- Academic Search Premier (EbscoHost)
- – print the first page of your search.
- America History and Life or Historical Abstracts (ABC-CLIO)
- – print the first page of your search.
- – print the full entry for one article that is available at CSI-CUNY, and indicate the way in which you would have access to it (electronically, full-text, the journal is on the shelves, etc.)
- – print the full entry for one article that is available at CSI-CUNY, and indicate the way in which you would have access to it (electronically, full-text, the journal is on the shelves, etc.)
- JSTOR
- – print the first page of your search.
- – print the first page of one article that is stored as full-text.
- – print the first page of one article that is stored as full-text.
- Project Muse
- – print the first page of your search.
- WORLDCAT (FirstSearch)
- – print the first page of your search.
- Assignment Two: Verifying "Facts" (due March 10)
- The Positivist historian Ranke wrote that, when writing history, "the strict presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive though they may be, is undoubtedly the supreme law." Facts are the foundation of any good history. But how does the historian get the facts? How does the historian prove and verify the facts that he or she finds?
- There are two ways in which historians verify facts: "limiting the claim," and "corroboration."
- "Limiting the claim" is a process of making a clear and precise statement which contains no hidden fallacies. For example, the sentence, "George Bush was elected to become President in 2000," seems on its surface to be "true." However, several questions could be raised about the statement. Was it George Bush or George W. Bush who won the 2000 election? Is it a "fact" that he did win the election, or is there some dispute over it? Of what country or organization was he elected President? Did he become president in 2000 or 2001? Who elected Bush president? A responsible historian would want to be careful about making statements which raise so many questions. A more "precise" (and therefore factual and limited) version of the same information might be: "In 2000, following controversies over ballots in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush had won the U.S. Presidential election," or "George W. Bush won the 2000 U.S. Presidential election and became President of the United States in January, 2001."
- "Corroboration" requires finding several different kinds of evidence which support the claim. It is important that the evidence comes from a variety of sources – depending too heavily on only one source can lead the historian to make mistakes or distort the past. For example, if an historian of the future wanted to resolve the historical question related to the election discussed above, something like, "Who really got more votes in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election," that historian would need to look at a broad variety of sources: the ballots themselves, exit polls, news coverage, documents submitted by both the Democrats and Republicans to the Supreme Court, private records and correspondence of both the Bush and Gore campaigns, etc. If the historian used only sources collected by Democrats, he or she would have only part of the picture; critics could attack his or her argument as one-sided. If Republican sources contradict Democratic ones, then that contradiction must be examined and explained. If they provide support for the Democratic argument, they are considered corroborative. If the sources disagree, that does not mean that they can not be used to corroborate each other. Even if the overall conclusions reached by each source are in contradiction, there will be individual facts within each that will be useful as corroboration.
- Your assignment will be to do the work of the historian in verifying two facts in these two ways:
- The Positivist historian Ranke wrote that, when writing history, "the strict presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive though they may be, is undoubtedly the supreme law." Facts are the foundation of any good history. But how does the historian get the facts? How does the historian prove and verify the facts that he or she finds?
- 1) Transform a fallacious fact (1-39) into a "true" one by limiting the claim. In order to do this, you will identify five challenges to the sentence and re-write the sentence as a limited claim.
- 2) Verify a fact (A-J) by finding (and keeping track of) corroborating evidence. For this part of the assignment, you will be given a historical "fact" – a very specific one – which you will verify using primary and secondary sources. For this, I will give credit for effort and thoroughness, as well as creativity; whether you ultimately find the "smoking gun" is of lesser concern in this particular case.
- 2) Verify a fact (A-J) by finding (and keeping track of) corroborating evidence. For this part of the assignment, you will be given a historical "fact" – a very specific one – which you will verify using primary and secondary sources. For this, I will give credit for effort and thoroughness, as well as creativity; whether you ultimately find the "smoking gun" is of lesser concern in this particular case.
- As you research, make a list of all the steps you take, even if they don't yield results. This means, for your assignment, you will turn in a list of sources consulted, along with notes about what each yielded. You must also keep track of strengths and limitations of each source – are there reasons you find it hard to believe? Are there particular reasons why this source may be more trustworthy than others? You will submit a copy of these notes with your assignment.
