HIS 100 Module Three Activity Revising Questions
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Southern New Hampshire University *
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Dec 6, 2023
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HIS 100 Module Three Activity Template: Revising Questions
Replace the bracketed text below with your responses.
Identify the topic you chose to explore:
Chernobyl
Identify a historical perspective that could be applied to your historical event.
A historical perspective that could be applied to my chosen historical event is “Voices from
Chernobyl” by Svetlana Alexievich. She interviewed over 500 eyewitnesses to this event ten
years later in 1996. This included testimony from all walks of life. Politicians, firefighters, doctors,
physicists, everyday citizens, and even the cleanup crew.
In her book she is quoted as saying:
“Reality has always attracted me like a magnet, tortured and hypnotized me, and I wanted to
capture it on paper. So I immediately appropriated this genre of actual human voices and
confessions, witness evidences and documents. This is how I hear and see the world—as a
chorus of individual voices and a collage of everyday details. In this way all my mental and
emotional potential is realized to the full. In this way I can be simultaneously a writer, reporter,
sociologist, psychologist, and preacher” (Alexievich, 1997). I believe that this quote speaks
directly to gaining a historical perspective from those who were there, who survived when
others didn’t.
Revise your research question based on evidence from your primary and secondary sources.
Original Question:
How did the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl affect the wildlife, the ecosystem,
and the long-term health of the human population around the area?
Revised Question:
How was the human population affected in the ten years immediately after
the nuclear event?
Explain how historical perspective and evidence from sources influenced your finalized research
question.
Historical perspective and evidence from my primary source helped to shift my original question
to what I ended up revising it into. Direction from Professor Mehrtens helped me to gain clarity
as well. I was able to shift it to a question that would lead to much more direct and fruitful
research. By looking at the immediate ten years after Chernobyl and how it affected human lives,
I can analyze information that came straight from those who were there that day and those who
affected then and the decade to come afterwards. As Svetlana Alexievich said in her book, “Show
me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl--there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic”
(Alexievich, 1997)
References:
Alexievich, S. (2006).
Voices from Chernobyl: The oral history of a nuclear disaster (K. Gessen, Trans.).
Picador. (Original work published 1997)
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