QUAESTIO - Social Sciences Division - UCLA

Introduction
EDITOR’S NOTE
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the sixth
edition of Quaestio, the annual undergraduate history journal
produced by the Theta Upsilon chapter of Phi Alpha Theta
National History Honor Society at UCLA. I am most humbled to
have overseen the compilation and publication of Quaestio this
year; my distinguished peers’ works are nothing short of
enlightening.
I am often asked about the title of our journal. Why
Quaestio? Quaestio is the Latin word for ‘inquiry.’ This title is
an apt representation of what our publication is all about: history,
not as a story well told, but rather as a story well scrutinized.
In my brief message to you, I should like — in the style
of my esteemed mentor, Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz of UCLA’s
Department of History — to invoke Walter Benjamin. In his
essay, entitled “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940),
Benjamin presents a critique of historicism. According to
Benjamin, historicism depicts the “eternal picture of the past”
(Thesis XVI). He argues against the idea of an “eternal picture”
of history and posits that history is about “seiz[ing] hold of a
[distinct] memory as it flashes up at a [distinct] moment of
danger" (Thesis VI). Moreover, Benjamin rejects the idea of the
past as a continuum of progress (Thesis XI) and employs Paul
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