Critical Social Inquiry 0155 - Fighting Over the Facts: Debates in History

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? Additional topics may range from the measurement of technological and cultural change to the distortion of history for political purposes. Students will come to understand how historians work and thereby learn to think historically. Keywords:history

In/Justice Students should expect to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.