History

History, as BU Archivist, Tom Mitchell noted, has undergone a great change over the past thirty years in moving away from depicting how the social order has developed and changed. With the rise of critical theory, there has been much more emphasis on authors examining their own cognitive framework as they write up their accounts of the past.[]

Every discipline can take a historical approach to research in its field, but the Historian conducts history as an activity in itself, views life from an historical perspective, and is interested in questions about the historical aspect of life. B.U. History Professor, Jim Naylor, said that the Masters of Rural Development was designed for "community builders", and the historical question, "Why is it like this" is a critical to a depth understanding in such an enterprise.[]

Tom Mitchell noted that one of the interesting developments in the field of History is the notion of language as a social artifact, and an examination of it as a doorway into a community's self-understanding at various ages and stages of life together. Critical theory asks about how people use language to describe and account for their experiences.[]

Further Resources

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