Writing History

Catalog description

How is history written? This course offers a survey of the major theories and practices that have defined history as a scholarly discipline, and as a way of writing, over the last fifty years. Students are introduced to the major theoretical and narrative perspectives that have shaped historiography: to the kinds of historical questions that drive the research agendas of contemporary historians; and to the kinds of historical literature historians write, including analytical, narrative, scholarly, popular, and experimental. How do historians find and interpret their sources? How do they engage with existing scholarship while still striving to push their discipline forward? What methods do they apply to communicate the results of their research to other scholars and to a wider public readership? Students will learn to evaluate a wide array of different historical sources (including written documents, material artifacts, oral histories, and visual culture). They will also gain experience in meeting the challenges of writing their own works of historical scholarship, producing an original piece of written history by the end of the semester.