learning from history...

The finish line and a change in direction

2005-12-08T14:32:00.000-06:00

Hooray! It's turned in! I'm a little nervous because I didn't change a whole lot within the historical sketch/outline, but I did add quite a bit to my bibliography, and have anywhere from 45-50 sources (I can't keep track of my newspapers articles...they're all saved in .pdf format though so I do have them. Probably should print them out). So I'm optimistic about the final grade.

Did anyone else really enjoy the two senior seminar presentations today? I felt like I got re-inspired to tweak my topic a little for future use and make it a broader topic than just contrasting two English egyptologists and the formation of their motives and attitudes.

If I stick with this idea for Senior Seminar in the spring (which I think I will; I don't really have time to go hunt up resources for something totally different, and I do love Egyptology and Egypt so much), I'll probably mess with it a little. Since Egypt from 1880-1920, 30ish, was quite the microcosm of European (and American) social, economic, and political interaction, it would be fascinating to look at the interactions between the imperialist outside influences and the so-called "natives" of Egypt, to look through the eyes of my two English Egyptologists and explore some prejudices, conceptions, political motivations of the time. There are SO many ways I could explore the social atmosphere and attitude of all of Europe just by looking at Egypt during this time when the Italians, French, English, Germans, Spaniards, and Arabs rubbed shoulders with each other in close quarters.

Anyway. I think I'm freshly interested in my topic (too bad it comes NOW after weeks of feeling stalemated by my paper)!

Just a Heads Up

2005-11-29T01:30:00.000-06:00

I've been looking at some of you all's blogs (gosh that sounds so Southern...I was Kentucky born and raised though), anyway, I've noticed that a lot of you have the spam comments on your site. Well, there should be a link on your little Publishing 'dashboard' when you first sign in that lets you turn on Word Verification -- so far this has worked well for me because advertising spammers' programs can't automatically read and type in the verification. Anyway, just thought I'd point that out so nobody has to keep deleting irritating comments on real-estate or whatever they're selling.

Motivation or lack thereof

2005-11-15T17:39:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling a little exhausted of late on my topic, trying to see how much I can actually get written out now since I know I need to at least group bits of material that I find and mesh it with various points in my outline. Is anyone else feeling unmotivated right now? It's not that I don't enjoy my topic or sources, it's just that burnt-out feeling.

I'm also realizing that I really could write a book on this subject if I had to...not only covering my two Egyptologists, but then expanding and attributing their motives to the society of the time, especially remnants of English imperialism? And not only that but I could analyze society's response to archaeology and relate that to economic factors, politics of the time (especially nationalism...race to make Britain the foremost nation in Egyptology), you name it...no wonder Dr. Lowe wants us to start with a very specific topic and stick to that because even just looking at two human beings about whom not a whole lot of individual biographies have been written, the tangents I could go off on are innumerable! Between Historiography and History of Technology this semester, I've learned nothing if not the fact that it's impossible to isolate one person, event, or invention in history, to contain it without exploring surrounding factors. But I think that's a good realization to come to, since we're an increasingly globalized world and now more than ever, a happening on the other side of the planet can have fast repercussions back to home since people are so interconnected.

But then, as Dr. Dean pointed out in a lecture the other day, do we always have to explore all the ins and outs and connections and origins of something in history to enjoy learning about it? No...sometimes a simple history of a person, place or thing is far more satisfactory and informative to read about/research if we deliberately limit our scope so we don't get slowed down in doggedly pursuing every side alley, as long as we acknowledge that our thesis/vision/conclusion is not necessarily the only one, due to so much other relevant information.

And now I know I've been thinking too long when I start using "/" all over the place.

Field trip summary

2005-11-11T00:44:00.000-06:00

Oooooh why is it so hard to remember to get these things in on time?! My life is ridiculously busy right now but I know these don't take THAT long to do.

So right, the field trip summary; I thought the Lincoln library was such a beautiful building...if I do wind up becoming a librarian, it'd be nice to work in something as clean and inviting as that. Some of the features gave me the nervous giggles, like the chamber that sucked out all the air in case of fire, suffocating any hapless person trapped inside, or the moving bookshelves that looked too much like the trash-compactor in Star Wars. I think the room I enjoyed most was where they were working on preserving books, making little boxes for them, removing tape, etc; being also a fan of archaeology, I realize that artifact preservation even of not-so-ancient items is pretty delicate and painstaking work but quite rewarding.

Also, can I just say that I wish Sodexho offered box lunches like that ON campus? Hm.

The State library was impressive, what I got to see of it anyway. The two books that they were holding for me on my two archaeologists were really just icing on the cake, not key books. I feel like I have quite a few really good sources, but it's always nice to add a few more.

