Back

@lizcovart The instance looks great, but I wonder if it is too limited for me. I do a lot of historical research (17th century London/Empire), and will be publishing it in various ways (historical fiction, videos, games), but I also do music, art (incl. animation, 3D), and simulation. I'm also looking at writing.exchange .

@rcameronthomas History is our common bond, we don't expect for people to talk about history all of the time. @jmadelman and I like to talk about baseball and @kawulf likes to talk about gardening with her dog Margaret.

You'll find real people on this server and most people have a lot of different interests. You may also find the writing group/exchange you're looking to form on the server. You can follow along without switching, if you'd like.

@lizcovart Thanks so much. Yes I know that your content will be open ended. It's mostly about what the Local timeline looks like.

Now that I think about it, I will probably create two accounts: one on historials.social and another one on writing.exchange. Having multiple focused timelines up is a nice experience.

@redstrate @histodons Thanks!

@lizcovart @redstrate @histodons that makes it a double negative, or in other words, an invitation to historians of sexuality to post anything they want!

@rachelcleves @redstrate @histodons I fixed the duplication and we know you have a good track record for posting content about the history of sexuality without veering into the posts we don't want to see :)

@loud_noodle @histodons I've been told all you need to do is to follow someone from the server you'd like to follow and then you will start to see their fed in your local and federated feeds.

@ericdano @histodons In terms of funding, @kawulf @jmadelman & I are self-funding until we can get an appropriate business entity up and running to ask users for donations.

We host the server through Google.

@AmyArtBoston @histodons I suppose you can because there are different servers. You can also follow different servers by following someone on a server you're interested in following.

@lizcovart @histodons Just let them know it's not authentic unless the shepherd used a hand-sharpened old steel knife/scissor/whatever!

@LinaBasile @lizcovart @histodons

Might not be the answer you're looking for, but imo no one "validates" history. There's simply no way to say we know everything about an event/person/place/culture at a specific time. We constantly reinterpret and reimagine it, based on new information (records, archaeology) and new ways of processing that info (theory, which is really just asking different questions). That's what makes it interesting! And yes, oral history counts!

@nathanledbetter @lizcovart @histodons well thanks for that

@LinaBasile @nathanledbetter @lizcovart

Often scholars' understanding of history isn't proven wrong, so much as made more complex, refined, or more specific. Historical research is both figuring out particular details and putting this analysis in a broader explanatory framework, so even if the link to the framework (or the framework as a whole) doesn't hold up, the insight into the particular circumstances does. 1/2

@christinkallama @nathanledbetter @lizcovart yes. I know nothing but am realising that history is alive...like a moveable feast. This makes the world so much more intriguing for me.
I can ponder things like how history and science interact.
Sorry to take up space. I guess this is a moment in my history. I feel like I have been given a present.
Thank you, all you historydons
#historyalive

@LinaBasile @nathanledbetter @lizcovart

Addendum: we need to keep working on frameworks not only as we gather new information, but because those frameworks reflect the academy that created them, and so contain implicit or even explicit racism, sexism, Orientalism, and other distorting and unwarranted assumptions. Feminist history found women because feminist scholars asked questions about them and went looking for them. That's why it's important to include everyone in history 3/2

@LinaBasile @lizcovart @histodons

...be invested in retaining the old interpretation for one reason or another, whether political, economic, or emotional.

But, you asked for examples:
The biggest I can think of is removing assumptions about race/ethnicity = language/material culture, particularly in ancient periods. This has led to new understanding of everything from the spread of the Indo-European languages to the "invasion"/migration of the Angles and Saxons into Britain.

@LinaBasile @lizcovart @histodons

Another example would be when we try to shed myths. The "Lost Cause" mythology around the US Civil War, which obscured the importance of slavery to starting the conflict as a way to ease Southern egos, integrate the South back into the US, and preserve a new version of white supremacy. Slavery is literally the stated reason in most if not all declarations of secession. Only those with an emotional investment in a "noble Confederacy" argue otherwise.

@tonahangen @LinaBasile @lizcovart @histodons
100%. The point of history education isn't to know such and such date--it's the best (imo) means to teach things like source evaluation and critical thinking, one essential component of which is the recognition that there's always more possibilities. Necessarily applicable to today, not just the past.

@LinaBasile @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons

Glad to hear it's helpful! But by all means, whatever your self-assessment of knowledge, speak up and ask questions (like you did)! Made a great start to the convo.

@nathanledbetter @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons which makes me think. It would be hard to call an autobiography, a history, unless you were using the word " history" in a very narrow way, wouldn't it?
So many ppl quote autobiographical facts as "history"
#history #historidons #possiblyhistoric

@LinaBasile @nathanledbetter @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons yes well obviously it is only one person’s opinion.
My version of events will be very different from those of my boss or my staff.
And completely unrecognisable from my children or my spouse!

