Unit+1+Max+Chung

**__Max Chung's Family History Project__**

August 29, 2011 HW Max Chung

Max Chung

August 18, 2011: Due

August 17, 2011: Class Work APPARTS: Journal of Hamel

A: Hamel Dutch, shipwrecked, virtual prisoner observer, isolated in one or two areas P: Korea, Japan, Holland Distance from events (reported to the author), time from events (years later) P: Knowledge of the time period in Korea and in Europe A: VOC, Dutch East Indies Company R: Record keeper: memories of trip T: Explaining Korea society and culture to a European audience (VOC) S: First written d ocument of life in Korea by a European

August 17, 2011: Due The Many Hats of a Historian

heretical - iconoclastic view/deem over a prevalent tenetfaggot - a bundle of sticks that signify one's disgrace of his or her felonyEucharist - pieces of breads that are symbolized for Jesus's body in Christian cultureabstain - self-denialpenance - punishment for wrong-doingbeseeching - yearningsource - novel information; the preliminary object/space which/where something is derived from.

1. In the article, Hogsflesh was carrying faggots as a penance for his heretical views over Christian beliefs and if he denied or failed on his punishment, he was planned to be burnt with the faggots. As stated in the story, these types of elaborate details about a specific history are the chief focuses of this article and the author describes and discusses about how historians came to not only garner and record the features, but also took sides/roles to tell and explain historical events, and gave meanings to it.

2. John Arnold defined the many hats of a historian as an analysist and detective (interpret), judge, political campaigner, and philosopher (assess), synthesizer, and story teller (report) and I surely agree with his assumptions because even if a conjecture over a historical event is assumed wrong, most of the times, human beings tend to pursue a certain pattern of proclivity. Therefore, the history made my the historians might not be exact, but also all mankinds are not exact, and historians are not exceptions.I believe presenters are also a vital role for historians. Modern day historians not only probe on their national history, but also on other countries' as well. In other words, a meaning of a historical event that was given by a historian might be interpreted differently among other countries, thus expressing those meaning in a way that could be understood with unison is essential. 3. Treating their sources with fidelity meant that historians do not abscond from informations that rebut their own subjective perspectives over a historical event, but rather they consider every bits of both their opinions and its opposition with loyalty before arbitrating on which perspective is the most cohesive and plausible. This treatment is crucial when reading historical references because the readers are then able to visualize the over-all perspectives of an event, providing them with credibility about the historians' presumption and excluding them from biased judgements.

4. Providing with the story of Hogflesh, the author demonstrated how historians may come up with varieties of different interpretations from a single historical story. He also concluded that those resulted from historians' individual points of views that derived from their past experiences and expositions in certain environment.

When I was still an elementary student, I once entered my house where it leads to a glassy door that needed to be opened in able to access to the living room. However, my brother and cousin, two villians who used to enjoy teasing me, locked the one way door by placing their gargantuan bodies against the door. At the time I was still a tiny little boy who could not open a door that was pushed by two boys in a growing age. So I decided to push the door by throwing myself with all my strength and of course, the glass shattered. From his incident, some historians might deem that it was the older one's fault due to their preliminary intention to tease their brother/cousin, but on the other hand, some might view it as my fault because I took the situation too seriously and used belligernt force against them (actually the door) to deal with the situation.

5. Currently, I am a boy whose included in the 'taller-ones' taxonomy amongst my elementary school cronies and if I recall my past days in elementary school correctly, I was still part of the 'taller-ones' group. However, according to most of my friends, I was placed on the 'average' section which perplexed me about my own body shape. I believe it is impossible to fabricate a meaning to a historical event with complete objectivity because in my case of viewing one's own experience from the future perspective, one's reminiscence will most likely be that of one's preferable imagination. On top of that, when one is giving a meaning to an event that is not of their experience, it still will not be objective since one is required to 'predict' about what has happened and as stated in the article, historians cannot simply guess the meaning with scientific calculation which might count as an objective approach (if it is possible), but again, human beings do not run with formula.

6. Practicing subjective history might cause problems in that historians will not be able to come up with a definitive meaning in a brief duration due to their everlasting altercation. Additionally, when a wrong meaning has became the reasoning for a historical event, not only the readers will receive the erring information, but also the scenario of other historians inferring from that information for other researches will redudantly occur, providing the readers with even more false meanings.However, subjective history could be positive in a way that for some incidents, there are insufficient amount of sources or it is impossible to gain any of them so it is the only way of giving a definitive meaning.Going back to my experience, I thought my presumption was more plausible since I was referring to my 'own body' and that I was exposed to an environment that had students who started to grew when they reached high school age (I was living in Europe during my middle school days) making me think that I was always the tallest. However, others, who have vague but small amount of memories about me, will have a much more accurate interpretation of my past.This tells us that most meanings based on subjective perspectives of historians are much impractical compared to the much objective approaches of a historical situation.

7. All historians are story tellers because no history can be justified with absolute objectivity. As mentioned in the article, historians have the hats of interpreters that result in sundry different presumptions over a single event, therefore, the author utilizes the term, 'story', to represent the fictional sense of those presumptions.However, that does not mean that we should always be skeptical about them because as I mentioned, people do follow a certain physicological pattern that might consequent on meanings of actions that historians have precisely presumed.

8. From this article, I was dazzled by the fact that all informations written on history text books are not completely true. It gave me a vision of skepticism on viewing facts that our ancestors have priorly decipherd. However, knowing that I, as a mankind, am living in a world full of imperfections also gave me the tolerance that we should not always scold the perspectives of others.However, from this point, I decided to approach history with much deliberation and ratification and put myself on the shoes of the third person when assessing a historical situation.

August 10, 2011 HW

Why is an understanding of culture necessary in order to understand history?

Cultures are the aftermaths of histories that precede it, thus without knowing one's culture, it is arduous to interpret and understand one's history. According to the dictionary, cultures not only discriminate among the nations, but also within social groups, or even individuals. These sundry variances often brought us with biased perspectives and sociofacts (tenets and values), resulted in conflicts and most likely all the traumatic wars that have occurred during the history of mankind.

Concerning the culture's disparity among individuals, ‍‍‍WWII epitomize the definition of culture due to one individual's mind that consequent on genocide of thousands and millions of innocuous Jews around the world (of course, Adolf Hitler's infamous deem). ‍‍‍

However, on Hitler's view, his actions would had been the counteracts for justice since he desired to take avenge on the adversaries that brought catastrophe to his own people at the WWI.

‍‍‍Despite Hitler's inhumane intimidation towards the Jews, though, if one does not know the reason behind his actions, it is wrong to assume that Hitler was just an all-time notorious felony since that will be just a simple biased assessment over a partial culture of Hitler. ‍‍‍

Therefore, understanding cultures are vital because it uncovers one's blindfold of biased perspectives and beliefs that stifles one from understanding the objective nature of viewing history.