Factors for acquiring writing and ways of learning and teaching its skills (handwriting, dictation and written expression)

Writing is the pride of the human mind throughout its long history, as it is a symbol of its humanity and the title of its civilization and its memory and its history. Writing is one of the means of communication by which a person can express his thoughts and feelings, and records what he would like to record of incidents, facts and information, in order to preserve them from oblivion and disappearance. We will address in this research paper writing in two main axes; The first is an introduction to writing, the factors helping to acquire it, the stages of its learning, and methods of teaching it. As for the second axis, we will dedicate it to writing skills, each skill separately. handwriting, spelling and written expression, in terms of definition and teaching methods, as well as weaknesses in some of them and the reasons for that.

WE are Dalit History

Life writings had time and again been used as source material for historical research both in the West and the various literary cultures of South Asia. Considering the absence and a deliberate, socially conditioned erasure of Dalit history from the mainstream narratives of Indian historiography, some scholars have introduced the notion of viewing Dalit life writings as exercises in history writing. This article explores several Dalit autobiographies as instances of engagement with the process of constructing history of Dalit communities in India. Starting from this premise, it undertakes a preliminary analysis of various narrative strategies employed in Hindi autobiographies by Dalit authors in the hope of revealing the nature of their engagements with India’s past and present. The study presented in this paper is based on four relevant examples of prose in Hindi—by Kausalya Baisantri, Sushila Takbhaure, Omprakash Valmiki, and Sheoraj Singh Bechain.

Inter-Confessional Church History: East Syrian Christian Identity and Islam in the Ecclesiastical History of Kitāb al-Maǧdal

Kitāb al-Maǧdal is a large East Syrian theological treatise that was composed in Arabic, probably in the late tenth or early eleventh century CE. One section of the work is an ecclesiastical history of the Church of the East. This essay argues that close analysis of this section reveals that elite East Syrian identity in the period overlapped to a significant extent with contemporary Muslim identity, at the level of vocabulary and conceptions of revelation and communal history. In this sense, the work represents a kind of “inter-confessional” history writing. The essay aims to contribute to recent studies of Middle Eastern Christian identity and historiography, which have focused of Syriac sources and/or late antiquity rather than Arabic sources for the Islamic middle periods.

The Spread of Buddhism and Peace in Southeast Asia

Buddhism is among the oldest religious traditions of the world. It is based on the life and teachings of Siddharta Gautama. The message of world peace is the greatest contribution of Buddhism to the human civilization. This paper aims to study the spread of Buddhism in the Southeast Asian region and its relations with the ideals of peace in contemporary period. Theoretically paper relies on the post-colonial history writing tradition. It adopts descriptive and analytical method to study the subject matter. Conclusions of the paper are drawn after scrutiny of primary and secondary literatures. A thorough study reveals that Buddhism has a glorious past in the Southeast Asia. The practice of Buddhism in the region was popular even prior to the beginning of recorded history. Different monuments provide tangible evidence, and deep-rooted essence of Buddhism in the socio-cultural practices of the region are intangible testimony to this. Paper argues that inter-religious issues in the region and especially current situation of conflict between people of different faith can be resolved by following philosophy of Buddhism in true sense.

For Science and Country: History Writing, Nation Building, and National Embeddedness in Third Republic France, 1870–1914

This article examines late nineteenth and early twentieth-century historiographical practices and convictions in Third Republic France. It shifts the focus from the question of whether French academic historians were nationalists to the issue of how they were nationalists. If republican academic historians took a critical stance on nationalist distortions of the past, they nevertheless associated the teaching of history with patriotism and opposed historiographical “pan-Germanism” in ways favorable to French cultural and territorial claims. Meanwhile, the growing internationalization of the field stimulated scholarly competition across the West and spurred reflections about nationals’ epistemological privilege over national histories, methodological nationalism, and the invention of national historiographical traditions. Uncovering the anxieties of continual debate with foreign historians and the nationalist right wing, this article offers a prehistory of present-day dilemmas over global, national, and nationalist histories in an international field characterized by structural inequalities and academic competition.

Searching for the yet unknown: Writing and dancing as incantatory practices

As two ballet dancers and university educators, we began this collaborative research with a shared belief in ballet and writing as liberatory practices and a desire to confront pedagogies that rely on intimidation. Both we and our students have experienced ballet and writing classes that rely on audit-and-surveillance, and we sought to foster individuality, value differences, and cultivate agency through multimodal approaches in our ballet technique, history, and dance studies courses. During the spring semester of 2021, the history and dance studies courses were online and asynchronous; the ballet classes met in a ‘hybrid’ model: classes were held in person, with students given the option to take class via Zoom either synchronously or asynchronously. Through interviews and analysis, we found praxes that ignite curiosity and motivation by drawing from definitions of writing and dancing as incantatory practices. Notably, this is the first research that takes a capacious view of ‘ballet pedagogy’ to include history, writing, technique, and dance studies courses. Ultimately, we hope these findings support exploratory and multimodal teaching, reinforce connections among language, empowerment, and pedagogy, encourage students and educators to collaboratively challenge current practices, and motivate administrators to rethink university structures that replicate the audit-and-surveillance practices of certain ballet and writing pedagogies.

Applied History

The past few years, the field of applied history has witnessed the publication of several manifestoes, the establishment of dedicated research centers, and the foundation of an academic journal. Conceptual discussions about the notion of applied history and the very fact that the methods and techniques of applied history are now part of the discipline of history provide further evidence of the field’s maturity. By offering an historiographical overview tracing the roots of applied history, this article will show that both discussions about the contemporary relevance and application of historical thinking, and the actual application of history to current events, possess a long history: applied history has been part and parcel of history writing since ancient times. Moreover, the article offers a discussion of recent debates about the concept and methods of applied history and concludes by mapping the trends that are shaping its current development.

Perspectives on Sports History in India

Kausik Bandyopadhyay’s chapter provides an account of what a history of sports should mean in India and the travails of establishing it with an academic focus provides a glimpse of an emerging, vibrant sub-discipline. Beginning with histories of established sports such as football and cricket, the essay focuses on researching sports history in the contemporary that poses numerous dilemmas and constraints for academics interested in history writing. Added to this are the experiences of teaching of sports, and the pedagogical engagement in the academy.