- Then, you will write an informal essay – two to three pages – in which you will say how sure you are that you know the truth about your "fact" and that you can prove it to be true. What is the relevant evidence? How good is it? Why have you reached your conclusion? Is there any doubt in your mind? What are your criteria for calling a statement a fact – Common consent? Provenance? Internal consistency? External consistency? Plausibility? Coherence? The "ring of truth"?
- ATTACHMENTS (below):
- Then, you will write an informal essay – two to three pages – in which you will say how sure you are that you know the truth about your "fact" and that you can prove it to be true. What is the relevant evidence? How good is it? Why have you reached your conclusion? Is there any doubt in your mind? What are your criteria for calling a statement a fact – Common consent? Provenance? Internal consistency? External consistency? Plausibility? Coherence? The "ring of truth"?
- Historical Truisms
- Historical Facts
- Historical Facts
- HISTORICAL TRUISMS
- 1. Sally Ride was the first woman in space.
- 2. America won World War II.
- 3. President Roosevelt served two terms in office.
- 4. The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery.
- 5. Columbus discovered America.
- 6. Indians lived in tepees.
- 7. The eagle is the symbol of America.
- 8. Jamestown was the first American settlement.
- 9. The Sears Tower is the tallest building.
- 10. Most Americans speak English.
- 11. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
- 12. The Dutch founded New York.
- 13. Bill Clinton never inhaled.
- 14. America is a nation of immigrants.
- 15. Gold was discovered in the state of California in 1848.
- 16. There has never been a nuclear war.
- 17. The Wright Brothers were the first people to fly.
- 18. Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb.
- 19. Apples are good for you.
- 20. A little hard work never hurt anybody.
- 21. Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady in the 1940s.
- 22. The Pilgrims were the first settlers of America.
- 23. Lenin created the Russian Revolution.
- 24. Hitler ruled Germany in the 1940s.
- 25. The Caribbean was created by European colonialism.
- 26. The Civil War was fought over slavery.
- 27. The Civil War was a religious war.
- 28. The French Revolution was successful.
- 29. The Revolutions of 1848 happened in Germany.
- 30. Italy was a rich country in 1700.
- 31. Pirates in the South Pacific were motivated purely by greed.
- 32. Heinz makes ketchup.
- 33. Washington was the first American president.
- 34. Napoleon sold the Louisiana Purchase to America.
- 35. In Spain, the people speak Spanish.
- 36. Canada is an English-speaking country.
- 37. Africa became independent following the First World War.
- 38. Henry VIII had a lot of wives.
- 39. Stalin was a dictator.
- 2. America won World War II.
- HISTORICAL FACTS
- A. George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on February 22, 1732.
- B. The United Nations was created on October 24, 1945, with 51 member countries.
- C. The Armistice ending World War I was signed on November 11, 1918.
- D. The Armistice ending the Korean War was signed on July 27, 1953.
- E. Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
- F. Pol Pot died on April 15, 1998, in Bangkok, Thailand.
- G. Adolf Hitler died on April 31, 1945, in Berlin, Germany.
- H. The Lusitania sank on May 7, 1915, in the Irish Sea.
- I. Galileo was condemned to life imprisonment for heresy in 1633.
- J. Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44 BCE.
- B. The United Nations was created on October 24, 1945, with 51 member countries.
- Assignment Three: Differentiating Interpretation from Evidence (due March 17)
- Reading: Henry Steele Commager, "The Defeat of the Confederacy: An Overview," in Why The North Won The Civil War, edited by David Herbert Donald (1960), in course packet.
- What is interpretation? Interpretation is the perspective brought to the evidence (the problematic "facts" you examined in your last assignment) by the historian. The historian first gathers information (evidence and "facts"), but that act of gathering is only the beginning of the historian's work. Having gathered a body of information, the historian must then interpret what this information means. The process of figuring out the meaning of a body of evidence is called interpretation.
- Each historian will have a distinct interpretation, because interpretation is affected by many factors which differ between historians; these factors include the historian's training, theoretical orientations, knowledge of context and other information, and even prejudices and assumptions. Learning to differentiate between evidence and interpretation is an important skill the historian must develop in order to read other historians' works critically.
