09.29.05
Fall, 2005 - Historian’s Craft
I gotta say, this class scares the willies out of me. I’m enjoying the conversations in the forums, my classmates are my kinda people. But the work itself just scares me. I’m never sure if what I’m turning in is what’s expected. This class stuns my brain right into cryogenic mode.
“I’m supposed to turn in a 600-word summary of a 25-page essay on the sexual economy of prostitution in the Roman Empire? An essay that I still don’t understand after 2 readings? Ack!!!!!!”
It’s a good class. DrN asks questions that dig deep and I do that whole cryogenic thing. I realized, finally, last week that maybe I just think she wants us to dig to the center of the Earth when all she’s asking is that we dig a few feet deeper than we’re used to going.
The work has been about exposure to theories: materialist, marxist (yes, with a little ‘m’), gender … with more to come. It’s also about how to take the information we gather and put it together in a well-written, properly cited work.
The questions have been about what we think of the theories, how we think the theories apply to the material assigned for that week, what we find when we read and think about them.
For instance, last week’s assignment was reading (pardon the Turabian, it’s a direct cut and past from my paper):
Flemming, Rebecca. “Quae Corpore Quaestum Facit: The Sexual Economy of Female Prostitution in the Roman Empire.” The Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999): 38-61.
We were asked to read this essay, write a 600-word summary of it and then discuss questions such as “Was the comparison of prostitution in the Roman Empire and slavery in the American South valid?” and, “What is Flemming’s main thesis?” There was also a question about whose voices were missing from the essay and what we, as historians, should be careful of concerning sources.
In a fit of desperation, I chained myself to the office chair in front of my computer, set the timer and began to write; anything that came to mind. I put the essay on my bookholder, the reading guide and the lecture next to it and went from text editor to text and back. Within my self-imposed time limit, I had written 779 words (including the citation at the beginning) and turned it in. (Turned it on the wrong screen but fortunately, our TA caught it and put it in the correct place.)
I had no idea if what I had done was even close. Basically, I wrote a paragraph or 2 that recapped the first few paragraphs of each section and then I scanned the rest of the section to see if there was anything that needed to be included. If not, I moved on.
DrN adds comments to our original papers, so we can see exactly what she is talking about. I was so nervous; heart pounding and all that. “Don’t open it! Don’t open it! You don’t really want to know,” my adrenaline kept screaming.
But! I opened it and got a better score on this assignment than the last one. There were some pointers about citations, a grammar check and correction on a point that I misinterpreted. I was so relieved! Relaxation and breathing returned and research on my paper for the Latin America class commenced with more enthusiasm.