Extension History - General thoughts (1 Viewer)

[darkroomgirl]

Question 1 - Good thing I prepared well! I did alright I think, but it took me a while to work around the question. I pretty much talked about how the purpose and AUDIENCE of history has altered over time, using the examples of Herodotus (haha the markers would be so sick of him), Cicero, Livy, Bede, etc. Then I also argued against Jenkins' statement of 'History is what the historians make.' (I ABHOR postmodernism) I said that yes, postmodernism made a good point, as Richard J. Evans said, in forcing historians to re-evaluate their work, but in no way should it dictate what history is entirely to us. History has many interpretations, but to say that our knowledge of what happened in the past is merely the account of a group of storytellers is a bit over-reaching.

Wrote 10-11 pages.

Question 2: This question was MADE for our case study (Jesus Christ). I started out by saying that the 'two histories' thing was applicable to the historicity of Jesus Christ, because throughout history we've had many, many interpretations of who he was or whether or not he existed, but that doesn't change the reality of what actually happened... our perspectives of it have only changed. Then I discussed how historians have used and manipulated sources according to their own purposes and beliefs. I talked about a rationalist, Marshall J. Gauvin's interpretation of Jesus and the evidence (and why it's flawed), a Christian historian's interpretation (which was rational but understandably pro-Jesus) and also the Jesus Seminar, who've had some VERY FLAWED scholarly opinions with results 'determined ahead of time' and some anachronistic tendencies in their treatment of the historical figure.

Bottom line was that a belief in Jesus Christ's existence connotes some very important religious values, and so historians are generally more reluctant to accept it as a fact.

Wrote 10 pages for that one.

Overall, let's just hope for the best...

 

[Korobushka]

Question 1:

Thought this was fairly decent. From reading everyone's replies it seems I took a unique line. I wen through most schools (ancient, classical, enlightenment, annales, marxist, modern) and related them back to "means different things for different groups", also making reference to the "revolutionary" stuff in backing up the marxist school.

Then I moved into post-modernism, discussing, "evaluating", Jenkins' perspective on history, and thoroughly agreeing with him by throwing in all bias-related quotes from the thick source book they gave me to the start of the year. We never actually studied a particular historian? Just went through their writing in the source book. I made particulr reference to Jenkins' work "What is History?" that appears in the source book, hammering three or four quotes down. I was pleased with this section, though perhaps I didn't answer the question properly? I wrote 12 pages.



Question 2:
Again, fairly happy. I thought the idea of "relative history" drew in well with the Windschuttle/Reynolds debate raging over White settlement in Australia. I made particular references to the Battle of Pinjarra, The Forrest River Massacre, and then Windschuttle's 'ambition' to bring back the concept of Terra Nullius. Probably one mistake was supporting Windschuttle (and Rod Moran) in regards to Forrest River, and then disagreeing with him in the Terra Nullius 'land' argument. They probably want us to take a particular side if we do. I wrote 11 pages here.



I think 40 is possible. Though being positive about things never got anyone anywhere.

 

[wrong_turn]

tacitus is of course possible for question 2 though i dont do it as a case study myself. though i had to constantly use tacitus in ancient history for anceint rome. however, you could have spoken about the differnet perspectives on tacitus by other historians.

 

[bonniejjj]

I think question 2 wasn't as bad for Tacitus as everyone seems to think. New archaeological evidence (such as the Lyon Tablet, The Senatus Consultum de Pisone Patriae [SCPP,] Tabula Habena [I didn't use this one so not sure of the exact spelling,] and even non-epigraphic sources such as Agrippina's villa and the forum of Augustus) provide valuable checks on Tacitus and causing modern historians to change their opinions, changing the debates in history. Also new methods and styles of history (particularly the influence of postmodernism) have caused new (and often very different) approaches to enter the debates in history, such as Patrick Sinclair's "Tacitus, the sententious historian: A Sociology of Rhetoric in Annales 1-6."

I think having the same question for all case studies does privilege some case studies over others, but hopefully the markers take the suitability of the question in regard to the students chosen case study into account.

 

[eric__white]

Possible yes.

But, it definately disadvantaged our case study. I did talk about the different perspectives of historians. But still that didnt ful;ly answer the question about sources and their use. Oh well, i think i did it ok.

 

[DeepDarkRose]

hahaahha hi eric... yeah i totally agree, what a screwed up question, that was even more evil than the trials *account for three historians* one! we're so screwed.... let's hope they'll figure out how useless our case study was as they mark it....

 

[boycee]

section one took a bit of getting used to, but section two was awesome. i argued that in the case of the historicity of jesus christ, the historians truth and evidence/reading of sources doesn't in fact change the historical debate, merely fuels it and reinforces one side or the other.

great question, and awesome quote.

