Historicity Checklist Worksheet/Analytical Memo Purpose As we have discussed in class, historicity refers to the idea (or fact) that anything currently happening in society is shaped by the events that happened before it, and was necessarily affected by this in important ways, so we cannot fully understand any social topic without some understanding of its history. Because human social life is patterned, there are some common patterned ways that the history of sites shape their characteristics (including, for us, the ways inequities occur or are reproduced) today. The purpose of this checklist is to help make sure you consider some common questions or important characteristics related to the history of your site; this is not an exhaustive list of historical phenomena that may matter – please do include anything else that is important – but investigating these should help you think carefully about the history of your organization and understand it well enough to consider how it shapes today’s equity environment. Task List • Investigate each question on the worksheet in any and all ways you know how (internet research, scholar.google.com, insider informants, historical documents, etc.). Check off each axis as you investigate it to make sure you are considering all salient axes; as your investigation yields results that may be related (not that you will use while writing, but that you may need to consider in later thinking) to your research, write or copy/paste them in a separate document. ◦ Remember that intersectionality means there may be more going on that isn’t captured one axis at a time, and you need to look for those patterns yourself. ◦ Make sure you are also keeping track of where this info is coming from, so you can cite it correctly and fully! ◦ This step is just about data collection; you may want to also re-organize the information in a way that is useful to your thinking, such as by axis or in a timeline. • Separately, in a different document or at the bottom of this one, write a memo that considers the implications of this history. Why does this matter? What does it help you understand? ◦ Memos are a pretty informal kind of writing – you don’t need to worry about full sentences, spelling, grammar, formal tone, etc. Feel free to write it like you would talk to a friend, or like you are just making notes for yourself to read later (just make sure there is enough there and written clearly enough that your classmates can understand it and give good feedback). ◦ Make sure to include the story or stories you are seeing (the argument), the details on the worksheet that tell the story (the evidence), any connections you see to course concepts and materials or to your previous findings, and any ideas you have about why it might be happening, whether it is positive or negative, what seems likely to happen long-term, who is being helped or harmed, etc. ◦ There is no length requirement, but memos are usually pretty short. Half a page is fine, three pages is too much; one solid paragraph per story/pattern is about right. • Upload your worksheet and memo to this discussion. • Read your groupmates’ memos and give feedback. ◦ Directly reference the criteria section below and discuss where you feel your classmate succeeded and where they could put more attention. ◦ Help each other out, even more than you think is ok. If you see a different story or a patter the author didn’t write about which you find interesting, tell them about it! If you have a suggestion for a reading or quote related to their ideas, give them that info! If it feels like cheating, you are probably just starting to help. ◦ Make sure your feedback is big-picture, ideas-related stuff. Don’t bother giving feedback on grammar/spelling/punctuation unless it is bad enough that you are struggling to understand what’s going on. ◦ Feel free to tell the author about your own life experiences if you think there might be an interesting comparison to make, or they could learn from your life. ◦ Make sure you tell classmates if/when you think they are wrong or are missing something important! This is hard but really crucial. ◦ Don’t forget, you can learn a lot from seeing your classmates’ worksheets and thoughts – making some notes or even adding to/editing your own memo after seeing your classmate’s is probably a good idea in the long run! Criteria You will know your historical analysis is successful if you can (1) tell a clear, coherent story about the history of your site, that (2) illustrates the changes in the site’s inequality regime (how multiple intersecting inequalities show up here: policies, demographics, culture, roles, etc. for all axes, all together) over time and (3) helps us understand some things about why the site’s current inequality regime looks how it does. Nota Bene: you don’t need to actually write out this whole coherent story for the assignment, nor do you have to include a full history in your final paper – you just need to know enough that if you decided it would help your paper, you could do it!
