I started teaching online through Miramar before COVID-19. I love trying new tools.
I've been lucky to have taken several online courses before Covid as well, including a colloqium, so I have high hopes for this course to work out despite the fact that we can't meet in person.
Let a craftsman attitude help you get the job done
Very inspiring
It may feel humiliating to patiently work on the gradual building of productive writing skills and techniques
Classic impostor syndrome, I feel it all the time.
It keeps us in touch with the fact that academic writing is something we can learn how to do.
I fully believe this sentiment and support it as the healthiest approach not only to writing but to any skill where there is a percieved "talent" barrier to entry. I've met many people who have given up learning to write, learning an instrument, learning to code, or any other task because they believed themselves to be lacking "talent" and therefore couldn't start learning. In reality, talent only makes the the start of learning a skill less rough but it does not provide anyone with mastery. Only practice and work can give you that, and practice is something absolutely anyone can achieve.
Don't allow yourself to become self-conscious about vocabulary.
One of the worst things a writer can do, in my opinion, is use obscure or technical terms where a simple one would suffice. Last week I was reading a a book on Ottoman history for a course and while it was interesting the author kept using the word "interalia" instead of simply saying "among other things" and it took me out fo the reading every time I saw it.
And suppose the context‐book is twice as long and costly as a textbook? Aren't we willing to pay for knowledge of what knowing is?
Though I appreciate the efforts of the author, I am definitely not excited about having to purchase a "context-book" twice as expensive as an average textbook. Most of my history professors have chosen to have their classes read specific excerpts from specific works they think most relevant and most useful, and I personally believe this approach is far more personable and effective.
more money is being lost than won from slot machines and more facts forgotten than remembered from textbooks.
I find this very relatable, and this is the reason why I find most textbooks, especially history, to be dull and pointless. Facts without the context of personalization are useful in trivia but less so in historical thinking.
In place of fiction, I offer the craft of history, assisted by the art of speculation.
Very well put, I'm going to save this quote for the future.
~ow did she judge the _Irish immigrants who worked alongside her m the New England mills? What opinions did she formulate about l slavery when she lived in the Deep South? What did it mean co her that her husband fought for the South during the Civil War? How did she make sense of race in the British Caribbean? Eunice's letters ~ever expounded, in any concerted manner, upon any of chose issues
Therein lies the issue with such sources in that, while interesting, they may not contribute in any meaningful way to any particular discussion that might be of interest to a historian, no matter their validity as primary sources. Still, I don't believe that means they are entirely pointless. As time changes, so can interpretation of sources.
I dont know yet what I shall do if I live
Morbid
the women in Eunice's family hardly ever mentioned the act of reading, beyond the Bible
Perhaps there was cultural stigma against women reading rectreationally in a way that did not exist against men.
Dont think because I send you my refuse paper that it is any lack of respect to you, Eunice made clear to her mother, but I had rather send it to you than to strangers, for you know the circumstances.
Honestly, I have never once considered the medium of a source, as opposed to some other possible medium, to a value worthy of consideration before but I can see here how that can be the case.
In her voyages from New England to the Deep South to the British Caribbean, Eunice also mad~ ajou_pey fro_m the life of an im overished white woman in the United States to the life of an elite -------woman of color in the West Indies
I am impressed by the author's ability to summarize her story in so succinct a manner. Personally, I tend to struggle writing introductory and conclusionary statements, including summaries.
I gleaned everything I could from vital records, city directories, and village maps, then pieced together context from town records, newspaper reports, and regi-mental histories.
This type of work is fascinating to me, reminds me of being a detective but thankfully without the stakes of a crime having been committed.
Purchased for their value to Civil War researchers, the Davis Papers are today preserved in optimal condi-tions of temperature and light, neatly arranged in that single sturdy archival box
With digital scanning, hopefully all sources such as this can be preserved for all time.
Most of Eunice's mail was left behind somewhere, thrown out, or deliberately destroyed.
Unfortunate that so much physical evidence has been lost overtime. Perhaps digital media will be more durable in this regard.