- In order to examine the difference between evidence and interpretation, we will read a very brief essay by Henry Steele Commager, "The Defeat of the Confederacy: An Overview," which appeared in the book Why The North Won The Civil War, edited by David Herbert Donald and originally published in 1960. In reading this essay, ask the following questions: What evidence does Commager present for the reasons that the Confederacy lost the U.S. Civil War? What interpretations of that evidence does Commager provide?
- For your written assignment based on this reading, you will make a chart which lists, on one half of the chart, the evidence, and on the other, the interpretation of the meaning of that evidence. Once you have completed this chart, you will examine the various interpretations made by the author and answer two questions in about a paragraph each: 1) What is the overarching interpretation of the evidence (essentially, the thesis) that all of the smaller interpretations add up to? 2) What are the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the author's interpretation?
- Reading: Henry Steele Commager, "The Defeat of the Confederacy: An Overview," in Why The North Won The Civil War, edited by David Herbert Donald (1960), in course packet.
- Assignment Four: Analyzing/Annotating a Historical Document (due March 24)
- Reading: Selections from diaries and other found documents, in course packet.
- Internal Criticism
- Reading: Selections from diaries and other found documents, in course packet.
- Historians read documents of many different kinds. Some are written texts, while others are material culture, films, music, or other kinds of documents. One of the ways that historians learn to analyze documents is to take part in the process of annotation of that document: indicating information that can be gleaned from a document in exhaustive detail.
- For example, a document can yield a great deal of information about the historical moment in which it was produced, and it can also hide embedded information. Both immediately-evident and initially-obscured information can be revealed through the process of close reading of the document.
- In order to analyze a document, the historian must engage in both internal and external criticism. Internal criticism focuses on the content of the document itself, the arguments made in the document, the information provided in it, etc. External criticism focuses on the document's context and information about the document itself which can be gleaned from other sources. In this exercise, we will restrict our examination to internal criticism, only those elements which we can determine using the document itself.
- Your assignment will be to take a historical document and annotate that document. Indicate what the text can tell us about the writer, the audience, and the information included in the document. The document you will annotate is a bankbook from Hagerstown, Maryland, dated 1930. You will circle the information and indicate what you can know from that information.
- For example, a document can yield a great deal of information about the historical moment in which it was produced, and it can also hide embedded information. Both immediately-evident and initially-obscured information can be revealed through the process of close reading of the document.
- External Criticism
- In addition to using close-reading methods to draw as much material as possible from a primary document, the historian must also use context in order to analyze the meanings imbedded in documents. This requires the historian to undertake research beyond the document, using the library, archives, and other documents, to illuminate the significance of the information gleaned using internal analysis.
- When conducting external analysis of a document, you should focus on the questions which have been raised in the process of internal analysis and attempt to clarify them and even to answer them (or to venture an interpretation) based on corroborative sources. In this exercise, we will focus on the process of external criticism, opening up our research to all available resources in order to learn more about the document at hand.
- Your assignment will be to take a historical document and annotate that document, using any resources available to you (but especially the library and its databases and other scholarly resources). Indicate what the text can tell us about the writer, the audience, and the information included in the document. The document you will annotate is the same bankbook from Hagerstown, Maryland, dated 1930, which you analyzed in the previous exercise. You will circle the information and indicate what you can know from that information, while identifying the external corroborating evidence that lets you know that.
- When conducting external analysis of a document, you should focus on the questions which have been raised in the process of internal analysis and attempt to clarify them and even to answer them (or to venture an interpretation) based on corroborative sources. In this exercise, we will focus on the process of external criticism, opening up our research to all available resources in order to learn more about the document at hand.
- Assignment Five: Criticizing a Historical Argument (due March 31)
- Reading: Richard N. Current, "God and The Strongest Battalions," in Why The North Won The Civil War, edited by David Herbert Donald (1960), in course packet.
- Reading: Richard N. Current, "God and The Strongest Battalions," in Why The North Won The Civil War, edited by David Herbert Donald (1960), in course packet.
- The argument is the system of logic employed by the author in order to prove the author's thesis. This is not merely a summary of the story told by the author, but instead recreates the logical structure that the author has put together to prove the monograph's point.
