/lit/ - Literature

>>21526600
I am also graduating this year just like >>21526761 and yes, he is right about this:
>You spend more time learning about sixteenth century Irish agricultural reform laws than stuff that actually matters.

The idea of "microhistory" is a trend where I live, and it's ridiculous, there is this insistence that fragments concerning the "mentality" of a peasant in medieval Europe can offer a better overview of the era than reading a papal bull or an imperial diet decree. At least here, people are still tackling what they call "positivist historiography" or "Rankean history" as an outdated model. Some teachers might criticize Marxist history but most of them are still doing "marxist historiography" like a stopped clock.
Most historians are attempting to write thesis and papers such as "causes and consequences of the wheat crisis in 14th century Aquitaine" or maybe "A social history of native-american gender plurality in colonial Yucatán."
It's not like the books on our syllabus are THAT boring, the problem is that the only people that will read these are academics, and they only read this garbage because they are researching some niche detail that will contribute to a more elaborate bibliography on the pointless publications of their own.
Nobody, absolutely nobody, cares about this shit.
So it makes you wonder... What is the purpose of doing this? And moreover... What private institution would finance this?

>>21527000
People need to remember that you don't need to go to school in order to saciate your craving for intellectual content. You can learn on your own, out of pleasure and focus only in what you like (man, I want all those hours I've wasted watching lectures on """methods of historiography""" back). You still can go to a trade school, learn how to wire a wire, how to mend a pipe, how to fix a car and how to saw a wood. You'll earn a fair amount of money, probably start your own company and hire a bunch of Juanitos to do the worst part of the job, and still come back home to enjoy your readings of Thucydides by the fireplace.

Literature majors BTFO'd

Literature majors eternally BTFO'd