Talk:Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2018-19/Truth in Uchronia

General timeline:

22/11/18 We discussed which texts we were going to use in our project as well as the structure of our wiki page.

6/12/18 Edited the structure and points of the draft, added references and photos

7/12/18 Divided up labour - Each group member was given the responsibility of proofreading and editing one section

8/12/18 Group meeting, final changes and coherence in the different sections. Missing a summary of what each person has done, which will be uploaded on this discussion page.

How we worked in general: we worked on a google document, sharing links and ideas about our different sections. We co-wrote each section and only divided labor in the end, when we needed more coherence and precise elements. Usually, we developed each other's ideas, so we all have contributed to each section (and even each sentence!) of this chapter. As an example, Lena wrote a first introduction presenting our key concepts and main ideas, which I (Audrey) re-wrote, to which Kaixuan added precise elements, which I and Lena rephrased again.

We of course all had our 'specialities' and completed each other. Kaixuan initiated the 'Challenging history' paragraph, while Lena put the emphasis on the literature and 'history as a lesson' part, which was indeed not complete enough. Mier added elements to each section and checked the coherence and accuracy of each idea (as many ideas were not as much related to our subject as we thought). Finally, I focused more on the necessity of history and lessons part which needed a bit of philosophy. Uclqcot (discuss • contribs) 18:05, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Precise individual work:

Kaixuan: when Audrey first raised the idea of uchronia, all of us were very excited since it was very interesting and closely related to our issue "truth". At the very beginning, we read a lot about the term "alternate history", at the same time we all read the most representative uchronia novel by Philip K. Dick, namely The Man in the High Castle. As I am doing a bachelor degree in English literature in China, I recommended myself for the literature section to discuss how truth is constructed in fiction and how uchronia tells truth by alternating history. I collected 5-6 journal articles about alternate history or The Man in the High Castle and got some nice quotations. Also I found a very relevant book by Singles in UCL Library online resources explaining the contingency and necessity in history, which gave me a lot of insights. Based on what I read and was enlightened, I wrote the first draft of "how is truth constructed in uchronia", in which I defined truth in history and in literature to see how this interdisciplinary approach help the understanding of the significance of uchronia. Audrey helped me a lot on the "divergence point" part, since she has a very good knowledge on the novel and this genre. Lena and Mier also helped smooth my logical structure and language in this section. And Lena suggested that I place more emphasis on truth conveyed in literature and separate the extra content about historical truth out. We then decided to move this part out of the literature section and added a new subheading "challenging history". After we all finished our draft and did some refinement on each other's, we found the word count was more than 1200. On the evening of Dec 8, I tried to condense the "introduction" again, changing it from a detailed introduction of uchronia to the introduction part of the whole chapter. Moreover, finally I unified all the references according to vancouver format on https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/library/public/vancouver.pdf. Although we still need progress on reading more literature and organizing our ideas more effectively after brainstorming, I really enjoy our group's collaboration on gathering inspirations, discussing truth in uchronia with different disciplinary background and refining our writings into a precise and succinct style. It is during this process that I practice the knowledge and thinking I have gained in our ATK course.

Lena: The decision to write on uchronia first arose when we were discussing what disciplines we were interested in. We all knew we wanted to write on the issues of either truth or evidence, but had no insight into an interdisciplinary focus. We all agreed that history as a discipline was interesting, and Audrey came up with the idea of Uchronia - which combines history, literature, and philosophy. Having never heard of this word, I further researched into this topic and found it to be quite interesting, so we all agreed. In terms of our work, we mostly worked individually from our own laptops apart from the designated seminar group sessions we had. As the deadline approached, we realised it was more effective to meet up and discuss in person, as opposed to communicating through online means, so we planned meetings to work on our chapter. Instead of dividing up labour from the very beginning, we decided that we would co-write each section of our chapter, and then edit the whole chapter together as a group. This was to ensure that our whole chapter flows well, without clear differences between our different styles of writing. I think this worked very well for our group, as it allowed each team member to read, edit, and develop into the paragraphs that we wrote together. For example, Audrey's contribution on the Divergence point and philosophy section was detailed and long at first, but needed to be cut down. Thus, Mier and I read and edited, merging sections together, altering the order, etc. Kaixuan and I also worked together for the introduction and 'Uchronia as a Literary Genre' part. I also managed to find and add photos that fit with our chapter. We also changed the subheadings of our chapter several times; each time debating whether or not it was focused on the "interdisciplinary" nature of uchronia. All in all, this chapter is a contribution of all our works combined.

Mier: We chose to focus our article on truth in uchronia as we knew we were interested in subjects relating to humanities. Audrey introduced us to the concept of uchronia and we all decided to research the topic and read up on the novel, The man in the high castle which we ultimately chose as an example. We communicated mostly through messenger and started a google document with our ideas and the points we wished to discuss in our article. During our seminar sessions, we decided that we wanted to explore the interdisciplinary nature of uchronia as an idea that arises in literature but has applications in history and philosophy. Audrey provided the structure of the article which we then discussed and refined such as changing the subheadings as we progressed to make sure they reflected the content of the paragraph. I read up on the concept of historical determinism and condensed and contributed to the paragraph Audrey wrote to ensure greater clarity. Whilst, Lena and I rearranged the structure of our article for coherence to ensure the logical procession of ideas as well as to ensure our argument remained relevant to our topic. We worked separately during the start of the project but kept in contact throughout whilst discussing ideas and suggestions to each other's work on messenger as well. For example, Kaixuan wrote the first draft of the introduction which we all edited and contributed to and I rewrote the conclusion to emphasise the importance of Uchronia as an interdisciplinary medium for reflection on historical narratives. We also met up in person, to read through the article together to ensure the flow of ideas and finalise our article. Ultimately, the article is the product of our summative efforts and experiences gleaned from the ATK course.

Audrey: I came up with the idea of uchronia as a literary genre which demands an interdisciplinary approach because I had already written an essay about this subject two years ago. what was more difficult for me then was to condense this information without leaving any important challenge out of it. The other members of the group were a great help with this; Since I had read a great number of uchronias beforehand (if you don't know what to read, consider reading 'La Part de l'Autre', a uchronia about Hitler becoming an artist after going to university -beautiful), I guess I had the practical approaches to the matter. The major part of the work was to analyze and structure our knowledge. I wrote the first structure of the chapter, but in the end, it's Lena and Kaixuan who found the most logical and coherent plan for this chapter; I started exploring each discipline I thought could be involved in uchronias, but I had most of the time no argument of authority and reference; Kaixuan did a great work at enriching the subjects and finding accurate references. What I am trying to say is, there is some individual work everywhere in this chapter. There are some paragraphs I started, or modified, enriched, corrected or finished, and so did all the other members of the group. I see this chapter as the embodiment of our teamwork: no part was done individually and everyone was involved in each section (making the learning process more efficient). Overall, I think I finally understand what the purpose of ATK is (I am sorry, I admit I had doubts) and we all tried to show our understanding of this purpose in this chapter.