Last Saturday, I attended the Zimbabwe Research Day at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford on the topic of education. Put together by the Britain-Zimbabwe Society, the day brought together academics, activists and others involved in education in Zimbabwe. Speakers came from Zimbabwe, South Africa, the United States, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The wide range of presentations provided an insight into the history of education in Zimbabwe from Barbara Muhamba’s talk on the gendering of education at Catholic missions in the colonial era, to Joanne McGregor’s discussion of the political activism of Zimbabwean students and others in the 1960s and 1970s. The combination of these talks with others which had a more contemporary focus resulted in a broad-ranging discussion of the challenges facing education in Zimbabwe today. Some speakers tackled education including Ngwabi Bhebe, the vice-chancellor of Midlands State University in Zimbabwe, Gerry Mazarire of the University of Zimbabwe, Bruce Mutsvairo of Amersterdam University College and Blessing Makwambeni of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology addressed issue in higher education. Others tackled primary and secondary education includingTerri Barnes of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign who examined the teaching of Zimbabwean history in high schools, Cathy Campbell of the LSE who spoke about a larger project which seeks to help schools provide support to children affected by HIV/AIDS and Pat Akhurst and Pam Stuart who spoke on a long-running link between the towns of Stevenage in the United Kingdom and Kadoma in Zimbabwe. Taking a broader view, Dennis Sinyolo of Education International in Belgium placed the situation of Zimbabwean educators in a global context. Others spoke about education projects that did not necessarily fall within the formal schooling problem: Lee Taylor and Maggie Coates presented a case study on Hlekweni, an adult education program that provides its students with the skills needed to begin their own small businesses, such as carpentry and agriculture, while Chipo Chung described Envision Zimbabwe’s peace education initiative. Just as when I went to the Children and War conference last year, I was struck by the vibrance that this combination of academic historians, activists and social scientists provided and also the opportunity to meet people in different fields who share my interest in Zimbabwe.
Author Archive
Bringing Academics and Practitioners Together: The Britain-Zimbabwe Society Research Day on Education in Zimbabwe
June 21, 2011History Compass Interview: Michael Roche on World War One Soldier Settlement in the British Empire
March 15, 2011
I recently had the chance to interview Michael Roche, professor of Geography at Massey University in New Zealand about his recent History Compass article, “World War One British Empire Discharged Soldier Settlement in Comparative Focus,” which is currently available as a free download for our readers.
Can you briefly summarize the article for our readers?
I’m happy to – in this article I have endeavoured to bring together the Canadian, Australia and New Zealand literature on soldier settlement of the 1920s as well as a smaller literature on empire wide ex-soldier settlement schemes. It forms a surprisingly cohesive body of literature even though it is quite dispersed and various authors reside in history, geography and economics departments in a number of different countries. There was a considerable degree of similarity amongst many of these schemes in terms of their objectives and the institutional arrangements for their implementation as demobilisation took place and as allied governments sought to repay debts of honour to returning soldiers. There was also a wide spread view that the schemes were largely a failure regardless of whether you are reading about Canada, Australia or New Zealand. A closer reading of the literature suggests however, some of these judgements were particularly harsh and that there are some pitfalls in too easily using and assigning labels such as ‘success’ or ‘failure’. (more…)
The Challenges and Importance of Studying Rhodesian Soldiers
March 1, 2011Recently I attended Dr. Sue Onslow’s stimulating talk ‘War and Memory: Narratives of the Rhodesian war in the UDI era,’ part of the Institute for Commonwealth Studies Seminar Series on Decolonization. Onslow’s presentation explored on oral history interviews she had completed of 120 Rhodesian Army veterans. Onslow’s research focused around the question of “Why did you fight?” and her discussion included reflections on her methodology as well as some preliminary conclusions and questions that have arisen out of her research. Onslow discussed the difficulty of interviewing former combatants many of whom were still marked by the trauma of their experiences. Though Onslow clearly demonstrated the wide variety of views held by former Rhodesian soldiers, she also discussed the challenges of gaining the trust necessary for a successful interview of people who often had attitudes about violence and race that were quite different from her own.
