History Paper1. “Writing a History Paper”

by Kristin Poling,

2008/2009

(Dept. History, Harvard University)

2. “How to Write a History Paper”

by Dan Wewers,

2007

(Writing Center, Harvard University)

Kristin Poling

Visiting Assistant Professor,Department of History, University of Rochester

-Ph.D. in Modern European History, Harvard University, May 2011

-Dissertation:“On the Inner Frontier: Opening German City Borders in the Long Nineteenth Century”

-B.A. in History, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Dan Wewers

Teaches: Seminar in American Constitutional History, etc. at Harvard University/Writing Center-AM and PhD in History, Harvard University-AB in History, Princeton University -Research Interests: political, intellectual, and cultural history of the early American republic-Dissertation: examines the idea of union and the specter of disunion in American political thought

Select & Interpret

History Research: Overwhelming

-subject matter: immense

-encompassing all of human affairs in the recorded past-up until this very moment

-never be comprehensive or universal

-no time travel/lab setting

-must rely on the fragmentary records

⇒SELECTION & INTERPRETATION to construct meaningful arguments

Various Writing Styles

-Narrative (organized like a story according to chronology, or the sequence of events)

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

-Descriptive (what happened/why/how)

-Historiography (how historians have written history---different works/scholars/schools of thought)

-Various genres: social/cultural/political/military/

intellectual/economic history

Common Argument Types(Review Essays)

1) Scholars have disagreed about Topic

---Explain why one party is more convincing than the other

2) Scholars have disagreed about Topic

---Show why the entire debate needs recast

3) Scholars have (more/less) agreed about Topic

---Argue for a different/better interpretation

Common Argument Types (Research Papers)

1) No one has written about Topic---Scholarly Neglect

---Explain the significance of Topic & offer provisional interpretation

2) A few scholars have written about Topic, but withgaps and deficiencies in the literature

---Examine new/different evidence to correct shortcomings

3) Many scholars have written about Topic

---Call for reassessment of the existing literature, with recent findings/new methodologies/original Q’s

Common Q Mis-formulations

1. The Deceptively Simple Question---demands a simple answer to a complex question

Ex: When did women achieve equality?

2. The Fictional Question

Ex: If Hitler had been accepted to art school, would World War II have happened?

3. The Stacked Question/Embedded Assumption

Ex: Why did the Carter presidency fail?

4. The Semantic Question---hinges on the definition of terms

Ex: Are all radical revolutions violent?

5. The Impossible-to-Answer Question

Ex: Was World War I inevitable?

6. The Opinion or Ethical Question

Ex: Was Truman wrong to authorize the use of the atomic bomb?

7. The Anachronistic Question

Ex: How good was ancient Athens’ record on civil rights?

Good Research QuestionsCheck List

1. Does my question allow for many possible answers? Is it flexible and open-ended?

2. Is it testable? Do I know what kind of evidence would allow an answer?

3. Can I break big “why” questions into empirically resolvable pieces?

4. Is the question clear and precise? Am I not usingvocabulary that is vague or needs definition?

5. Have I made the premises explicit?

6. Is it of a scale suitable to the length of the assignment?

7. Can I explain why the answer matters?

Selecting Sources

1) Select Quality/Best Possible Primary & Secondary Sources

2) Understand Sources in Context.

Primary/Secondary Sources---Never Unmediated Prism⇒ Questions to ask of your sources:

1. Who wrote/produced this source?

2. Why did they write/produce it?

3. Who was the intended audience?

4. What sources did the author use?

5. Under what preconceptions or prejudices did the author operate?

　 Primary Source/Secondary Source

Primary Sources: produced in the time period under study

-Reflect the immediate concerns & perspectives of participants in the historical drama

-e.g., diaries, correspondence, dispatches, newspaper editorials, speeches, economic data, literature, art, & film

Secondary sources: produced after the time period under study

-Consider the historical subject with a degree of hindsight

-Generally select, analyze, and incorporate evidence

(derived from primary sources) to make an argument

-e.g., various works of scholarship

Question: Edward Gibbon’s

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Primary Source or Secondary Source?

Sources, Evidence, Argument

-Sources ≠ Evidence

-Sources=Raw Materials

(metaphorical straw and clay)

to be fashioned into

Evidence (bricks)

to be assembled into

a Historical Argument (structure)

Presenting Evidence

Check List

1. Is evidence based on an explicit, objective framework appropriate to my topic?---not just juicy/morally enlightening/convenient facts only

2. Have I provided the context readers need to interpret my evidence?

3. Is generalization from an example justified?

4. Have I not taken sources to be more literal or precise than they are?

5. Have I not applied anachronistic standards or categories to my sources?

Common Logic 1Causation & Complexity

If you are attributing a cause, ask yourself:

-How much explanatory power does this causal relationship have?

