Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #presentism
Most recents (2)
I stayed out of the recent #presentism "History Wars" because: I'm not a fool; I'm caring for a spouse w/ COVID and a geriatric dog (16+) on steroids and opioids; David Bell & Joan Scott both pronounced, so who needs another historian of France in the fray? But...
I agree historical analogies are theories, insofar as theory = "way of seeing"*. For sure, some ways of looking at things can be more helpful, more generative, than others. Some can be flat out wrong; others, "not even wrong." But testable?
* It's been decades since I learned the etymology of the word "theory"--it has nothing to do with models or empiricism. A theory is not a scale likeness and it isn't (as Jann Matlock @autopsiesgroup used to say) a string of lights into which you plug your text or event. 
My positive response to Sweet's @AHAhistorians column is born out of more than 2 decades of fighting for the discipline of history at a small liberal arts college. My sparring partners are... 1/2 currentpub.com/2022/08/18/the…
administrators and gen ed committees who want to eliminate required history courses and merge history departments with practitioners of other disciplines. If history is just about presentism, I have no argument in these battles. 2/2 currentpub.com/2022/08/18/the… #twitterstorians
I finally got around to reading the twitterstorm about #presentism. Have any of these critics ever taught a methods class? Why is there so little about undergraduate teaching in these critiques of Sweet’s column? #aha #whystudyhistory
