The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide

A university professor once berated a young graduate student for what he termed "stale historiography." A fellow student later said this sounded something akin to bad breath. What the professor meant, of course, was that the student was not familiar with the most recent scholarly interpretations in a particular subfield of history. "Historiography" is not a word one normally finds in casual reading; nevertheless, the concept behind the word should be familiar to every student of history. In fact, you probably already know the concept even if the word itself is unfamiliar. Literally, the word means "the writing of history." In modern usage, however, the word refers to the study of the way history has been and is written--the history of historical writing, if you will. When you study "historiography" you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians. To acquaint yourself, for example, with the variety of ways historians have tried to explain the coming of the American Civil War is to become familiar with the historiography of that subject. Graduate students in history spend years mastering the major interpretations in their particular specialties, including the most recent scholarship. ...Examining a few important interpretive "schools" and trends [will] help you read history more critically. (...) Trying to summarize even a few historiographical trends in capsule form is a sin only slightly less serious than omitting the subject altogether. Not only is the topic immense, but any secondhand account of another historian's work should be viewed with suspicion. If you want to know what a historian says about a subject, you should read that historian's work. Furthermore, every historian's work is to some extent unique, reflecting individual values, assumptions, interests, and abilities. (...) If one can perceive a trend over time, it is this: historical writing has become more eclectic, more rigorous and imaginative in its use of evidence . . . History as a discipline is alive and growing, telling its story of change but telling also how tenaciously the past survives in the present.