So all in all I think the trip was profitable, if for nothing else than a change in scenery and a couple more sources. I'm still disappointed I couldn't get Dr. Dean to give us all an impromptu lecture on the economics, society, and politics of the Middle Ages. I know he could've entertained us the whole way there AND back.

Hooray, sources!

2005-10-26T20:16:00.000-05:00

I think the primary sources I got most excited about finding were the scans of all the newspaper articles from the Chicago Tribune and New York Times that were either interviews of...

Wait a minute. I should back up here...pause, rewind, play. Something I've realized, reading my blog and those of others of you is that when we've been tweaking our topics, a lot of people haven't really had time to post exactly what they've decided on to research. I know I came in thinking "Oh English Egyptologists, that's good enough." But definitely that was too broad of a survey, and while my current topic may still be too broad (or so Dr. Lowe is worried), it's a little more focused and specific now.

My final subject (or so I hope) is comparing and contrasting the well known Egyptologists Howard Carter (discoverer of the nearly intact tomb of Tutankhamun) and Flinders Petrie. The more I got to thinking about prominent Egyptologists, the more I found the similarities and clashes between the two men. Petrie, a very meticulous man, the son of a middle-class engineer, was for a time Carter's mentor and supervisor, and Petrie thought that Carter would never make much of an Egyptologist. Carter came from a large, poor family, and his specialty was art rather than scholarly pursuits; his lifelong dream was to find a royal tomb that would gain him notice and acceptance. Carter got his tomb, Petrie found many less recognized sites. It's interesting, while the average well-educated person recognizes Carter's name fairly well if mentioned with King Tut, the academic community tends to be more accepting of Petrie because of his careful focus on the importance of everyday ancient Egyptian life rather than treasure-seeking. So as I said in my prospectus (which ended up much better than I'd thought), I'd like to research and find out how much their economic and educational backgrounds influenced their mindsets towards excavation, and provide a more balanced look at them by combining both popular opinion and scholarly opinion.

That being said, I think my most exciting primary source finds came from the two newspapers I mentioned; there are many articles out there that are actual interviews with either of the men or come from journalists present at the opening of tombs or uncovering of artifacts. And also I've found invaluable sources directly from Carter's or Petrie's viewpoints: Excavation diaries! That made me pretty happy. I've also got a book of Petrie's and his wife's letters back and forth to each other while he was away from her, and I think those are promising.

Criteria for evaluating sources

2005-10-26T19:29:00.000-05:00

Bother. I'd forgotten this one...things are so terribly busy and I get so little sleep these days! Thank goodness my poor roommate is as busy as I am or I'm sure she'd resent how late I stay up typing and how early I get up to continue typing.

I suppose the way I evaluate the validity of sources in a variety of ways. A lot of times I first look to see whether or not they come out of a well known college or university. I think a lot of the most helpful and scholarly books or articles come from professors who have had the training and done the research to truly know what they're talking about. Also I won't take just anything off the internet, even things that are supposedly written by scholarly authors, unless they come off of scholarly databases (especially JStor or Project Muse, things like that), considering that just anybody could type up a review or a memoir or article and slap a pretend professor's name on it. That's not to say that there aren't perfectly credible sites out there that aren't run by universities; I've found a few that have very good reproductions of excavation records that I trust because they come from very well known sources like the Egyptian Council of Antiquities (which does have the support of places like the Oriental Institute at University of Chicago), but I'd say if you don't know your topic all that well (I've been doing Egyptology research for years and figured out what's accepted and what's not) then it's kind of risky picking up sites that may seem very scholarly but might be completely off. Also I generally take mainstream newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and New York Times, or well-known magazines like National Geographic as credible just because they're sure to undergo quite a bit of scrutiny from a variety of professionals.

So far I haven't had a whole lot of trouble finding trustworthy sources, but that may be because my topic is too broad! I came up with about thirty for the annotated bibliography from quite a few categories that I might address in a different post because it was kind of fun compiling them.

A little about changing your sidebar content

2005-09-30T00:25:00.000-05:00

Prof. Vaughan asked me to explain a bit how I changed my sidebar content to something actually interesting other than the blank links that had been underneath Google News. It's a little complicated, but basically instead of clicking "New Post", you choose the "Change Settings" option with the little cog or whatever it is, and click the folder tab marked "Template". There will be a long string of Html whatnot (I'm really not very good with coding stuff) but you scroll down almost to the bottom and you'll see under "Begin #sidebar" and "MainOrArchivePage" a spot for your Links, and mine look like this (only I had to add spaces wherever there were <> because otherwise it wouldn't show you!):

<>< href="http://news.google.com/">Google News< /a >< /li >
<>< href="http://www.antiquitynews.com/">Egyptian Antiquity News< /a >< /li >
<>< href="http://guardians.net/">Guardian's Egypt< /a >< /li >
<>< href="http://library.olivet.edu/pubserv/ins/library_science /300/blogs.html"> SSCI 300 fellow bloggers< /a >< /li >

And as you can see, I just typed in my own favorite websites within the quotation marks and gave them their own titles rather than the blank links that had been there before. You can add just as many or as few as you want! Then just save your changes. That probably looks really messy but it's not as difficult as it looks considering even I can do it, and I've messed up a few computers in my time.

