What is history?

= study of the past

Historians produce knowledge about the past and they need to have a certain
mindset to do so= “historical thinking”

1) need multiple accounts/perspectives

2) 2) Analysis of primary sources (original documents & objects which were

created at
the time under study)

Primary sources contains firsthand evidence about past events. Types of primary
sources:
* historical/legal documents
* Eyewitness accounts (diaries, etc.)
* Statistical data
* audio/video recordings
* Speeches
* Maps
* Artifacts
* Letters
* Photographs
* Newspapers
* literature/art/film

Secondary sources= accounts or interpretations of events created by someone

without firsthand experience

3) sourcing = identifying and asking questions about the origins of the source,
about the author’s purposes and perspective, when the source was created by
whom/ for whom

4) understanding historical context —— the man, his times, conditions, ideologies

—— locating events & sources in time and place—— how did these effect the
topic you’re studying?
5) claim - evidence connection = it’s not fiction. When you claim something, you
need to show the evidence (you get the evidence from the sources— sources do
not speak by themselves, you need to ask questions). Do not assume things.

Microhistory= “the intensive historical investigation of a relatively well defined

smaller object, or a single event” (Istvan M. Szijarto)
Characteristics of microhistory=

• 1) small object, well defined/restricted focus

• 2) Use of synecdoche (part represents the whole)= examination of the

“ocean in the drop”.

• 3) Focuses on social agency —- people are not puppets on the hands of

great underlying forces of history— they are active individuals, conscious
actors

Modern History (19th century): macro-history/ states, statesmen, wars, peace,

etc. / narration / written sources (official documents mostly)

Postmodern history (20th): micro-history / common people, local events,

communities, etc / interpretation of the past / every type of source including both
the written and oral sources

Postmodern historians think that we cannot know the past in an objective sense
— We can only try to get as close it by interpreting the sources that we have.

Beware of the risk of anachronism/presentism

Anachronism= the action of attributing something to a period to which it does not
belong, a chronological inconsistency
Presentism= tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and
concepts

Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy= (after this, therefore, because of this) there are
two events; let’s call them event A and B. Event A happens and then event B
happens. Sometimes people make the mistake of automatically thinking that
event B happened because event A happened, just because B happened after A,
although there are no/little connection/causality between the two events. We call
this the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Determinism= thinking that every event is the inevitable result of past events
(denies free will)

The Challenges of Writing About History

History’s subject matter: All of human affairs in the recorded past

Consulting all these records? Comprehensive? Universal? Objective?

Irretriveable subject matter!

Time travel not possible yet= no firsthand experience

No chance to recreate the same conditions in a laboratory setting

Relies on fragmentary records that survive from the time period under study
=necessarily reveal JUST PART OF THE STORY!

Guiding principles: SELECTION and INTERPRETATION

SELECTION
Thoughtful selection of topics and questions that seem most interesting
INTERPRETATION
Responsible interpretation of sources in order to construct meaningful arguments

Subjective decisions about what to include, what to exclude and how to interpret
it =make history writing manageable and CONTROVERSIAL

Bound to disagree with the judgment of other scholars

History writing = an ongoing argument or debate over this unavoidable process of

selection and interpretation

YOUR FIRST CHALLENGE AS A WRITER IS TO FIND A WAY TO ENTER THIS

CONVERSATION!
HISTORY PAPERS

In all shapes and sizes

Narrative (organized like a story according to chronology, or the squence of

events)

Analytical (organized like an essay according to the topic’s internal logic)

Concerned with history (not just what happened, of course, but why and how it
happened)

Concerned with historiography (i.e., how other historians have written history,
specifically the peculiarities of different works, scholars, or schools of thought)

Social or cultural history Political or military history Intellectual

Economic

RESEARCH PAPER (requires research in the library and archive on a topic of

your own choosing)

Find a topic, develop an argument (formulate a set of historical questions) and

STATE IT IN YOUR THESIS STATEMENT (in the first paragraphs of your paper)

SOURCES
PRIMARY SOURCES
Materials produced in the time period under study
Reflect the immediate concerns and perspectives of participants in the historical
drama Diaries
Correspondence
Dispatches
Newspapers

Speeches Economic data Literature

Art
Film
Etc.

For example, the diary of Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), I will bear witness: a
diary of the Nazi Years (published 1998) discusses Klemperer's first-hand
experience of life in Nazi Germany (1933-45). Another example of a primary
source is a newspaper published during (or shortly after) an historical event. For
example, the October 1962 issues of the New York Times provide insight on the
Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the USA and USSR to the brink of war.

SECONDARY SOURCES
Materials produced after the time period under study

Consider the historical subject with a degree of hindsight and generally select,
analyze, and incorporate evidence (derived from primary sources) to make an
argument

Works of scholarship

Nikolaus Wachsmann’s Hitler’s

Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (2004) and Alice L. George’s Awaiting
Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis (2003) are both
examples of scholarly secondary sources.

Treat any source with a critical eye

Sources do not answer historical questions on their own; they yield evidence only
after a process of interrogation and analysis

Primary or secondary?
Edward Gibbon – History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Your topic
is imperial Rome in the first millenium =secondary source

Your topic is imperial Britain in the 18th century (when Gibbon wrote the book)
=primary source

Further elaborate: newspaper piece from the time period under study=primary;
newspaper piece from today about the time period under study=secondary

Hint: What determines whether a source is primary or secondary is the firsthand

experience of the writer, not actually the time he writes.

USE OF EVIDENCE
DON’T CONFUSE SOURCES WITH EVIDENCE: sources provide raw materials
that scholars turn into evidence to assemble a historical argument (straw and
clay---bricks--- structure)

Collect this evidence by reading sources closely, and interrogating them by

asking questions

Who produced this source? Was the author biased or dishonest? Did he or she
have an agenda?

