Critical Social Inquiry 0155 - Fighting Over the Facts: History as Debate

Many people think of history as an authoritative account of the past, based on indisputable facts. Historians, however, understand it as an evolving interpretation: debate. They argue not just over the interpretation of facts, but even over what constitutes a fact. What happens in the age of "fake news" and "alternative facts"? What is the difference between debating why the Holocaust happened vs. claiming it never happened? Whether Vikings came to America vs. extraterrestrials built the pyramids? Did women have a Renaissance? How did French peasants understand identity? Were Nazi mass murderers motivated by hatred or peer pressure? Nazism discredited the idea of race, but can genetics help Blacks and Jews recover their lost histories? Are European Jews descended from medieval Turks or biblical Hebrews? Did Thomas Jefferson father a child with the enslaved Sally Hemings? Students will come to understand how historians work and thereby learn to think historically.

Time and Narrative Students should generally expect to spend 6-8 hours a week on work outside of class time.