Of course, one way around this problem is to limit your research to people or causes with whom you are sympathetic or broadly agree. This of course happens frequently and is probably more likely to go unexamined than if you are researching those with whom you have a strong personal disagreement. But of course, it comes with its own problems and can result in an unquestioning acceptance of a particular narrative. And, just as it is necessary to research those who suffered under oppressive regimes, cruelty or discrimination, it is important to research those who committed acts that we today see as reprehensible, whether slave-holders, those behind genocide and other atrocities or common criminals. (more…)
How do we teach undergraduates to write history papers?
February 15, 2011Justin Bengry recently wrote on this topic and I have been thinking about it as well. It has often occurred to me that, especially in the lower division survey classes for which I worked as a teaching assistant, there was a lot of emphasis on teaching the mechanics of historical writing and explaining the difference between primary and secondary sources and only rarely did students engage with examples of argument-driven history based on primary research. Commonly their reading would consist of a text-book supplemented by primary sources that we would analyze in section. This is often because of time constraints, particularly in the ten week quarter system of my university and the desire to expose students to primary sources, but also because of concerns that many articles or monographs would be too difficult or inaccessible to students. However, when I did have the chance to teach such material, I found that students often rose to the challenge. Discussions were often better, largely because once I made sure that students understood the argument and its relevance, I could ask them whether they agreed with it and why, what they considered its strengths and weaknesses. These are all topics likely to provoke debate rather than to have my students uncomfortably searching for the “right” answer that they often assumed I was looking for in our discussions of primary sources, despite my best efforts to assure them otherwise. (more…)
The History of the History PhD in the United Kingdom
February 1, 2011Last Friday, 28 January, the Institute for Historical Research in London convened a one day conference on the topic of the History PhD: Past, Present and Future in partnership with the History Subject Centre at the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society. The IHR has also mounted a virtual exhibition as a companion to the conference. The conference formed a part of the IHR’s yearlong ninetieth birthday celebration, which highlights other important milestones of 1921, the year the of the IHR’s founding, including the birth of the eminent historian of Victorian England, Asa Briggs, the founding of the first of Marie Stopes birth clinics and the birth of Prince Philip. 1921 was also the year that the first PhDs in history were awarded at Edinburgh, Manchester and Oxford.
The conference opened with a keynote address from Michael Bentley of the University of St. Andrews. Bentley posed important questions about the PhD both in terms of its history and its present function. Asking what the British PhD was intended to measure in the early twentieth century, Bentley compared it to the degree in Germany, where is was intended as a rite of passage into the profession and the United States, where it was originally seen as a particular moment of scholarly excellence and not necessarily entrance to the academic profession, finding that the British PhD performed a role in between these two systems. Bentley also noted the class dimension to the PhD in Britain, noting that it was not considered gentlemanly to earn a PhD. Describing the PhD as a “modernist project” in a changed epistemological climate, Bentley concluded by asking whether the PhD degree as it currently stands remains the appropriate way to enter the profession. (more…)
Plagiarism and the “Shadow Scholar”
January 11, 2011Last November, an article appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The Shadow Scholar” allegedly written by a man working for a paper mill. The author, “Ed Dante” describes how he has been commissioned to write customized works ranging from undergraduate essays to doctoral dissertations in a mind-boggling array of disciplines and subjects. I was most surprised by the work he has done for postgraduate clients including doctoral dissertations, who he claims have never been caught. The undergraduate essays however, are less of a shock. When laboring under a heavy course load in a large undergraduate survey, such plagiarism would be difficult to catch and certainly to prove. Dante asks, “Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?” Well, this is entirely possible if you have never had a conversation with that student, quite likely in a large lecture class. Or even if you have suspicions, they can be difficult to prove and without the proof so often turned up by googling sentences (or in one memorable case of my experience in the form of embedded html code actually in the text of paper) it is risky to accuse students of cheating. I have seen enough teaching assistant colleagues convinced that a student who never contributes to section discussions must have cheated because of the quality of their paper, disproved after some embarrassment by the student’s in-class midterm exam to be wary of proceeding without proof. (more…)
Remember, Remember?
