied by a small commentary relating the who, what, when, where, and why. Each post has a section for readers to make comments on the photo. Although, like any forum for internet publication, comments will often reflect idiocy, belligerence, or unwanted commercial solicitation, these comments are often valuable because they reflect a heterogeneous experience of reading the blog. People from all over the world, and many Russians in particular, are quick to defend their country in the face of less than flattering photographs. In truth, many of the posts do reinforce Western negative presuppositions about Russia; i.e. posts showing ramshackle apartment buildings or mountains of trash. But there are also many beautiful images of a pristine Arctic snow or an ice sculpture of the Kremlin.

Anyone can post images on this blog, although registration is required. Apparently the site is quite popular, as there is ad space on the site. These adverts are generally focused on an audience interested in Russia, offering travel deals to Russia or items of Soviet kitsch. This, and the fact that it is updated often a few dozen times a day, lends englishrussia to a slightly jumbled feel. It does not link to other websites, which is odd considering that many blogs centered around a particular theme love to link to other blogs of the same theme. But they do sell ad space, so they might not want the user navigating away from their site.

Ultimately, englishrussia.com encourages you to draw your own conclusions about the chosen subjects, eschewing lengthy analysis by a digital gatekeeper in favor of a more egalitarian approach. The power of the image resonates with the user, and coupled with differing opinions from other users, only enhances the famous mystery that surrounds the Russian land.