 

[gorgo31]

Question 1:

Thought this was fairly decent. From reading everyone's replies it seems I took a unique line. I wen through most schools (ancient, classical, enlightenment, annales, marxist, modern) and related them back to "means different things for different groups", also making reference to the "revolutionary" stuff in backing up the marxist school.

Then I moved into post-modernism, discussing, "evaluating", Jenkins' perspective on history, and thoroughly agreeing with him by throwing in all bias-related quotes from the thick source book they gave me to the start of the year. We never actually studied a particular historian? Just went through their writing in the source book. I made particulr reference to Jenkins' work "What is History?" that appears in the source book, hammering three or four quotes down. I was pleased with this section, though perhaps I didn't answer the question properly? I wrote 12 pages.



Question 2:
Again, fairly happy. I thought the idea of "relative history" drew in well with the Windschuttle/Reynolds debate raging over White settlement in Australia. I made particular references to the Battle of Pinjarra, The Forrest River Massacre, and then Windschuttle's 'ambition' to bring back the concept of Terra Nullius. Probably one mistake was supporting Windschuttle (and Rod Moran) in regards to Forrest River, and then disagreeing with him in the Terra Nullius 'land' argument. They probably want us to take a particular side if we do. I wrote 11 pages here.



I think 40 is possible. Though being positive about things never got anyone anywhere.

You do "Arrival of the British in Australia 1788-1848" as well?

Wow, I didn't know any other schools did it. Would've loved to have shared resources and stuff, seeing it's such a small elective. Your essay sounds great, I talked about some similiar stuff plus the Smallpox debate, Bells Falls Gorge Massacre and yeah, Windschuttle reinvigorating the overturned legal doctrine of Terra Nullius with his pathetic suppositions about the Tasmanian Aboriginals. The evidence stuff was, for me, primarily the debate about oral lore and tradition in comparison to "official" written White documents, and how Windschuttle accepts and rejects both as he pleases. Odd man, he is.

 

[Felixxx]

I think question 2 wasn't as bad for Tacitus as everyone seems to think. New archaeological evidence (such as the Lyon Tablet, The Senatus Consultum de Pisone Patriae [SCPP,] Tabula Habena [I didn't use this one so not sure of the exact spelling,] and even non-epigraphic sources such as Agrippina's villa and the forum of Augustus) provide valuable checks on Tacitus and causing modern historians to change their opinions, changing the debates in history. Also new methods and styles of history (particularly the influence of postmodernism) have caused new (and often very different) approaches to enter the debates in history, such as Patrick Sinclair's "Tacitus, the sententious historian: A Sociology of Rhetoric in Annales 1-6."

I do Tacitus as well and I can confidently say I've never heard of any of the texts or archaeological evidence you've just recalled. I'm not saying you're making it up, I'm just saying that it looks like the majority of the candidates who did Tacitus weren't taught in the same way as you. So for the rest of us who - it seems - were taught improperly, Tacitus was difficult.

 

[Felixxx]

Posted twice...

 

[eric__white]

Thank you felix and deep dark rose . i was after some comfort. I have never heard of any of that crap. We didn't really look into the last point on the epigraphical sources etc.

i talked about Characteristion and his view on the notion of the principate. I basivcally said that even though the source (Tacitus) remains the same, people interpet him differently (and they hardly do that!)

The night before the exam, i called the advice line. I asked her about 2004 question, and how it was also crap for Tacitus, cause i knew very little about the historians personal backgrounds. She said that the markers take into account the question for each case study. So, essentaiully we a re judged against others that do our case study.

To the person who said they study Tacitus in Ancient.... So do I and i tell you it is a whole lot different!

All i can say is one thing - Tacitus is Annal.

 

[DeepDarkRose]

i'm alina by the way, so i REALLY feel your pain since i have the exact same sheets that told me nothing yeah i talked about characterisation and notion of principate too.... i think they should give us points for creativity, considering how many sources i managed to make up lol.... all these people saying how easy it was, really really scares me

 

[rebecca05]

Totally screwed up!! I think i did best in part one but still shocking!! I had so much trouble with question 2 and relating it ti JFK!! So hard!! Im hoping it still counts cos i went good in the assessment and the trials (ended up first at school)...but not sure now...totally stuffed it!!

 

[Don Mackey]

Alina and Eric, Mr Mulligan is writing a letter of complain to the BOS about how crappy the question was for Tacitus, and Miniutti is going to be marking for ext History so she is going to complain in person. However I to have no idea about those archaelogical sources and Augustus's forum tells us nothing about Tacitus's sources because he only wrote a small amount on him, Im afraid I doubt we were taught incorrectly and the fact that it was a generic response for all case studies that benefits others above classical case studies really is stupid.

