HIS 299: Thinking Historically: Historiography

historiography

[ hi-stawr-ee-og-ruh-fee, -stohr- ]

noun,plural his·to·ri·og·ra·phies.

• the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively.
• the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship.
• the narrative presentation of history based on a critical examination, evaluation, and selection of material from primary and secondary sources and subject to scholarly criteria.

Source Selection:

• You should have a mixture of sources such as books and articles rather than primary sources.
• Generally, you should be looking for books on your topic.
• If your topic is recent, you will probably find fewer books and more articles.
• Consider using Historiography as a subject keyword within the both the library catalog and databases

Examination of Authors and Published Works:

• Look at for academic/scholarly book reviews.
• Observe how an author structured their book and, if relevant to the subject, discussed contrary viewpoints.
  • You might consider how the language and keywords of a subject have changed throughout time.
• When using articles, you can get an idea of importance based on how often the work is cited by other scholars.
  • In addition to the somewhat anecdotal information gained from seeing how often a source is cited, you should try the following technique. Within a database such as JSTOR, search for your topic and limit sources by a time period such as a decade.  This will allow you to examine how historians during X years discussed your topic.

What might your historiography look like?

• After examining all your sources and reviewing content and reading reviews, you discuss change over time. 
  • Compare and contrast the arguments
• You examine major schools of thought. For example, in Labor History, you might see the following divisions: Institutional, Marxist/Neo-Marxist, Post-modern or Gendered.