-What is the burden of proof implied by my claim?

-Have I not equated correlation with causation?

-Have I not equated causation with responsibility?

Common Logic 2Intention

If you are attributing intent or motive to an historical actor, ask yourself:

-Have I avoided an over-simplistic psychological model that reduces motives to only unconscious or conscious elements?

-Have I assumed that human motives are stable, completely knowable or single?

Common Logic 3Generalization

If you are generalizing from an example, ask yourself:

-If I’m assuming an individual to have the characteristics of a group, or a group to be represented by an individual,

on what basis am I doing so?

-When I use big collective nouns: “society,” “Americans,” “Puritans,” or “the public,”

is there no smaller group that would do?

History Writing Do’s & Don’ts

1) Write in Past Tense

2) Avoid vague generalizations:

X “once upon a time”

X “people always say that….”

3) Avoid presentism or anachronisms

4) Treat your historical subject with respect:

O Aspire to understand

X Judge (no generation---including our own---is perfect)

5) Paraphrase if possible; Quote if necessary (sparingly)

History Writing Do’s & Don’ts

6) Provide Necessary Context

-Active commentary & rigorous engagement with material

-Interrogate sources, interpret evidence, & report findings

7) Employ Responsible & Consistent Citation Style

-Use Footnotes/Endnotes (Chicago Humanities Style)

to provide references or supplemental information

-Parenthetical Citations: also possible

-Credibility and Integrity as a Scholar

8) Use Formal, Academic voice:

X first or second person (e.g., “I” and “you”),

∆ passive sentence constructions X Redundancy (“I think” or “in my opinion”:

redundant in Expo Writing)

9) Proofread

History Writing Do’s & Don’ts

1) Avoid stating timeless truths, even in the introduction

2) Write in the past tense

-The literary present should be used with caution in historical writing, since it encourages presentism and a loss of historical context

3) Put your evidence in context

4) Avoid presentism, antiquarianism and anachronism

5) Cite, cite, and if you are not sure, cite some more

-Anything that does not fall into the category of

“general knowledge” needs a citation

-The Chicago Manual of Style

(most common citation guide used by historians)

6. Make your goal to understand rather than to judge…

7. But avoiding judgment does not mean abstaining from critical engagement

Resources on History WritingPractical Side

Fischer, David Hackett, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

(Harper Perennial, 1970)

Marius, Richard A., A Short Guide to Writing about History (Longman, 2006)

---“Writersʼ Checklists” at the end of each chapter help translate theory into practice, and extended excerpts from published works of history help make his points concrete.

Storey, William Kelleher, Writing History: A Guide for Students (Oxford UP, 2003)

Resources on History WritingTheoretical Side

Bloch, Marc, The Historianʼs Craft (Knopf, 1953)

Carr, E. H., What is History? 40th anniversary edition. (Palgrave, 2001)

-Full of good common sense on such topics as causality and objectivity, but ask yourself how areas of history developed since Carr wrote, like social history, cultural history, or gender

history, fit in to his analysis.

Evans, Richard J., In Defense of History (W. W. Norton, 2000)

Gaddis, John Lewis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford UP, 2002)

Green, Ann and Kathleen Troup, The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in 20th-Century History and Theory (NYU Press, 1999)

Resources on History WritingMechanics

Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed. (Chicago UP, 2002) [Also available online, through hollis.]

Harvey, Gordon, Writing With Sources: A Guide for Harvard Students (1995)

Turabian, Kate L., A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations

(Chicago UP, 2007)

Resources on History WritingOnline Resources

Rael, Patrick, “Reading, Writing, and Research for History: A Guide for Students” (Bowdoin College, 2004) Bowdoin.edu/writing-guides

---By far the best and most thorough out there. The most useful sections, and those most specific to history-writing, are “History and Rhetoric” and “From Observation ot Hypothesis.”

Herzberg, David, “Writing your First History Paper” (Wesleyan University, 1993)

Wesleyan.edu/writing/workshop/departments/

history.html

Resources on History WritingAt Harvard

Writing Center Website:

fas.harvard.edu/~wrctr

History Department Undergraduate Program:

www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/

~history/UGindex.cgi