Doing History: Beyond the Book

Catalog description

This class will teach you how to look for clues in the historical record beyond the usual written texts. The past took place in three dimensions, involved five senses, and included actors that were not human beings. This course takes seriously the challenges of recovering a larger source base than books (although we will also consider books in their materiality as books). What are some of these non-text sources? How should we approach them? What are their prospects and limitations? What do we do when there aren't many sources for our subject? "How do we know what to look for?" is one of the most profound and important questions for historians - and scholars more generally - to ask themselves.