hi, I’m Paola and I was born in Mexico but mainly raised here in the Illinois, Chicago. I’m a sophomore and I’m currently debating on what to major in although, I’m leaning to major in history while minoring in Spanish. My academic interest would be learning about US history specifically wars that the US has been involved in such as WW1, WW2, cold war, American revolution, civil war, etc. My non academic interests would be playing video games, playing my guitar, reading comics, and going out. Something I’m looking forward to is learning more about indigenous history without there being any ‘bias’ information or history not being erased if that makes sense. Based on some previous history classes I taken, I noticed that even though indigenous history is a big part of US history, its not talked about enough and is often erased from history and I look forward to learning more about indigenous history from indigenous people from 1st pov resources.
Hi Paola! Welcome to HIST 281! I’m glad your here and I look forward to your insights this term! Your point about erasure in historical narratives is very important. Historically, scholars have privileged non-Native sources to construct a narrative that does not adequately engage with the actual lived experiences of Native people. This is very problematic, because those same historical narratives reinforce systems of colonial violence and erasure. The only way to fully address these issues is to engage with a diverse array of historical sources produced by Native people and allow us to think more critically about the past. I look forward to all of the sources that we will be working with in this course!
I look forward to seeing how you engage with the course material and contribute to our discussions!