I dont care about that exam any more I did bad, it will stuff up my UAI but hopefully it will be moderated.
Good Luck to those who are not yet finished and to those ext history students who found the case study question suited them (screw you lol)

 

[bonniejjj]

God I can't believe what I wrote caused such a disturbance. I guess my teacher was just a gem- she did so much work for Extension (not saying the students didn't; I did A LOT of work for extension) and tried to be at the forefront of the latest archaeological evidence and academic scholarship. I think I took the right approach, although I think if you didn't study the fifth area of debate on archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic sources etc it would have been difficult to take this approach. I agree with everyone however on the point that it wasn't really a fair question for those of us studying Tacitus. Just hopefully I did the right thing....
Oh to Don Mackey, I didn't talk about Augustus' forum in the exam, and I know it does not tell us a lot about Tacitus, but I was just writing off the top of my head... perhaps more accurate would be the infrastructure and the roads, praetorian barracks etc developed by Tiberius, opposing Tacitus' image of him as a hypocritic tyrant, showing actual evidence of Tiberius' achievements, etc, etc. I didn't have enough time to talk about this in the exam so I'm just going off what I learnt in Ancient...

 

[wrighty_wrongy]

extension history

look, for all the people out there who were looking at 5-6 different historians to support your case, there was no need. Your essay had to primarily focus on teh source itself, then use 2 maybe three oteh rhistorians to support your answer. The best way to answer this question was to deconstruct the source, then, if u had enough knowledge on a variety of sources, pick one that agreed with the source, and one that had differing opinions on it. The best way to deconstruct the other historians u use, in regards to teh question was compar each of the following...
1. Context
2. Purposes/Aims
3. Methodolgy
4. Bias
5. What the historian believes

... by doing this, as well as deconstructing the source, you are not only agreeing with the source but also offering a different opinion thriugh the use of another historian. From the above categories, you can then explain how the differences have brough about the change of ideology as to 'what is history'. As well as this, by using two differing opinions, you can the 'evaluate' (as the question asked), what Jenkins' theory was i.e, give ur own opinion....

 

[DeepDarkRose]

i'm so confused.... i dont really understand how even writing about the roads and stuff would have helped all that much..... how does that affect what historians think about what tacitus wrote? wouldnt we have needed something like sources about tacitus himself or at least those in his situation to make them relevant? since we're not really supposed to be talking about what tacitus said, but what others say he said.... if you know what i mean lol
i still wrote quite a lot for this question, just based on my own powers of bullshitting where i was making up sources right and left... hmmm i wonder wat the markers will think....

 

[hottie_mira]

soooooooooooooooo haaaaaaaaaaard
i was screwed..ahhh

 

[Carnivour]

I loved the first question. It was good in the sense that you couldnt really have pre-prepared a responce and just regurgitated it because it WAS so narrow and specific. And I was surprised to see many people talk about a whole bunch of historians...that in my opinion was really unnecessary, as the question really only asked for 2, meaning that you had to explore two in depth. Therefore this question tested more your argumentative/philosophical facet of historical understanding rather than just chronological "What is history" recital, which was exactly what the question in essence was arguying against if you remember. I used only two historians, Reynolds (the whole Black Armband history) and Evans (re: the Irving libel case), and I got 12 pages out, which I'm pretty satisfied with.

The 2nd question was a little curly, but it was actually an aspect that I had sort of explored in one of my Ext History assesments on Richard Evans (hence I used him in both of my sections, which was awesome because I knew the most about him), where Evans states that historical knowledge is "cumulative" and we must seek to fill in the gaps as much as find out new ideas about the past. So JFK got pretty whiplashed by all the. I got 14 pages done for that, although I'm pretty sure I repeated a little too much, and I think I also miquoted the name of the producer of one of the documentaries on JFK. *sigh* I hope it doesnt cost me too much, because the quality was there.

 

[Bobby George]

I was quite shocked when i first saw the paper to be honest.
i did Elizabeth for my case study, and the question suited quite well, but clearly the BOS is getting annoyed with prepared answers. that question was clearly an attack on prepared answers, so watch out next year kiddies. But nah, i still wrote 12 pages, but historiography was gay in way, because as someone else has already said, the source was so repetitive, and yeah in the end i only talked bout Herodotus, Bede and Ranke (mentioned E.H Carr though) in depth instead of talking about heaps with passing reference- totalled bout 9 pages- because in depth is much better than like 16 of utter rubbish