Encyclopedias, Biography, and History (Workshop 4) 9:00-9:05 FW 9:05-9:15 Believe and Doubt Every word immediately becomes a concept,

inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases which means, strictly speaking, never equal- in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept leaf is formed thrugh an arbitrary abstraction of these individual differences... (p. 21, 2nd paragraph) 9:15-9:30 Thought chain 9:30-9:40 3 students read one Nietzsche quote and their interpretation. FFW/Process Write: What was the value (if there was any) in interpreting Nietzsche? Are some interpretations superior to others, and if so how or why, and if not, why not? Would it be different if you were interpreting, say, a scientific study? A novel? (5 minutes) 9:40-9:55 RA encyclopedia(?) entry on Emily Dickinson following the poem Parting (do not read the poem yet). As a group, identify different types of statements (fact, argument, interpretation, thesis, conclusion, information, reason encourage as many identifications as possible, and then generate more (data, opinion, metaphor, transition) in what appears to be a biographical encyclopedia article. Ask students how the author knows this? Where does the author limit the claims to knowledge, in what way are they limited, and why? (The answers to these questions are not all evident in the article itself) 9:55-10:05 RA The Historian's Craft. Annotate as read. 10:05-10:15 Reflect on one or two records: your Facebook (if you have one) or your application to BHSEC (transcripts, letters of rec, attendance record, math test, essay, interview notes). FFW #1: What could a biographer know of you from these traces? FFW #2: What could a biographer not know? FFW #3: What could mislead your biographer? 10:15 PW: how does this relate to your history classes at BHSEC? With remaining time: Discuss what phenomena (notable or otherwise) the discipline of history should not neglect, and the problem of the phenomenon which must of necessity elude the historian because, [Valery] argues, there are no documents which refer to it specifically.