The Purpose of this course:
This course has two basic components. First, the course provides an introduction to the branch of historical inquiry known as historiography. The course is also meant to provide students with the skills associated with basic historical research and writing methods.
One focus of this course is to introduce new graduate students to historiography. Historiography is the history of historical writing. We will examine changes in the ways that writers of history have understood the meaning and purposes of history from Homer down to the 20th century. A critical understanding of historiography is a necessary element in the mastery of the discipline of history. It is also an important prerequisite to the intelligent and systematic production of original historical research and writing.
This brings us to the course's second focus—research and writing. Historians ask questions about the past that they try to answer by means of research and ultimately by writing books and various kinds of shorter papers. Good historians know how to ask historical questions, and how to employ historical sources—both primary and secondary—in order to frame an argument in prose that provide interpretive answers to their questions. Much of your course work will be devoted to sharpening the requisite critical skills that will enable you to write good history. The final goal of the course is the production of a paper in which students combine and hone all of the skills that have developed over the course of the semester. In order to get some idea of the process that leads to this paper, see the webpage on this site entitled, "Research Paper."
The assignments in this course are designed around meeting several objectives. When you finish this course, you should have developed a thorough understanding of the following:
- how history has evolved as a scholarly discipline
- how to read secondary sources for argument
- how to interpret and employ primary source materials
- how to do basic historical research
- how to define and clarify historical research topics and questions
- how to organize and produce several different kinds of historical papers
The end goal of this course is the production and in-class presentation of a (clear and concise) draft paper of some 15-20 pages.