PERSIA-GT

• An academic thinker named Edward Fenton came up with the acronym PERSIAT.
• He wanted to find a way to structure intellectual analysis so that concepts and subconcepts could be quickly and properly classified.  In the last few years, Fenton’s original concept has been expanded upon and the idea of Geographical analysis has been added.
• Currently, most academics refer to it as PERSIAT-G.  For the sake of simplicity (and for those with a fondness for fast cars…), I have renamed this idea PERSIA-GT.

All historical documents can be placed into one or more of the following categories:

P –   politics:  which refers to power

E –   economic:  which refers to material well-being

R –   religion:  which refers to spiritual well-being

S –    social:  which refers to culture and lifestyle

I –    intellectual:  which refers to great ideas

A –    artistic:  which refers to the expression of culture

G –    geographical:  which refers to spatial relations

T –     technological:  which refers to spatial relations

• PERSIA-GT is a mental checklist you can use to classify a document, debate or to discuss a topic (e.g.  Bismarck’s effect on Germany)

• The AP College Board uses the PERSIA-GT system to check over their exams for comprehensiveness.  The exam is broken down into centuries and then two or three different concepts (e.g. politics, religion, technology) will be looked at in that century.