- When reading an historian's argument, you should pay attention to the way he or she makes that argument. Is the argument logical? Does it contain internal contradictions? Does it depend on assumptions which are not supported by evidence? How is evidence used to support the argument, and is it used fairly and without bias?
- In order to examine and critique an historian's argument, we will use the essay which you read for the assignment on evidence: Richard N. Current's "God and The Strongest Battalions," which appeared in the book Why The North Won The Civil War, edited by David Herbert Donald and originally published in 1960.
- Your assignment will be to provide an outline of the argument made by Current in this essay. You will need to identify the main points that Current makes to support his thesis (which you will also need to identify), as well as the kinds of evidence he uses to support his argument. Once you have outlined this argument, you will write a one- to two-page informal essay which answers the following question: What are the inherent weaknesses in Current's essay, and what could be done to counteract these weaknesses?
- When reading an historian's argument, you should pay attention to the way he or she makes that argument. Is the argument logical? Does it contain internal contradictions? Does it depend on assumptions which are not supported by evidence? How is evidence used to support the argument, and is it used fairly and without bias?
- Assignment Six: Visual Analysis (due April 7)
- Reading: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (1777), in course packet.
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (1777)- Many types of historians – and art historians especially – engage in a research practice called visual analysis in order to “read” non-textual historical artifacts for the historical information that they carry. Not all historical data is stored in written or verbal form; instead, many histories are available to us mostly – or indeed, only – through things like material culture or artistic production. Visual analysis focuses on learning the systematic language of images embedded in any visual artifact of human production, from painting to photography, or from monumental building to plowed field.
- Visual analysis focuses on deciphering the origins, reception, social location, and history of material artifacts. To do so, users of visual analysis must employ a variety of specialized historical questions when investigating the artifact. These include:
- Reading: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (1777), in course packet.
- 1. Who produced the artifact, when, where, how, and why?
- 2. For whom (for what audience) was the artifact intended? How did this intended audience shape what is encoded in the artifact?
- 3. How was the artifact received by its intended audience? Did unintentional audiences receive the artifact in differing ways, as meaning different things? How has the way in which the artifact has been received changed over time and why?
- 4. What information is encoded in the artifact? What does the content of this information say about the culture (or the individual author) which produced it?
- 5. How is the information encoded in the artifact? What does the form in which this information is encoded (and then read by its audience) say about the culture (or the individual author) which produced it?
- 2. For whom (for what audience) was the artifact intended? How did this intended audience shape what is encoded in the artifact?
- For your assignment, you will provide a visual analysis of John Singleton Copley's painting, Watson and the Shark (1777). This analysis should address the questions listed above. Ultimately, you will explain what, in your analysis, the painting "means" as a reflection of American society in the period around the American Revolution. In addressing this question, you may find useful a web-feature about the painting prepared by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, which owns it: www.nga.gov/feature/watson/watsonhome.html. The essay should be two to three pages long.
- Assignment Seven: Elements of a Monograph (due April 14)
- Reading: Alan B. Spitzer, "Versions of Truth in the Dreyfus Case," in Historical Truth and Lies about the Past: Reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, and Reagan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996): 35-59, in course packet.
- Three of the most important elements of a monographic study are the thesis, the argument, and the evidence. As historians, we must learn to readily identify each in monographic works, and to differentiate among them. But we are not born knowing what they are or how to identify them.; instead, we must learn how to do so. The purpose of this exercise is to learn to identify thesis, argument, and evidence in one author’s monographic essay.
- First, you must understand what each element is.
- Reading: Alan B. Spitzer, "Versions of Truth in the Dreyfus Case," in Historical Truth and Lies about the Past: Reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, and Reagan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996): 35-59, in course packet.
- Thesis: The thesis is the central "point" of the monograph, the hypothesis the author is attempting to prove. Sometimes the author's thesis is complex, containing several subtopics or related issues. Sometimes the thesis is straightforward and unified. The reader should be able to restate an author's thesis in three or four sentences at most.
- Argument: The argument is the system of logic employed by the author in order to prove the monograph's thesis. This is not merely a summary of the story told by the author, but instead recreates the logical structure that the author has put together to prove the monograph's point.
