how i ended up at a college with no course requirements or majors
I hate not being able to get a degree in everything. It's just like when I go to restaurants. I want everything. All of it would taste yummy. And fill my tummy.
Evergreen gets my toes wet in (so far) gender studies, film studies, postmodern literature, philosophy, psychology, educational theory, political science, and history. It's not enough! I need to be an expert in everything! Not only do I want to eat these courses as main dishes, I want to eat them as prepared by different chefs. I want to research how the recipe has changed over time and across cultures, and I want to know ... ok, I won't get too carried away with the analogy. But I'm hungry!
"You can't understand anything without understanding everything."
New Fake Dissertation Idea for History: Euhemerism in modern history, and specifically the apotheosis of American historical figures, and how this mythologizes history.
Thanksgiving especially carries around a mythos. We hear this story about the Pilgrims and the Indians, and it's not even a consistent story. Some people tell it like the Indians were helping out the Pilgrims, some tell it like the Pilgrims were helping out the Indians (!), some say it's both, all relate it back to the virtue of giving thanks. What most people don't know is that when Abraham Lincoln wrote his Proclamation for Thanksgiving, it had nothing whatsoever to do with remembering the "Pilgrims and Indians". It had to do with uniting the people during the Civil War. Of course, it was based on a tradition of harvest festivals, but there isn't any evidence that suggests the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ever sat at the same table (though the Wampanoag did teach the settlers how to survive). The Wampanoag were regarded as savages, and treated as such. As English settlements grew, and as native populations quickly dwindled from an introduced plague, a war broke out between the settlers and the tribes of the New England area (though some argue it was more of a massacre). "King Philip" (known to the Wampanoag as Metacomet), the leader of the native resistance, was drawn, quartered, and had his head displayed on a pole in Plymouth for 25 years. His wife and child were sold into slavery.
There is a difference between history and the myths of history. History is first-person accounts, journals, official documents and such. That is as close to "what happened" as you can get. The myths of history are created when one tries to retell that information. What I have written is a myth of history, just as what we are taught in school is a myth of history. I call it a myth because retelling history rarely involves a recitation of documented facts. It is a collection of information into story-form, which will inevitably leave out some information so that the story flows better. Just as it subtracts information to make a better story, it may add information, like an interpretation of the events, or moral judgment of historical characters. When these moral judgments are made, or when a historical character is admired or despised for personal qualities, historians tend to polarize the characters, to create stories of "good vs. evil". People like those kinds of stories. (Unfortunately, nobody in real life is truly good or truly evil.) When historians mark a historical figure as representing "goodness", they overlook their "bad" qualities, and vice versa. The facts and the complexity of those facts are not as important as telling the story with consistent characters. This is the basis of creating a myth, complete with heroes and villains.
These are my initial thoughts, based on my experience of history. Perhaps I'm an amateurish history crackpot. Perhaps I'm on to something. Perhaps it's burrito time.
Evergreen gets my toes wet in (so far) gender studies, film studies, postmodern literature, philosophy, psychology, educational theory, political science, and history. It's not enough! I need to be an expert in everything! Not only do I want to eat these courses as main dishes, I want to eat them as prepared by different chefs. I want to research how the recipe has changed over time and across cultures, and I want to know ... ok, I won't get too carried away with the analogy. But I'm hungry!
"You can't understand anything without understanding everything."
New Fake Dissertation Idea for History: Euhemerism in modern history, and specifically the apotheosis of American historical figures, and how this mythologizes history.
Thanksgiving especially carries around a mythos. We hear this story about the Pilgrims and the Indians, and it's not even a consistent story. Some people tell it like the Indians were helping out the Pilgrims, some tell it like the Pilgrims were helping out the Indians (!), some say it's both, all relate it back to the virtue of giving thanks. What most people don't know is that when Abraham Lincoln wrote his Proclamation for Thanksgiving, it had nothing whatsoever to do with remembering the "Pilgrims and Indians". It had to do with uniting the people during the Civil War. Of course, it was based on a tradition of harvest festivals, but there isn't any evidence that suggests the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ever sat at the same table (though the Wampanoag did teach the settlers how to survive). The Wampanoag were regarded as savages, and treated as such. As English settlements grew, and as native populations quickly dwindled from an introduced plague, a war broke out between the settlers and the tribes of the New England area (though some argue it was more of a massacre). "King Philip" (known to the Wampanoag as Metacomet), the leader of the native resistance, was drawn, quartered, and had his head displayed on a pole in Plymouth for 25 years. His wife and child were sold into slavery.
There is a difference between history and the myths of history. History is first-person accounts, journals, official documents and such. That is as close to "what happened" as you can get. The myths of history are created when one tries to retell that information. What I have written is a myth of history, just as what we are taught in school is a myth of history. I call it a myth because retelling history rarely involves a recitation of documented facts. It is a collection of information into story-form, which will inevitably leave out some information so that the story flows better. Just as it subtracts information to make a better story, it may add information, like an interpretation of the events, or moral judgment of historical characters. When these moral judgments are made, or when a historical character is admired or despised for personal qualities, historians tend to polarize the characters, to create stories of "good vs. evil". People like those kinds of stories. (Unfortunately, nobody in real life is truly good or truly evil.) When historians mark a historical figure as representing "goodness", they overlook their "bad" qualities, and vice versa. The facts and the complexity of those facts are not as important as telling the story with consistent characters. This is the basis of creating a myth, complete with heroes and villains.
These are my initial thoughts, based on my experience of history. Perhaps I'm an amateurish history crackpot. Perhaps I'm on to something. Perhaps it's burrito time.