November 16, 2010The weekend before last, Tower Hamlets Council’s Bonfire Night fireworks display at Victoria Park was entitled “Remember, Remember” and commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the Blitz. In this event the remembrance of the Blitz was embedded in the ritual (fireworks, bonfires) which ostensibly commemorates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Why some holidays and traditions persevere even as they change in form or meaning is an interesting historical question that could be applied to many other similar festivities in the United Kingdom or elsewhere, Halloween for example. And, what meaning do these events retain? How many people think about Guy Fawkes and his conspirators as they watch Bonfire Night fireworks? I certainly wasn’t thinking about the Gunpowder Plot as I watched the fireworks in Victoria Park. But I was thinking about the Blitz and the appropriate way to commemorate such a traumatic event as the aerial bombardment of London. I have written about the complexities of remembering the Blitz before and some elements of the Tower Hamlets display left me feeling a bit uneasy. To the sound of the traditional round “London’s Burning” (which refers to the Great Fire of London in 1666, yet another layer of London history), the display began with what looked like a burning building, which was extinguished by a fire engine. The display also incorporated the sound of air raid sirens and search lights, which was later criticized by some Blitz survivors, as reported in the Evening Standard. According to the short article, one such survivor, Rene Broider, said: “Every time I hear a siren, even to this day, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and instantly reminds me of that horrible time. When people talk about the camaraderie and the excitement of the time, they forget about the sheer terror of it all.”
Bonfire Night Fireworks courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Organizing your personal archive
November 2, 2010I have written before concerning whether digitizing documents would help with organization and keeping clutter under control. But, of course electronic documents also need to be stored, organized and backed up. I have found that the most basic organization should be done when taking photographs in the archive or scanning paper documents but I will focus hear on photographs. The best advice I was ever given was to include a slip of paper with the citation in the actual photograph itself. This way if the photograph should end up in the wrong folder, it is still clear what it is and where it came from. Usually I will upload each folder to my laptop in the archive, rename them and check for blurriness so that I do any retakes as needed while I still have the file or folder out in front of me. But, as my own collection of digital photographs from various archives grows, I have started to wonder how best to organize them. I currently have three organization systems: one with chronological folders based on when the photograph was taken, for example, “Summer 2009”, one organized by archive and one organized by historical chronology, for example, “Second World War.” But will this be helpful when I am writing? (more…)
Using grading rubrics on a department wide basis?
October 19, 2010Like Justin Bengry, I have felt ambivalent about grading and concerned asbout the best way to evaluate students. While I have never considered peer review as Bengry describes in his post, I have found that I get much better results from students when I have given them a clear idea of what I am looking for in exams and papers. (This may sound obvious but it is surprisingly often overlooked in my experience as both an instructor and a student) I generally try to prepare students for exams and paper with a handout, which outlines what A, B, C, D and failing works looks like in terms of argument, evidence, organization, writing and citation. An added bonus of using such a handout is fewer grade complaints, presumably because students more clearly understand why they have gotten a particular mark. But, as Daniel McInerney’s explains in a recent article in Perspectives, this can also be done on a department wide basis. He and his colleagues at Utah State University developed a rubric for their entire department in collaboration with universities in Minnesota and Indiana under the aegis of “Tuning USA,” a project funded by the Lumina Foundation that sought to see what institutions of higher education in the United States might learn from the Bologna Process of academic reform in Europe. (more…)
Presenting history to those who lived it
October 5, 2010This past weekend I attended a conference on the subject of “Children and War: Past and Present,” in Salzburg, Austria, co-hosted by the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Salzburg. Though many conferences strive for this, few that I have attended have been so truly international and interdisciplinary. As well as the historical papers, which spanned the topic of children and war around the globe throughout the last three hundred years, albeit with more presentations on the twentieth century, there were numerous panels each session focusing on the present. Presentations included those from psychiatrists who work with former child soldiers and specialists in trauma. During a coffee break I chatted with an attorney whose work focuses on assisting children seeking asylum or refuge. Though I admit that I spent most of my time at panels focusing on the Second World War that were most relevant to my work, the gathering of such a wide variety of both scholars and scholarship made panel discussions far more interesting.
