hist125 week 1 discussion latest 2016 september

Week 1 discussion

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR DISCUSSIONS: Your contributions should be thoughtful and developed. Answer all parts of the question and use concepts from the course materials. Use a professional style of communication, with attention to grammar, spelling, and typos. Do not copy and paste information into discussions—write posts in your own words and cite all sources of information used. See the sample discussion post as a guideline.

To access the rubric for discussions, click on the discussion link for that week. The rubric is located towards the bottom of the discussion instructions.

Unless your instructor specifies otherwise, choose ONE of the following questions, and give a substantive response to at least two other students. A substantive response is not simply an agreement to your peer, but the response should add significance to the post and further the discussion.

Initial discussion posts are due by Thursday at 11:30PM ET and at least two responses to fellow classmates are expected by the end of the week on Sunday by 11:30PM ET.

Lynda Shaffer's article is a 'revisionist' work. Having read this work, define revisionism. Provide examples from "Southernization" to show how her work challenged your view (or the dominant view as you understand it) of human history.

Is the History of Technology addressed thoroughly enough in teaching history as a whole? Is it addressed incorrectly? For example, should technology be seen as something that determines the course of a particular society, or is the development of a civilization and its values more complex than this?

Drawing on this week's readings, explain this quote, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." (L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between 1953, 17)

The underlying assumption for many modern people is that technology = progress. Is this true? What does progress mean? What are some of the many ways people define progress?

This class in entitled "Technological Transformations," and the focus is on progress as a product of technology. Drawing on this week's readings as an introduction to the topic, discuss what you expect to learn in this class. What is the importance of Aristotle, Archimedes, and the concept of southernization to the big picture?