@peterbrown @LinaBasile @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons

Agreed-an autobiography is from one perspective, and has to be understood in that context. I have used them in class as readings, but always with discussion of how much we can trust the source, what their motivations were, what couldn't they have seen, etc.

@nathanledbetter @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons beginning to understand that the word " history" is just a very broad term and needs an adjective to define it. The only history I have been exposed to at school was 20th century war ! Hmmmmm

@LinaBasile @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons

Yes, indeed! And as I'm sure you'll see from discussions here, historians all approach the same events from different angles and backgrounds. A cultural historian, focused on cultural aspects of an event, will note and highlight very different things than an institutional historian or an economic historian, etc. None of those are necessarily "right" or "wrong" in opposition to each other.

@mattT @tonahangen @nathanledbetter @lizcovart @histodons
I wish my teachers had explained that

@LinaBasile @mattT @tonahangen @nathanledbetter @lizcovart @histodons in Higher History pupils are taught to examine the source of the information, the possible motivation of the writer, and how close they were to the event - in terms of time or place -  as well as their relationship to any of the participants.

@peterbrown @LinaBasile @tonahangen @nathanledbetter @lizcovart @histodons we also have this practice for our ‘Higher learners,’ known as Advanced Placement (AP)
Unfortunately, students who do not enroll in these ‘specialized’ programs, rarely have these skills emphasized enough.

@mattT @peterbrown @LinaBasile @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons I've tutored High Schol AP history as well as teaching undergrad at a school where you expect student will have taken AP courses in HS. The AP curricula are better than when I was in HS 30 years ago for sure, but it still depends on the teacher's ability/effort to have students exercise these skills. The thing is, students inevitably enjoy history more if you make them think about it.

@nathanledbetter @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons I lived in Okinawa for many years including when the US gave the island back to Japan. There were fiery scary protests. The Okinawans told me they were a more ancient race with not much in common with Japan, culturally. I loved those people but always wondered why they had to be given back.
#okinawahistory #histories #islandlife

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons So I'd be dubious of any claims based on the word "ancient," and as someone who studies this region, it's complicated. But yes, the Ryukyu Kingdom (present day Okinawa and surrounding islands) wasn't officially annexed by Japan until 1879. Ryukyu was ruled by the Sho royal family from the 1400s. In 1609 the Shimazu family of southern Kyushu (the fam at the center of my dissertation) invaded, conquered, and...

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons ...made them into unofficial vassals. Why unofficial? Well, the Ryukyu kings also paid homage to the Ming court. And since the Ming refused to trade with the Japanese, if they saw the Ryukyu kings as Japanese subjects, they'd stop trading with Ryukyu. The whole point of controlling Ryukyu was to create an avenue of trade with China, so the Shimazu (and the Tokugawa over them) forced the Sho to be subordinate in private but...

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons not overtly. This way they had a back-door through which they could acquire Chinese trade goods.

From 1609 to 1868 the Ryukyu kings sent tribute missions of ambassadors to both the Shimazu in Kagoshima and the Tokugawa in Edo (present-day Tokyo). Internally the Shimazu and Tokugawa used this to enhance their prestige, as here "foreign" kings were paying them homage.

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons
After the Meiji government took control, they were worried that Western powers would take Ryukyu/Okinawa and colonize it, so they took official control in 1879.

I've got friends who specialize in Okinawa, and it's very clear they were an independent state up until then. I wouldn't say "not much culturally in common" because it's way complicated. At the time of reversion to Japanese control, some Okinawans wanted it, some didn't

@nathanledbetter @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons yes. I was there when it got violent. Okinawans kept telling me they were more ancient and culturally different. I helped them recover some ancient pottery artefacts out of the ocean which dated them. #history #histodons

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons Any claims like that are a problem, because 10,000 years ago there was no "Okinawan" or "Japanese" or any form of modern national identification. Genetic research shows Ryukyuans as most closely related to Southern Jomon populations of Southern Japan, who were present in both regions before the "Yayoi" people moved into Japan from Asia and mixed with/pushed the Jomon to the Southern & Northern edges of the archipelago. 1/

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons

None of which means they're genetically "Japanese" because "Japanese" weren't "Japanese" at that point. Modern-day Okinawans also show a significant amount of DNA from "Japanese" populations. In other words, it's hard to make any claim based on "bones." Prehistoric sites have been dated in Ryukyu to 32,000 years ago, but there's no proof one way or the other that those are the ancestors of modern Ryukyuans. 2/

@LinaBasile @mattT @peterbrown @tonahangen @lizcovart @histodons

None of this means anything, of course, re: whether Okinawans today are "Japanese" or not. The funny thing is we always try to tie it to things like heritage, but genetic research shows that's always messier than we think, no matter where in the world or what period. I think Okinawans who wish for independence have enough to support them, having been a separate kingdom until 1879 and all, without trying to rely on 10,000 yo bones