Hi, just testing out my blog!
Focusing my Topic
Focusing my topic is going to be really important because I’m coming up with too much research as it is now. I’m researching women during the Civil War and so far I’ve got information on women nurses, women fighting, the roles of Northern women vs. Southern, and a bunch of other information. So my first idea to focus my topic was to narrow it down to women in their homes. This cut out a lot of information that was really cluttering up my topic. The next step into narrowing it down is to focus on the interaction between Southern women in their homes with the Northern troops. These troops often ramsacked houses in search of food or Confederate soldiers and took over houses for hospitals. My primary resource, the diary of Cornelia McDonald, has lots of interactions with Union soldiers and so I think this would a be good place to focus my research.
Research
My research is going pretty well but there are so many resources available that it can sometimes get overwhelming. I am studying family life in the civil war, particularly the role of women. I’ve got a great primary source, a diary from a woman in the south between the years of 1860-1865. It’s also a really helpful source because her son, who collected and published the diary, has taken the time to researched the events his mother wrote about and added footnotes where there was an error. One thing I’ve had some trouble with is trying to focus my research. I’ve noticed that I’ll find a really interesting book about women who fought in the war and then another book on a woman who lost 2 children while at home and while they are both good sources, I definitely can’t cover both topics in a 6-8 research paper. Still, I think I have a lot available to me, especially with the bibliography that Professor McClurken gave me from his book. I think this will be a fun paper to research.
Why I am a History Major
I think the biggest and most general reason I am a history major is simply because I like to study history. I find it very interesting to look at the lives of a certain culture at anytime and try to understand why they acted in a certain way or how their traditions may have influenced our modern day culture. In my major, I am focusing on American History because the world I live in today is a direct result of that history. I enjoy looking back at the actions made by generals or infantrymen and studying the outcome of those actions. I am amazed at how difficult it would be to try to organize a war when you have nothing but horsemen to relay your messages back and forth to other officers.
I am also interested in learning from the past. I believe the best resource available to us is the past. By studying that history we can hope to make the best decisions for the future. This is true even on a small scale, for example, if you had a young child who burnt himself on a hot cookie, the child will (hopefully) learn to let the cookie cool down before trying to eat it. I would hope that as a nation, or community, or individual, we would be able to learn from the successes and failures of our past.
It might also have something to do with the fact that I’m not very good at math…
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