- Evidence: The evidence is the data that the author uses to document the “trueness” of the argument. This evidence is usually cited in footnotes, and may be drawn from primary or secondary accounts of the events under discussion.
- Argument: The argument is the system of logic employed by the author in order to prove the monograph's thesis. This is not merely a summary of the story told by the author, but instead recreates the logical structure that the author has put together to prove the monograph's point.
- One useful way to think about this is to make an analogy to the five-paragraph essay with which you are already familiar. If you had to write an outline for a five-paragraph essay, it would look something like this:
- I. Introduction (with thesis statement)
- II. Body paragraph one (with topic sentence and supporting evidence)
- III. Body paragraph two (with topic sentence and supporting evidence)
- IV. Body paragraph three (with topic sentence and supporting evidence)
- V. Conclusion (with restatement of thesis)
- II. Body paragraph one (with topic sentence and supporting evidence)
- The thesis statement in this format (as in a monographic study) appears at the head of the essay, and is the point of the entire essay – the point that the author intends to make. The author then will provide three paragraphs, each with a topic sentence, to argue the point home. These topic sentences (and the paragraphs that accompany them) are the argument that the essay makes, in support of the thesis. The paragraphs in which each topic sentence appears will list evidence to support the argument being made.
- Your assignment is to identify and restate (in one or two sentences) the thesis of Alan B. Spitzer's book chapter, "Versions of Truth in the Dreyfus Case." Then you will provide an outline of Spitzer’s argument made to support this. You need not list the evidence he uses to support his argument, but only list the points he makes (his “topic sentences”) in support of his overall thesis.
- Assignment Eight: Historiography,or "No Historian is an Island" (due April 28)
- Reading: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Knopf, 1990).
- Historians do not write in isolation from other historians' work; when they set out to write about a topic, they review what has been written by other historians and enter into a dialogue with these previous works. In their arguments, they engage the body of historical literature, sometimes referred to as “the historiography,” that has come before them.
- Historiography indicates the tradition in which the author writes about the past. It has to do with the intellectual approach taken to the subject, the school of historical thought from which the author writes, and the assumptions, values, or analytical framework employed. For the purposes of history today, historiography should be defined broadly to include any discipline's literature which addresses a historical topic in its historical context, whether the author is trained as an historian or as a literary critic or social scientist. To identify the historiographical context in which an historian writes, the reader should look for differences between the monograph and studies which have come before; usually, these historiographical debates with the previous literature appear in footnotes, but sometimes they also appear within the text itself. Often, introductory chapters or the introductory materials in specific chapters will provide an overview of the ways in which the monograph draws upon and deviates from previous literature.
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s book, A Midwife’s Tale, is situated within several historiographical traditions: colonial history, the history of Maine, the history of women, and the history of medicine, to name only a few. Your assignment is to look at Ulrich’s footnotes and identify three other historians with whom she engages in an historiographical dialogue. These would be places at which she differs from previous historians, or places at which she states her agreement with (or refinement of) the work of an historian who came before her.
- You will list these three examples (with page and note numbers), and explain the form that the historiographical engagement takes in two or three sentences. Finally, you will write a paragraph about the usefulness of Ulrich engaging in this dialogue with other historians – what does it do for her analysis? Why is it important for her to do so?
- Reading: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Knopf, 1990).
- Final Paper (due May 19)
- Using primary and secondary material available via the DoHistory Site (www.dohistory.com) and in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale, argue whether Judge North was guilty or innocent of raping Rebecca Foster. Why do you believe this? Support your argument with quotes from the documents.
- Your final essay should be five to seven pages long, using the Chicago Manual of Style.
- Using primary and secondary material available via the DoHistory Site (www.dohistory.com) and in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale, argue whether Judge North was guilty or innocent of raping Rebecca Foster. Why do you believe this? Support your argument with quotes from the documents.
- Some Useful Tools:
Tips for Library-Based Research
Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for History 200 (Historical Methods), The Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York. Send email to lavender@mail.csi.cuny.edu
Fall Semester 1999. Last modified: Tuesday 29 May 2006.
| Evidence | Interpretation |
| 1) List examples of evidence here 2) List additional examples of evidence here |
1) List the interpretation that the historian makes of that evidence 2) List additional interpretations here |