Unit 2: Project Builder 3

WP2: Project Builder 3

Interview with Professor Paul Spickard

Professor Paul Spickard specializes in Comparative Race and Ethnicity, US Social and Cultural History, World History. He has written more than 20 books both fictional and non fictional within the fields of History and Sociology. As a History major, I immediately connected with professor Spickard’s exuberant teaching style in his History 2C course – this was one of the many reasons why I decided to interview him. Overall, the interview went extremely well; I learned so much more than I thought I would about the genre of history from professor Spickard. As soon as I started asking about the genre of history and its techniques, the first thing that professor Spickard mentioned to me was that he found historical writings to be easier than fictional writings because it is based on facts. From his experience, a successful fictional novel has to be able to capture its audiences’ attention right from the beginning to the end, and therefore it is based on the audience’s reception to the novel. Historical writings on the other hand, do not require such complexity as audiences read historical pieces to learn rather than for leisure. Historical pieces according to professor Spickard are also able to maintain audience’s attention better than fictional writings. Moreover, even when comparing sociology/political science with history, historical pieces tend to do a better job maintaining their audience’s attention. One of the reasons why this is achievable for historical writings is because history for the most part is stories – even when you are writing about facts, there are many different stories to choose from in order to gain the audience’s attention.

Professor Spickard pointed out that one of the issues with the genre of History that bothers him the most is the fact that people/writers think they know more than they do. He believes that everybody has a notion of history, and as a result is usually strongly entitled to his or her own opinion. Opinions and facts are different in the sense that facts will “try” to be as neutral as possible, and a lot of respect is usually given to these facts. Historical facts are often told differently in different areas of the world, and as a result credibility is one of the main importance when writing the genre some of the Historical genre. Professor Spickard used Ted Cruz as an example, as he said how Ted Cruz believed that President Barrack Obama’s economic policies are ineffective even though the statistics show a significant decrease in the unemployment rate in the United States. Moreover, Professor Spickard also raised the idea of intellectual generosity, as he believes that a real Historian or a writer of Historical genre should not be frugal with their knowledge, and instead share it to as many people as possible – the world will become more intelligent and a better place if more people truly understands history.

In one of the articles that I have chosen for this second unit, I have pointed out to Professor Spickard that some of the references that quote outside sources/influential figures/historians might be unnecessary to the paper. Professor Spickard agreed, and further stated that he is not a fan of the use of massive quotations in a writing piece, but many times they are necessary for the author to either reiterate a fact or challenge an idea. The discussion of quotation spearheaded towards the discussion of citations. Professor Spickard completely believed that the MLA style citation is an abomination, and that it messes with the flow of writing. He also mentioned how the Chicago style is the way to go for the genre of history, as it not only make the paper/literary work looks cleaner, but also allows extra spaces to insert more information on outside readings if the audiences wish to learn more.