I am currently swimming in a sea of print-outs (see: Bard allows me to kill many trees, for essentially no money. I still feel bad about it.) in the library, trying very hard to focus on "The limits of historical knowledge" from John Tosh's The Pursuit of History. He wants me to ask myself if historians can be objective. I'm going to simply say no and instead thumb through my newly arrived copy (thank you ConnectNY and Vassar) of Diego Durán's The History of the Indies of New Spain. I think we can all agree that I have reached a new low (or high?) of historical geeky-ness.
Wikipedia* tells me that Durán's book "was much criticized in his lifetime for helping the 'heathen' maintain their culture." Now we all know how trustworthy Wikipedia can be, but way before I read any of that I wanted to look into Durán as a historian contemporary to the time period I am interested in. Why did he write such a lengthy history of a population of people that had already been conquered and converted? What was so significant about his work that made it so threatening to the powers that be? Who in sixteenth century Spain and in the colonies had a vested interest in keeping certain histories forgotten? Wikipedia is also telling me that Durán's book was not published until the nineteenth century - why? Can we connect that with the previously asked questions?
I can't say too much quite yet about this work, however. I haven't really read it (and I feel like I may not get through all of it in the three weeks time the library has allotted me. I can say that since starting this semester, I've taken a new interest in the process of historical writing and its significance to...everything? Thanks, Jane! Now I can barely resist the urge to check out as many histories as I can carry.
Speaking of checking out more histories, I read quite a few excerpts from Bernal Díaz del Castillo last weekend. The thing I really got out of his history (which is, at best, tedious) is his rivalry with Francisco López de Gómara. Gómara was hired by Cortés to write a history of New Spain. As I understand it, Bernal Díaz took issue with this history because Gómara himself never travelled to the New World while Díaz had been a foot soldier under Cortés. Can you say drama? I would be interested in comparing the two histories. Is it even possible to determine which one is more accurate? It must take a lot of frustration for someone to sit down years after the fact and repute the stories of others just to make one's point.
All in all, I think I have a lot of reading to do.
*Oh, yesterday I learned that approximately 85% of Wikipedia entries are written by men. Let's let the implications of that one sit with us for a moment.
Hey Irina,
ReplyDeleteThis is Elias; Jane asked me to look at a few of your posts and give whatever advice may come to mind...
In general, and for whatever it's worth, I think a good idea to keep in mind when approaching your SProj is to think about what experiences or knowledge you'd like to have after you're done with college. I just know that having tied my project in with stuff outside of Bard, in the sense that I'm hoping to be able to point to this project as a reason I'd be a good applicant (for a job or grad, etc.), and having it be relevant beyond just fulfilling my Bard requirements has made it much more interesting and provided more motivation. The whole thing is kind of an opportunity to make yourself a pseudo-expert on one thing, so you might as well have it be something you think you can use in the future.
I hope this somewhat helpful and I'm not telling you anything you already know...if you have any more questions or want to talk more about your proj, feel free to contact me!
Hey Irina,
ReplyDeleteElias makes a really important point here. Think first about the work you want to be doing after you leave college, and then consider how you could use the SP right now to get there. You should ask him what he's doing...
It's intuitive for us to think it ought to work the other way--that the kinds of knowledge and skills we've acquired in college will surely be useful to somebody out in the world. Sadly, despite my hopes, I found that being able to parse John Keats's "Lamia" (the subject of a long paper I wrote as an MA student that got nominated for some obscure interdepartmental award) has failed to useful to anyone. ;-)
Jane