The Professionalization of The Study ... GMAT Prep.

[RonPurewal]

• there's no "criticizing" -- the author just describes a few siginificant changes, but expresses no personal judgments of them.

• the changes described by the author mostly don't have to do with "the writing of history". most of the description is about the changes in perceptions of certain genres/source documents, not about changes in the writing of historical material itself.

[hantingc42]

• there's no "criticizing" -- the author just describes a few siginificant changes, but expresses no personal judgments of them.

• the changes described by the author mostly don't have to do with "the writing of history". most of the description is about the changes in perceptions of certain genres/source documents, not about changes in the writing of historical material itself.

Hi Ron

sorry for reopening the post, but I still have some questions, in the article, the author states:
" The disappearance of women as objects of historical studies during this period has elements of irony to it."
doesn't the irony mean the author have a negative attitude about the changes(criticize)?
thanks!

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Irony is one of the hardest things to define. Generally it's concerned with some sort of opposite or contradiction: perhaps we say the opposite of what we mean, or we do something that has the opposite effect to what we wanted. The author uses the construction 'on the one hand...on the other' to show that the professionalization of history did two things that pulled in opposite directions. I think disapproval is too strong a word - the author is pointing out consequences of the professionalization of history that might even be considered funny.