fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3133 ]

[ SECRET POST #3133 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3133 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

[The Guild]

__________________________________________________

03.

[Harvest Moon: (More) Friends of Mineral Town]

__________________________________________________

04.

[Gump, from Legend]

__________________________________________________

05.

(Agent Carter)

__________________________________________________

06.

[Jeeves and Wooster]

__________________________________________________

07.

[Lupin III]

__________________________________________________

08.

[Courtney Love & Kurt Cobain]

__________________________________________________

09.

(SPN)

__________________________________________________

10.

[Kasumi Goto, Mass Effect]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 057 secrets from Secret Submission Post #448.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Specifically this will be more about historians, but it's just something I've been wondering lately.

I listen to Dan Carlin's podcasts and he calls himself a "fan of history" rather than a historian. He'll often quote from the books of historians but he'll stress that he's not one himself.

I've also been reading a lot of biographies lately and I've noticed that some of the people who write biographies aren't historians -- there's a range of writers: soldiers, journalists, psychologists, some historians. So would they be considered experts?

It's just an odd situation where I feel like being an expert on a particular subject is kind of nebulous.

Well, Dan Carlin's not an expert whether or not he calls himself one

In general, it's one of those things that's hard to define precisely. And I think that's okay. But one of the things that I would point to is familiarity with the subject at hand, particularly in terms of direct familiarity - so for history, for instance, a non-expert could be someone who's read many history books; an expert is someone who's gone to the primary sources and has an extensive familiarity with them.

"an expert is someone who's gone to the primary sources and has an extensive familiarity with them."

This.

I guess I was thinks more like this:

Dan Carlin quotes from these books and that (presumably) means that he either thinks of them as experts or is using them for first hand anecdotes (such as soldiers of WWI).

But what makes the books and the writers themselves experts?

Because there are A LOT of books about history not written by historians. And, then, can someone be considered an expert if they go to the primary sources but do so with an agenda in mind? And what, specifically, separates a historian from someone that reads primary sources and writes about it?

Well, I would say that the difference between a historian and an expert in history is that a historian has some formal academic credentials and is engaged with history as an academic field, whereas this is not necessarily true of an expert in history.

Ideological agendas are obviously a tricky subject, though. Not sure there's a bright-line definition there.

>Because there are A LOT of books about history not written by historians

A lot of them are shit. The problem with history is that it can be very political, very emotional, or both. So people seek out stuff that isn't quite true, emphasizes the less important thing, or is flat out wrong, but makes them feel good. And there's a huge market for this.

However, some of the books about history written by non-historians are really good! And if you work on a subject for years you can get good enough to be a historian. What you need to do is look at how other historians review the work--that is, multiple historians.

But there's no certification for a historian, so it's always going to be kind of nebulous. If I get a job outside my field and don't return to it for years and don't write any history, I'm not going to be calling myself a "historian" anymore because it'd feel silly.

I'm a postgrad student who studies history and I do wonder this myself. Historian is not a job title, after all. Academically, history is a certain discipline, so I suppose if you were trained and publish within that discipline, you are a historian. But I should think you're a historian if you're very well-read in current academic work and such.

What's really confusing for me is, I'll have professors tell me they "aren't historians" because they focus on literature and culture of the time period we study. They still know everything about the period, but they don't work within the academic "history" discipline. They work in the "English" discipline or such. Archaeologists are the same, they'll say "we're not historians" because they study material culture and such.

And in my brain, I'm like, all these things are history, from archaeology, to language, art and culture. But I guess the academic definition of historian is a little different from maybe the dictionary definition.

See, I guess what's confusing to me is that it seems like someone with no academic credentials who has an agenda to push can go back and read primary documents, cherry pick or interpret things to push their story, write a book on it, and then be treated as an authority on the subject.

This might not go over well but I've also noticed that a lot of historians behave like...well...fanboys/fangirls or haters for lack of better terms.

Yeah, but just because somebody publishes books doesn't mean they'd be considered experts by people in the field, and not just because of academic snobbery.
They might convince the public to treat them as experts, but then all sorts of rabble manage to get all sorts of attention - it doesn't mean they deserve it.

As an archaeologist, I like that you put archaeology in with history rather than anthropology. I find anthropology kind of "othering" even when it tries not to be. Meanwhile, I've worked enough sites that are historic (where historical records matter as much as artifacts" or that occupy the gray zone between ancient and recent that I don't see a boundary between things you investigate archaeologically and things you investigate historically. History is a continuum, even if it wasn't all written down.

Also, most of the cultural anthropologists I went to grad school with were as pretentious as fuck. Don't want to be lumped in with them.

Idk but I eye historians something nasty. Like medievalpoc blog is just about sharing information and books and various historical pieces and historians attack that blog something furious. Like it's just a blog of source material so anyone can read things and they dont want to share, even if something enlightening like the hairdresser recognising a tool in art might happen and just jetting everyone read up on buts and pieces of history.
But apparently it's not real history unless it's read through a historians interpretive work cum lens. No reading primary texts for us uneducated laymens.

Uhh... what? I am so confused. Are you angry that the medievalpoc blog gets critiqued for being misleading and inaccurate? And are you arguing that having opinions about history should be for ~everyone~, not just people who actually have educated opinions?

Please stop with your little strawmans, gatekeeper. I don't want to read your opinions on a primary text, I want to read the primary text myself. Which is what MPOC does, makes them available in a neat ordered way for people to read and enjoy and yes think about without some blinkered asshoke breathing down their necks.

lol

lmao

I consider myself a historian already--I have a masters in the subject and I'm going to defend my dissertation this fall. So I consider myself an expert on my particular field based on having formal training and being acknowledged as one by people with more experience than myself. Basically I base it on

1. Formal training
2. A lot of experience
3. Acceptance by other experts

You can replace 1 with a whole lot of 2--I wouldn't say a local history person who happens not to have had formal schooling but knows the ins and outs of the field and has been working for years doesn't count as a "real expert." However you can't really replace #3.

However, please note that "expert" is just a sort of informal certification. Someone not being an "expert" doesn't mean they don't know a whole lot.

This is a good distinction. Though, to be fair, I think a lot of it can be circumstantial, especially in regards to formal training, but even regards to the "acceptance by experts" bit because both acceptance and experts sort of need defining on their own. Generally, if you're involved and familiar with the literature in your field (I don't think just being familiar with the primary sources is enough), and have a publication under your belt, that helps.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3133 ]

What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Re: What makes someone an "expert"?

Sorry I saw this late!

Re: Sorry I saw this late!