Quotidian Quizzes—Introduction (h)

A year ago on Round and Square (10 December 2011)—Beginnings: Aspects of the Novel

[a] Everything RF

This is one part of a multi-post introduction. Click below for the other posts:

Quizzes 1          Quizzes 2          Quizzes 3          Quizzes 4
Quizzes 5          Quizzes 6          Quizzes 7          Quizzes 8

So there you have it. Quizzes help with everything from attendance to memorization of key materials, and have the added benefit of leading students toward the most important, and nuanced, facets of the historiographical operation. They are so useful that I have only one more thing to say. This is important, so stay with me for just a few more paragraphs. 

[b] Learning RF

It's not just for historians.

Yes, my examples in the last half-dozen (or so) posts have come from Japanese history. I am assuming that not many readers failed to see the possibilities beyond Japan...and history.

You see, the great part is that it works with everything.

Historiography is just the opening volley in a long string of terrific benefits that can be found by doing one's reading, coming to class, and learning to think more deeply about the nature of academic argument. 

Ethnographies, for example, work in this manner. Our very same Jimbo would initially be perplexed by two anthropologists who seemed to come at questions of festival activity in New Guinea in such weirdly different ways that he might wonder if they were even talking about the same Guinea. Using a bit of ethnographic telescoping, we might have, on the one hand, a careful study of the caloric power of yams and pork along with, on the other hand, a moment-by-moment narration and analysis of ceremonies meant to make people cry and try to light the people who made them sad...on fire.*

*The ethnographies are Roy Rappaport's Pigs for the Ancestors and Edward Schieffelin's The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers.

The professor might well ask Jimbo the same kind of question s/he did with regard to the individual who was emperor of Japan during much of the twentieth century. And Jimbo might reply with an audible "huh?"  

But only at first. 

[c] Everything RF

As Jimbo learns to get better and better at interpreting the scholarly opinions of others (this comes from, as we have seen, understanding that—at least on one level—all scholars are just a variant of Packer and Bears fans), he comes to see that the anthropologist who counts calories and the one who narrates "emotion-ritual" are all involved in an enterprise that seeks to understand the ever-changing dimensions of human life and thought. That's all. 

He starts to understand that ethnographies and histories...have authors. People write them.

From there, it is just a short series of steps until we understand that even biology papers, economic tracts, and psychological studies are also authored. That might be a step too far for our quizzes right now, though. You see, in those cases, even a few of the professors in these fields are not quite on-board with the concept of authorship. Let's just leave them alone for now, and let them imagine that their ideas end up in journals from the hands of the gods, the wings of doves, the ethers of the laboratory, and a little bit of typing.* 
*It goes without saying that Beloit College professors are much more enlightened than this.  

We know better, and have the foundations for tackling those questions, now and in the future, from the quizzical and daily work we do in the Round and Square series:
                                          ↓
                           Quotidian Quizzes. 

Welcome. 


This is one part of a multi-post introduction. Click below for the other posts:

Quizzes 1          Quizzes 2          Quizzes 3          Quizzes 4
Quizzes 5          Quizzes 6          Quizzes 7          Quizzes 8

[d] On high RF