I need a topic!! (1 Viewer)

[Kathlyn Joyce]

Okay I have a proposal to hand in this friday and I am in dire need of assistance!!!!
i ahve no idea what to do for ext.history...I suggested to my teacher that i would either do JFK assasination or mummy curses but she said that the assasination has already been done to death and she said to stay of commercialised crap like mummy curses...i have no idea what to do now! she suggested Martin Luther King and civil rights movement and how this act worked or if even really worked according to the treatment that African Americans get now....but it sounds like its going to bore me before i even start and i wouldn't want to do it coz then i wouldn't put much effort into it. I need any suggestion on what i could do...anything at all would help!!
i can't do man landing on the moon or Ned Kelly coz we're doing that in class.

 

[silvermoon]

look, seriously, just pick anything and knock up a quick propsal for it - you can always change your mind. i went through heaps of different questiosn (and researched all the bloody things) before i finally settled (in desperation) on my final question. but, surprisingly, it turned out ok.
i would also steer clear of JFK, only coz there's waaaay too much info on this topic. you'd have to narrow it down to much. with mummy curses - it probably depends on your question. if, for example, you were only intending to do a sort of "Was the curse real?" thing, than that wouldnt work - aside from the fact that its not even a proper question for this topic. remember you need to talk about at least one issue in history and historiography.
so, sticking with mummies, you could look at why historians chose to build up legends about mummies - personally, i think this could work very well if you looked at how history meets the demands of popular culture - ie. why historians felt they needed to write about 'curses' so that people would buy their books. your question becomes whether it is the right thing for historians to do to pander to the whims of the masses like this. modern historians such as simon schama have good arguments regarding how history must evolve to survive in society.

 

[silvermoon]

yeah, i decided to post whore so you could actually read this a little easier. anyway, you could have my question...cept i did ned kelly.
some of the other ideas i had though were: creation of the heroes and villains of history (focusing on Richard III and the Rchard III society), history in popular culture movies over time (focusing on Cleopatra - Elizabeth Taylor and the modern one), who owns history (looking at either the remians of Aboriginals or the case of the removal of the jewish bones)

try picking a history issue and then pick a case study to illuminate it. for example, i did the subjectivity of documents in the creation of the heroes and villains of history and focused on Ned Kelly as an example of this.

 

[veridis]

if you read through some of the other threads theres quite a few good ideas that might give you inspiration. what topics in history do you like? you can usualy make up a question to fit it

 

[MissSavage29]

Okay I have a proposal to hand in this friday and I am in dire need of assistance!!!!
i ahve no idea what to do for ext.history...I suggested to my teacher that i would either do JFK assasination or mummy curses but she said that the assasination has already been done to death and she said to stay of commercialised crap like mummy curses...i have no idea what to do now! she suggested Martin Luther King and civil rights movement and how this act worked or if even really worked according to the treatment that African Americans get now....but it sounds like its going to bore me before i even start and i wouldn't want to do it coz then i wouldn't put much effort into it. I need any suggestion on what i could do...anything at all would help!!
i can't do man landing on the moon or Ned Kelly coz we're doing that in class.

do something that you are interested in - because it will be a very long 6-8months if u are studying soemthing that u hate- mabye you could look at a quirky aspect of the JFK assasination or mummy cureses?

remember u are looking at histiography - i'm a big fan of the whole JFK conspiracy and i was thinking mabye you could focus on a small aspect of the whole debate - like choose a well known photo or somehting and find sources relating to it and c what they say? dont do something average relating to that topic
i haven't really done alot of research regarding the whole issue but i'm sure you could find a little aspect to argue -

my whole topic was litterally based on a single sentace - did hitler give an order for the final solution - one group said yes he did, anohter group said no it wasn't him that said to start the hollocaust -

you could pick something specific about the mummy curse to - you dont need to delve into the commercialised aspect - something like that would have a lot of historical evidence and debating groups so that would be an interesting study

 

[Kathlyn Joyce]

is this okay?

I kinda derived this from one of Veridis' threads (I hope you don't mind dude!) But I was thinking of Hollywood's portrayal of Pearl Harbour and how it compares to the actual event. I wanted to look at the movie (wit Josh Hartnett and Kate BEckinsale) and perhaps a couple of books. But do you guys think its a bit over done or is it a broad topic? I need to know quick coz' I think I'm like the only one who doesn't have a topic.

 

[veridis]

sounds good. my topic you got this from(if its the one i was thinking of) was a bit broad but focussing on one text is fine. theres a dot point about "critical analysis of a historical work" or something yeah. fiction can count as a historical work

and its veridis with a small v =)