I grew up not knowing much about Rome, not being very interested in Rome - my main passion, history wise, was, is and always will be the Tudor Dynasty of Renaissance England. But yeah, I knew who Caesar was.
I didn't study history formally at school until this year because a) my primary school sucked and all we did was Australian history, which is so short and so boring especially studied seven years straight at a primary school level and b) because I wanted to dabble in other social science subjects last year like politics and philosophy and the history classes were full anyway - if I had applied I probably would have ended up in economics or geography.
Last year I chose my six subjects for the next two years: Literature, English, Modern History, Ancient History, Politics & Law and Psychology - and history has been a huge part of all six subjects. Modern and Ancient History speaks for themselves, but you'll be surprised how much history pops up in the others. One thing I love about history is that it encapuslates everything - everything you study, or listen to, or read, every person you meet, has a history.
My study of Ancient History got off to a shaky start. One thing that got to me was that world was so long ago, and so different from ours - other problems included everybody had the same name (seriously) and the sources are not as clear as I was used to in my self-study of later eras.
My lifesaver was the TV series ROME, which as an R-rated epic saga of the late Roman republic I had affectionately nicknamed 'prehistoric porn'. But it really made me see into the world and mindsets of the Ancient Romans, who can blame Shakespeare and Hollywood for attempting to marry a savagely pre Judeo-Christian polytheistic society with the virtues of modern-day Christian capitalism. First Man In Rome was on my booklist because my teacher is a fan of Colleen McCullough, and although it took me a little while to hack into I enjoyed it very much, and I've now read Caesar's Women which I also liked a lot - I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the rest of the series.
I am currently (narrowly) at the top of my Ancient History class, and I believe that to study history successfully you need the help of all kinds of media, even media that is more on the high-budged fictionalized side of things (but let's face it, Plutarch is hardly unbiased or reliable either) and something which I still feel is lacking: sources written at your level - sources that are easy to understand.
I am by no means an expert in this field, but I am attempting to create a set of sources that cover the society and culture of the late Roman republic aimed at high school and upper-primary school students. Please don't use this for PhDs...although given the academic inflation recently, why not?
1 comment:
Fantastic (about your being narrowly top).
Yes. "Psychology [as an example of a subject] - History - [insert era/timespan]" is a good thing to type into the library catalogue and hopefully get the Dewey/Library of Congress code.
Good idea to write the sources you need or are frustrated with: a lot of original thinking can come through the cracks and shine light.
And academic inflation seems rather a bigger beast than mere grade inflation. Academia has had to run on the smell of an oily rag.
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