From Apathetic to Academic: Becoming a History Major

This past Saturday (7 May 2011) was the fourth annual History Department Bowling Night. I have written about History Department Bowling Night before, but this particular night was special. I have been at all four bowling nights and this past bowling night was my last History Department Bowing Night ever.

Jordan and I went, bowled with some awesome visiting professors (shout out to Marko Dumančić and Raja Adal), bowled with some awesome professors (shout out to Len Smith and Zeinab Abul-Magd), and met my thesis advisor's baby (shout out to Ari Sammartino)!

Over the last four years I have fallen in love with history, Oberlin's history department, and our incredible faculty. Here is the story of how I became a history major!

Before I continue, I need to explain History Major Heraldic Beast to you. If you haven't been exposed to the amazingness that is History Major Heraldic Beast and you are a history nerd, I am about to change your life for the better. History Major Heraldic Beast (HMHB) is my new favorite meme. It has appeared thanks to tumblr and I love it. This post will be peppered with some of my favorite HMHB posts.

My journey with Oberlin's history department began with Len Smith's first-year seminar on the French Revolution (entitled "The French Revolution"). This course introduced me to the liberal arts atmosphere of learning. In high school, I was often discouraged from participating because I wanted to contribute "too much." Here at Oberlin, participation is encouraged. I have never been told to stop participating. Ever. I also came to realize that Oberlin is full of the students who were the ones who participated "too much" in high school. This course also introduced me to the fact that history can be interesting (a fact often lost on many high school history teachers and high school history textbooks). Also, and probably most importantly, I was introduced to the awesomeness that is Len Smith.

In my second semester, I decided to continue to explore my new-found love for history. I took another class with Len Smith (History 102: Modern Europe) and decided to venture into my own personal historical unknown by taking a course with Emer O'Dwyer (History 160: Modern Japan). I dropped into Professor O'Dwyer's office hours during the second week of class to introduce myself and to tell her that I knew practically nothing about Japanese history. We began talking about my interest in the course and my historical interests in general and bonded over our mutual love for the French Revolution.

It was Professor O'Dwyer's class and her encouragement that ultimately led me to declare my history major at the end of my first year. I chose a concentration in Modern Europe. Len Smith's classes made it clear that this was subject matter that I wanted to explore further. While I found Modern Japan interesting, it wasn't quite my cup of tea.

My on-going joke is that the history department has abandoned me repeatedly to try to get rid of me. After my first year, Len Smith went on leave for three semesters. Professor O'Dwyer became my advisor. She is currently on leave in order to work on her book. And I have one more story of abandonment coming soon!

With Professor Smith on leave during my sophomore year, Diana Shull was brought to campus as a visiting professor. She taught five classes in the year she was here, and I took three of them - History 219: Disease and Public Health in Europe, History 211: The Social History of European Consumerism, and History 393: Prejudice and Policy in Victorian Britain. Diana Shull released my love for British history and social history and encouraged me to explore these interests. By the end of my sophomore year, I had a 20-page research paper under my belt. Until the completion of my honors thesis (more on this to come), it was my proudest achievement. My paper - "I'll Never Get Drunk Anymore": Temperance, Religion, Politics, and Race in Nineteenth-Century Ireland - explored the motivations behind nineteenth-century Irish temperance movements.

This paper led to my first in-depth exploration of Oberlin's library, JSTOR, and other various resources for research. It was during my research for this paper that I first placed a request to have a book removed from storage. I had found a book - Popular Songs of Ireland - that Oberlin had in storage and I wanted to see if there was a temperance song. The song that I found (yay for successful research!) eventually contributed to the title of my paper.

It was also during my sophomore year that I first had class with Ari Sammartino, who would eventually come to be my thesis advisor. Her course - History 222: Germany and Eastern Europe from 1848-1989 - is one of the most difficult courses I took as an Obie, yet it is also one of the courses in which I learned the most. Ari Sammartino is one of those people that when you meet her, you're immediately struck by how intelligent she is and how much she knows about her subject matter.

Junior year was devoted to private readings with Ari Sammartino that served as preparations for honors (a post on this is coming in the near future, I promise!), exploration of the use of modernity as a tool for historical analysis under the guidance of Pete Soppelsa (another amazing visiting professor), and the actual writing of my honors prospectus.

This year has been devoted almost exclusively to my honors research. Having completed my thesis and all of the requirements for my history degree, let me take this opportunity to say how incredible this experience has been. Under the guidance of the faculty in this department, I evolved from an apathetic high school student to an honors student with a love for all things academic. Even if you don't major in history, you would be remiss if you didn't take a course or two in the history department during your time at Oberlin.

Quote time!

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." - L.P. Hartley

P.S. Brownie points to the first person who can figure out why my title for this post in that particular manner.