Welcome to this DrakWeb Intranet Site.
This is the Site known as ahellas.
I am a historian, writer, and teacher. This Site
is to be the home of a number of projects,
each of which emphasizes
one of these interests,
and all of which are in embryonic stages.
First, I am searching for methods of learning and teaching History
that will make use of emerging technologies, that will
permit me and my fellow students to explore and
learn in ways that may well have been impossible without
the new communications medium that the internet is becoming.
To this end I intend to place "classroom material" onto
this Site, and see how such material evolves in this setting.
Second, I am gathering material for an on-going study of
Arthur Koestler. I am interested in gathering information,
ideas, and insights on Koestler's work.
Third and more, I am looking for clarity in my own discipline
and how I pursue it. I am not sure of what I want to do here so
I will put it out into the ether and see who responds and how.
Telling the truth of the past is of course well nigh impossible
as any student of the subject understands but we try as far as our
own prejudices allow us. I have always taught and studied history
from the view point of inclusion, truth even if it hurts my own
predisposition's, and a celebration of the good that humans are capable
of. Yet, I teach far differently now than when I started over twenty
years ago. Sudden insights from others, images, questions from students
over the course of time have caused me to tear up pages of
comfortable lecture notes and start over time after time.
For example, I have told the story of John Brown and his raid
on Harpers Ferry for years in my history classes with the requisite
historical objectivity, a certain amount of admiration for his
antislavery goals tempered by his tactics and the usual reference to
insanity, etc. Recently I read one writers assessment that
"no responsible black leader that met or worked
with Brown ever regarded him as insane."
After a little research I had to look at that statement seriously
in regard to the depth of white resistance Brown faced, even among
abolitionists. It meant that I had seriously look at how I presented
his story.
I would be interested in what events, images, information
has suddenly brought others to clarity, forced them to reassess what
they had taken for granted, to others interested in this discipline.
E-mail me at ahellas@aol.com.
Just a few things to seed the discussion:
ahellas
(The Private Links are just that, and you will
need a password to access them.)