Home > People > Kille > Advice for Historical Reading

Advice for Historical Reading

History 101.002 - Kille

I. Reading Primary Sources for Content and Context

Many of the readings in this class are primary sources: works written or otherwise created during the period we are studying. They represent a variety of genres: novels, diaries, legal statements, speeches, political treatises, etc. Many of these source can be difficult reading, because they use language and images that are unfamiliar to us in 1990s America--language and images that might have been perfectly familiar to 17th, 18th, or 19th-century audiences. In any case, it is crucial to read these documents carefully, trying to answer questions about their

CONTENT and their CONTEXT. If you follow these questions with documents, you will gain insight into the cultural situations in which they were written.

CONTENT: Pay close attention to the text itself: words, phrases, key transitions or shifts in content or tone. Identify the central themes or arguments, and look for metaphors, symbols, comparisons and contrasts that the author uses to illustrate his or her themes. Be especially alert for repeated images. In other works, think about how the author's language works to make his or her argument work. If words or phrases are unfamiliar, or if familiar words are used in unfamiliar ways, look them up. The relationship between form (how someone says something) and content (what he/she says) is crucial. And, often, the form itself is part of the content: the author or artist creates or uses forms in order to convey a particular message or idea or feeling.

CONTEXT: The context of a work includes everything about the document outside the document itself (who wrote it, when, for what audience or reason, etc.). Once you have thought about the language and themes (content), ask yourself several questions--all of them designed to get from thinking about what is in the work to considering why the creator did it the way he or she did.

1. AUTHOR: Who wrote this work? Did others besides the "author" have a hand in it (speechwriter, publisher, editor, etc.)? Do you know anything about the author that would help you make sense of the work?

2. AUDIENCE: For what audience was the work intended? Does the language or tone give any clues? If not, speculate: whom is the author trying to address, persuade, or whatever.

3. SITUATION: What was the situation in which the work was written? Was it a speech, a painting, a pamphlet, an autobiography, or what? Was it, in some way, responding to or building upon other works?

4. LINKAGES: Can you identify the sources on which the author was drawing--where her or she got the metaphors from? Is the author's point of view or message consistent with or different from other authors' works we have studied in this course? Do the secondary sources we are reading (works by modern historians) help you make sense of the primary source--or does the primary source perhaps modify or contradict what the modern historian is arguing?

This process takes you from studying the document itself to thinking about its place in a larger culture, and ultimately to putting readings together.

II. Reading Historians' Work (Secondary Sources)

Many of the readings in this course are secondary sources: that is, works written by historians about the period we are studying.

These works are not difficult in the way primary sources can be--they are written in twentieth- century English. But they also require you to think about several key issues.

1. Topic, narrative, and scope: what is the historian's subject? Be as specific as possible.

What is the big story the historian tells: what changes over time (or does not change over time)?

Who are the major players, or groups of players? Is the historian writing about people or groups of people in a specific place and/or at a specific time in history? Which people or groups is he or she writing about? (And are there people or groups in that place and/or time that he or she is not writing about?)

Is the historian writing about political issues? About social relations and structures among people? About aspects of culture: religion, literature, etc.?

2. Evidence what sorts of sources has the historian used? Be as specific as possible.

In the source you use to support your primary reading and the book you choose for your book review, you can examine the footnotes or endnotes to see what kinds of sources are used.

3. Argument/interpretation: most historians are not simply telling a story. They are offering some explanation of why things happened the way they did. And they are answering a "so what" question: what is significant about this story and my explanation?

What is the historian's argument: how does he/she explain what happened, what changed over time, etc.?

Is the historian suggesting that this story/explanation has larger regional or national implications? Which aspect of his/her story seem to be connected to larger "national" issues, and which aspects are basically "local"?

4. Extrapolation: this is where you, as a reader of history, raise questions about the book or article.

What would you want to know about your place, people, or events that is not available in this book? If you were writing "the" history of this place, what is missing from this historian's story? (And how would you go about finding it?)

What light do your other readings--whether the writings of other historians of the primary sources--shed on this historian's argument? Do they support it, raise questions about it, etc.?

What light does this historian's work shed on you other readings? Does it help you understand some of the other readings better (and if so, how)? Does it seem to conflict with other readings?