When was the source created? Where? Is it representative of other sources

created at the same time? In what ways is it a product of its particular time, place
or context?

Why did the author produce this source? For what audience and purpose? Is this
purpose (or argument) explicit or implicit? Was it intended for public or private
use? Is it a work of scholarship, fiction, art, or propaganda?

How does the source compare with other sources you have analyzed? Does it
privilege a particular point of view? Incorporate or neglect significant pieces of
evidence?

PERSUASIVE THESIS STATEMENT is required BUT your argument’s success

will be judged on the collection, organization, and presentation of its evidence.

Make sure to consider reasonable counterarguments to your thesis.

CONVENTIONS OF HISTORY WRITING

WRITE IN THE PAST TENSE not the “literary present”

Represents poor historical thinking. All historical events (including the

composition of primary and secondary sources) took place at some point in the
past; write about them in the past tense.

AVOID VAGUE GENERALIZATIONS

Be specific! No equivocal phrases like “once upon a time” or “people always say
that...” AVOID PRESENTISM OR ANACHRONISMS

Investigate the past on its own terms. Resist the temptation to easily connect the
past with present.
TREAT YOUR SUBJECT WITH RESPECT

Try to understand, rather than judge, the past. Contemporary values/

assumptions? No historical generation is perfect!

PARAPHRASE IF YOU CAN, QUOTE IF YOU MUST

I would like to read YOUR analysis. When you do quote, introduce the source
and context.

You should quote primary sources when:

Your primary source provides a fact or concept that directly supports your
argument

Your source uses terminology that is now obsolete, but that conveys the
atmosphere/way of thinking of the time

The source is unclear or ambiguous; you are obliged to put your own
interpretation on it, and want to make the reader aware of this fact.

You should only quote a secondary source when:

The historian quoted is using a phrase or expession or formulating a problem in a

way that is unique and that you find particularly useful for your argument

The passage quoted is critical to your argument – for instance, you are
challenging the author’s interpretation and intend to refute it.

PROVIDE NECESSARY CONTEXT

Interrogate the sources, interpret the evidence and report your findings about the
INTERPLAY OF TEXT AND CONTEXT

EMPLOY PROPER CITATION

Footnotes to provide references or supplemental information (in keeping with the

CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE) =credibility and integrity

What should you footnote?

All direct quotations, including from the internet
Any summary of another person’s words or ideas (simply paraphrasing or
rewording someone else’s ideas without citing the source of those ideas is still
plagiarism)

The use of someone else’s data or statistics No need to footnote general

knowledge.

How much? If you’re footnoting each sentence, you are compiling information,
rather than doing your own analysis. 2-4 footnotes per page on average.

WRITE IN A FORMAL, ACADEMIC VOICE

Avoid using the first or second person (I or you, and passive sentences. No “I
think”s nor “in my opinion”s!

PROOFREAD! Your readers will thank you.

PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH

Be creative in terms of keywords
Find first bunch of sources, then refer to the bibliographies and index pages of
these sources

Academic journal articles publish the latest findings and debates. (HINT: new
scholarship usually appears in the form of a journal article before it appears in a
book.) JSTOR AND GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Choosing and Evaluating your Sources

When you begin reading, you will need to decide the following: • Which sources
you will need to read in detail.
• Which sources you will skim for background information.
• Which sources you may not need to read at all.

• With a book, use the table of contents, the index and read the introduction –
these will give you some indication of how useful the source is for your purposes.
With a journal article, read the abstract.
• Reading the introduction will also give you a general introduction to the key
arguments and methodology of the author. This will help you decide whether or
not you will need to read the text in further detail.
When you begin reading for your essay, it is important that you read all material
critically. Analyse the logic of the argument being presented to you. Then
examine the nature and extent of the evidence used to support this argument.
The reader of your essay, who is also the marker, will subject your essay to this
sort of scrutiny.

BIAS
All authors and readers (indeed, all

human beings) are ‘biased’. As an historian, although you recognise ‘bias’ you
should not become obsessed with it. Try to think, instead, in terms
of the benefits as well as the drawbacks of an individual perspective. If a
secondary source is hopelessly biased, however, then you should not use it.

HOW DOES THIS MATERIAL RELATE TO MY ESSAY QUESTION?

WARNING ABOUT INTERNET SOURCES

Scholarly internet sources include primary source material that has been
placed on the web by a recognised academic, government or other
institution (such as the Internet Modern History Source Book, which is
hosted by Fordham University in the USA) as well as scholarly on-line
journals, databases of academic journal articles (e.g. J-STOR), online
collections of primary sources (e.g. ECCO)

Top Ten Signs that you may be Writing a Weak

History Paper
10. You’re overjoyed to find that you can fill the required pages by
widening all margins.
9. You haven’t mentioned any facts or cited any sources for several paragraphs.
8. You find yourself using the phrase “throughout history mankind
has...”
7. You just pasted in another 100 words of quotations.
6. You don’t have a clue about the content of your next paragraph.
5. You’re constantly clicking on Wikipedia.
4. Your professor sneaks another look at her watch as she reminds
you for the third time to clarify your thesis.
3. Your main historical actors are this, it, they, the people, and society,
and they are all involved with factors, aspects, impacts, and issues.
2. You just realize that you don’t understand the assignment/the topic, but it’s
3:00 A.M, the paper is due at 9:00, and you don’t dare email your
professor.
1. You’re relieved that the paper counts for only 35 percent of the
course grade.

FINAL ADVICE Start early!