Kindertransport memorial in Vienna. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
What struck me even more than the interdisciplinary composition of the conference was the presence of people who had experienced the historical scholarship that was under discussion. In one panel on the evacuation of children, which looked at case studies in Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany, two audience members identified themselves as British evacuees and spoke of their memories and experience, usually prefaced by something along the lines of, “Well this is just anecdotal but..” Despite these disclaimers, as practitioners of oral history and indeed many other historians well know, this kind of testimony can be just as valuable as any other kind of evidence, depending of course on what questions the historian seeks to answer. Pouring over minutes and correspondence only provides the historian glimpses into how children and their parents experienced evacuation, even as it is invaluable for revealing the official concerns and logistics surrounding the scheme. In this case, one man’s experience of private evacuation provided an interesting contrast to the officially organized evacuation, filling in the story narrated in reams of government documents. (more…)
Physical reminders of the past
September 21, 2010When I worked as a historical interpreter at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, in the early 2000s, there was a bit of controversy among my colleagues over the launch of an online virtual tour of Monticello, which included 360 degree views of the various rooms in the house. Several of my fellow interpreters were concerned that this initiative was misguided, that given the ability to have a look around Monticello for free at home, many potential visitors would be unlikely to make their way to Charlottesville and pay to visit the site, putting our jobs at risk. This never really struck me as likely but it does raise the question of why people visit museums and formally recognized historic sites such as battlefields, when they can gain much of the information presented there on the internet. For me, they are places that evoke in a concrete way the people of the past, who inhabited the same ground or buildings that I am walking through.
Monticello, Photo from Wikimedia Commons
I have recently been thinking about the relationship between physical space and history, as many of my recent posts on History Compass Exchanges indicate. Whether writing about the rare experience of seeing the physical embodiment of nineteenth-century science while visiting the dinosaurs at Chrystal Palace Park, highlighting the historical possibilities of the digital historical maps of Hypercities, or the immediacy of looking at the Guardian’s interactive map of the first night of the Blitz, the way that physical space can evoke history has been on my mind. I was recently struck by a story on NPR about Craig Childs attempts to map the Hohokam civilization of thousands of years ago onto the landscape of modern Phoenix. Childs, the author of the book Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession, helped to explain why the physicality of historical markers is so compelling, “We never live in just one time. A well of history rests in the ground beneath us. And sometimes, when the light is just right, you can see through to the other side.” (more…)
Remembering the Blitz
September 7, 2010Seventy years ago today, on the 7th of September 1940, the aerial bombardment of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany began. The Blitz would last for eight months spreading beyond its initial focus on London. The sheer scale of destruction was most vividly displayed to me in the Guardian’s map, based on London Fire Brigade records, showing where bombs fell on just the first day of the Blitz. Three bombs landed within a block of my flat in the East End and there were many more along routes I travel frequently or places I visit regularly. The map is worth a look, even if you haven’t lived in London; the sheer scale of the bombing represented visually is almost incomprehensible to someone who did not live through it. Much of the press coverage of the anniversary has also focused on the stories of those who did live through the Blitz. Many of these accounts reveal the everyday heroism and steadfast determination to endure that make up the popular idea of the Blitz, featured in such propaganda films as “London Can Take It.” But others highlight another side of the Blitz: the terror, ordinary human greed and the disorganization and bureaucratic bungling that led to unnecessary loss of life.
Children outside the ruin of their East End home during the Blitz. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Writing your Dissertation in 15 minutes a day?
August 24, 2010I finished my comprehensive exams a few months ago and since then have moved to London to work on my dissertation. Like many other people in this situation, I have found my newfound freedom to work on my research without the distractions of coursework or teaching to be both wonderful and also quite difficult. It is harder to remain disciplined when you don’t have a looming deadline or the pressure of 54 exams that need to be graded within a week. With the huge goal of finishing a dissertation, it is hard to know how much to work each day or each week. What are realistic goals? As Jana recently wrote, there is something to be said for structure and time pressure in terms of getting results but as she has also previously addressed, how can that be balanced with other demands and the risk of getting burnt out? With the tremendous pace of the ten week quarter system, my previous approach was usually to go as flat out as possible during term time, always with the sense that I wasn’t quite finishing everything properly, followed by periods of complete idleness during breaks to recover. Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day suggests that rather than this binge approach to writing, a better, more sustainable way is to write every single day for at least fifteen minutes. Of course, if you want to finish your dissertation in a reasonable time frame you need to write for more than fifteen minutes a day but the point of the title is the daily discipline of writing. (more…)
HyperCities: A Digital Platform for Urban History
August 10, 2010
The HyperCities project and website, developed by UCLA, USC and CUNY takes a spatial approach to history and uses the Google Earth platform to collate the layers of history of a particular place. Information about people, buildings or institutions can be tied to a particular geographic location and cross referenced by time so that you can see the evolution of urban spaces. These objects, organized by both a geographic and a temporal marker, can take the form of almost any kind of media including photographs, oral histories, historic maps, 3D reconstructions of buildings.
Visiting the Victorians at Crystal Palace Park
July 27, 2010
Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs (Photo: Jean Smith)
