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Unit 1 Overview: Narratives and Frames
Unit 1 Overview: Narratives and Frames
The stories we choose to tell about the past and how we choose to frame them can change our understanding of history.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
What is claim testing?
What kind of evidence does Bennett use to test Kim and Colby’s arguments?
What is scale switching?
Why did Colby not travel to Australia to film this video?
What are frames, and what are the three frame narratives used in this course?
: (music playing)
: Three, two, one.
: Happy New Year!
: Happy New Year!
: Colby, I'm so excited to see you later this year to film the overview videos for World
: History.
: Me too!
: I've never been to Australia.
: It'll be great.
: I'll show you around Sydney and introduce you to Australia's best historical sites.
: Hey Kim, what do you call it when you get fooled by an animal in Australia?
: Hmmm, what?
: A kanga-ruse.
: Bring jokes like that and you won't make it through customs.
: Anyway, I can't wait to see you this August.
: Same.
: (music playing)
: Hi, I'm Kim Lochner and along with Colby Burnett we're introducing Unit 1: Narratives and Frames.
: In this unit we're going to ask the critical question "Why does it matter what stories
: we tell about the past, and how we tell them"?
: Like the narrative you told your friend Kim when you said you were going to come to Australia
: to film these videos?
: Exactly!
: Wait, what?
: I was just remembering how you bailed on me instead of coming to Australia to film these
: videos like we agreed.
: And now we're stuck doing them over video chat.
: I even bought a tourist guide book Colby.
: Kim, I'm sorry, that was months ago.
: I think tickets were just too expensive.
: Maybe, but is that the whole story?
: Because you cancelled right around the time you found out that when it's summer in Illinois
: it's winter in Australia.
: And then you kept posting pictures of yourself doing outdoorsy things in sunny Chicago.
: It had nothing to do with that...
: I told all my friends you were coming.
: I just have a lot going on…
: I booked a tour of the Opera House…
: Tom Hanks gave Australia 1 star.
: Have you ever had a disagreement with a friend or family member about something that later
: on neither of you could quite agree on what started the disagreement or how the argument
: escalated?
: If only you had a time machine so you could go back in time to prove you were right.
: Colby and Kim might be wishing the same thing right now.
: They don’t have a time machine, but what they do have is me, a professional historian.
: Hi, I’m Bennett Sherry.
: I’m one of the WHP historians and I’m one of several historians you’re going to
: meet in this course.
: In this unit you’re going to be introduced to some of the most important tools that historians
: use to create narratives of the past.
: Throughout the course you’re going to encounter a lot of different history stories.
: But remember, different people like Kim and Colby often remember the same historical events
: in some very different ways.
: Historical narratives can prove to be quite useful in your own life as you seek to understand
: the present and prepare for the future.
: But some, as you’ll see, are more useful than others.
: It’s critical that we test the claims made in these narratives to determine whether they’re
: based on any actual evidence.
: Let’s examine all sides of Kim and Colby’s argument and see if we can figure out what
: really happened.
: This is a skill we call claim testing, which you are going to practice a lot more in the
: coming months.
: So who’s right?
: Why did Colby not travel to Australia that summer?
: Colby claims the flights were just too expensive but Kim claims that Colby just wanted to stay
: in the hemisphere with the warmest weather.
: Let’s put their claims to the test.
: One way to test claims is with numerical data.
: Of course, there’s no Kim and Colby travel database.
: But we can combine some other pieces of evidence to get a bigger picture of why Colby’s plans
: changed.
: This chart represents the average change in the cost of domestic and international airfare
: from the United States.
: Colby claimed the tickets were too expensive for him to travel to Australia as he had planned.
: But here we can see that even though the cost of international travel didn’t increase
: quite as much as domestic travel, it still wasn’t expensive relative to 2019 and even
: decreased for a little while.
: So things aren’t looking too great for Colby’s claim.
: But let’s look at all sides of this argument and examine Kim’s claim about the weather.
: These two charts show us the average monthly temperatures in Sydney and Chicago.
: If we look at the month of August we see that yeah, Colby could have guessed it would have
: been warmer in Chicago than in Sydney, but August is the end of winter in Australia and
: it’s usually in the high 60s fahrenheit.
: So it’s not like he couldn’t enjoy the outdoors.
: So it looks like neither expensive flights nor a nature-loving Colby are to blame.
: So what’s a historian to do now?
: We can also explore the causes of Colby’s missed travel plans by doing something called
: scale switching.
: We switch scales when we zoom in to explore smaller stories or zoom out to gain a broader
: perspective.
: We’ve been focusing on the very personal story behind Kim and Colby’s argument, but
: now let’s shift scales and zoom out to see if any other big events were going on when
: they were planning this visit that might have impacted their narratives.
: On New Year’s Eve 2019 just as Colby and Kim were getting ready to celebrate the start
: of 2020 on two different continents, a new virus was spreading in the Chinese city of
: Wuhan.
: Though the World Health Organization declared an emergency in January, the Chinese government
: and many international leaders were slow to take action to halt the spread of the virus.
: By March 11th, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic as cases of Covid-19
: skyrocketed, particularly in Italy and Iran.
: By the end of March, the United States had the highest number of cases in the world.
: In August of 2020 the pandemic had reached nearly 25 million cases confirmed globally
: and over 800,000 deaths.
: And tragically, those numbers continued to climb through the following months.
: The economic fallout of the pandemic is significant and in many places, people have quarantined,
: businesses have closed, and people have lost jobs.
: In addition, domestic and international travel has been restricted.
: So now that we’ve zoomed out, we can see that this other narrative is much more significant
: than their claims about weather or travel prices.
: Oh right.
: I totally forgot.
: This whole year was a blur, but uh...I guess this is the start of a new school year?
: So, I guess it’s time to start empowering historical knowledge to World History students.
: And don’t forget historical thinking skills like claim testing.
: We’ve just introduced you to Unit 1: Narratives and Frames.
: In this unit we’ll cover the importance of historical narratives and highlight some
: of the key skills like claim testing and causation that historians use to evaluate these narratives.
: This unit begins with a couple of videos that introduce important concepts.
: Professor Bob Bain will expand on the idea of usable histories.
: Chimamanda Adichie will give you a guide to the importance of multiple perspectives on
: a global past.
: In all of the units that follow you’ll watch an overview video like this one where Colby
: and I will welcome you to a new time period and theme.
: We’ll introduce the central question of the unit and look for answers by examining
: data and switching scales, by zooming in and out like in the example you just saw.
: In these overviews, Kim and I will also make connections to our frame narratives for each
: unit.
: You’ll learn more about our three course frames from Professor Bob Bain in four videos
: at the end of this unit.
: But for now just know that our three frames--communities, networks, and production & distribution--are
: like different picture frames you can place around any historical narrative in order to
: develop a richer understanding of past events.
: As you progress through this course remember there are a lot of different narratives out
: there.
: It’s your job to evaluate each story you encounter.
: That’s the key to identifying what usable history means to you.
: Whether it’s a disagreement between two friends or a violent conflict between two
: great empires, the narratives we choose to tell about the past and how we tell them have
: real consequences for how we understand our present and prepare for the future.
: So Kim, since we’re using data and scale switching in the rest of these videos, that
: means we’ll never have another disagreement, right?
: That’s not what Bennett said at all.
: Yes it is, I took notes.
: Here, let me read back to you.
: Well, I took notes too…
: I watched the same video you did…
: (Colby and Kim talking over each other)