EDIT: Ok, it's still not showing the html correctly and I don't know what my text is doing way over here now, but I think you get the general idea. Blogger's got a fairly decent explanation in the FAQ/Help section if I remember right.

Second Edit: I think the main reason Prof. Vaughan wanted me to share about this is that it's helpful to at least have a link on your blog that will take the reader back to our class collective blogging addresses homepage.

Primary Sources

2005-09-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

Ideally I'd like to find mainly letters and memoirs from the two British Egyptologists I'm contrasting, Sir Flinders Petrie and Howard Carter. Carter, as some may remember, was the finder of Tutankhamen's nearly intact royal tomb. Petrie is less well known in the sensational circles but more respected by serious archaeologists for his careful methods.

Thus far, just from a preliminary search, I know there's definitely a book out there of compiled letters between Petrie and his wife, and I know that Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon published quite a bit about the time leading up to their discovery of King Tut, and that's accessible just through interlibrary loan. It would be great to find old newspaper articles, archaeology scholarly journals (of which I've found quite a few), and personal accounts of people who knew Petrie and Carter, just to get a better feel of how others perceived their motives for excavating in the first place, and I'm sure I'll come across more of those as I look.

Citations and more pinned down topic...

2005-09-15T02:07:00.000-05:00

Alrighty then...almost forgot about this until I got the e-mail (thanks for the reminder, Prof Vaughan...I thought I'd written it down in the schedule book but apparently not). Look what time I'm writing this...shame on me.

Citations -- this early I don't particularly have a system other than to create a WordPerfect doc and copy down basically any URL from any helpful site I find, and any information about useful-looking books so I can find them again, keeping the internet sources separate from my paper documents because I forget what I have when I mix them. Sometimes I'll alphabetize, more often than not I won't this early on in research because I may soon read a book and realize it has nothing to do with my topic and have to strike it from my list. Later on I'll probably go so far as on my citation page to temporarily type up the page numbers of sections I think might be helpful, but not just yet.

The topic I've pretty much decided on is more or less about the inrush of English archaeologists into Egypt from 1890-1930, who their patrons were, what they stood to gain (national pride, social standing, economic advancement, etc) and what they eventually accomplished. It may still be a bit broad and I may want to pick three or so specific ones and contrast them and their motives, but I'm not sure yet. I've already got quite a few books on Egypt that at least point at the promise of journals, memoirs of the archaeologists, etc, so I think there will probably be enough sources. Hopefully.

Topic? Maybe...

2005-09-08T09:07:00.000-05:00

Alright, well, considering we're supposed to think up two topics due in Historiography today anyway, I've been thinking and I've come up with two that I like so much that I can't choose between them yet...Probably I need to go look at available sources first before making a final decision.

Being an archaeology nut, one topic I'd be extremely interested in researching is something about the actual history of archaeology, particuarly in Egypt. Obviously there's been a long line of archaeologists perpetually digging in the land of the pyramids since the 1850s or so, but did you know that even some of the more educationally-minded pharaohs dug up and documented earlier dynasties and attempted some restoration of tombs and temples? So the process goes far back in that country, and I'd like to trace the development and technique of Egyptology.

Another interest of mine is art, especially painting, and I find the Renaissance such a busy political and social time period, so I might be interested in researching the connections between the great Renaissance artists and their patrons/patron cities, and find out how their art affected the economy/politics of their particular...city-states? You could almost call some of them that, I suppose.

I know that's all very vague and up in the air, but those were the two that I was most interested in and I guess I can tack down more specific theses after rolling the ideas around in my head for a while.

First post!

2005-09-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

Well let's see...my name's Anna Hesterberg and I'm doing this obviously for the Research Techniques class. I already have probably three other active online journals, used to have a blogger journal but I didn't care for it as much as livejournal or xanga. I'm 20, I'm a Senior (finally!) and a history major graduating in the spring if all goes according to plans.

My hobbies lie with geology and the outdoors (I love going caving and I do a lot of rock climbing) and archaeology (namely digging up farmer's dumps for pottery and glass jars) but after I graduate from ONU I'll most likely go on to grad school for a master's in library and information science. Eventually I'd like to get a doctorate in Egyptology but that could be way ahead in the future.

Previous research I've done has always been either for advanced composition classes or history courses, and semester long projects are no stranger to me, but I doubt any have been as in-depth as Historiography will be. I guess I have always looked to the end result and thought of what I want the finished product to look like...if I focus on the little details right off along the way I get bogged down.