indexT510

T500 Historical Methodology (IU Online MA/MAT)

Diana Lin
Fall 2022

Office: Arts & HUmanities #2051
(O)219 980 6981
Web page: https://dchenlin.pages.iu.edu
Email: dchenlin@iun.edu
Office hours: by appointment

Purpose of Course

The course consists of two parts: historical methods and historiography. We cover historical methods in the first eight weeks, including how to process facts and arguments, using primary and secondary sources, historical research versus empirical studies in social sciences, how to understand historical events through their contexts and inferences, limits of historical narratives, building frameworks for history writing, digital history, history through art, history through object analysis, and intercultural history. We study historiography in the second half of the semester, tracing the evolution of historical approaches in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Course Outcome

Build Familiarity with historical methodologies, including but not limited to distinguishing between facts and arguments, primary and secondary sources, history and empirical sciences, deciphering and constructing historical contextualization, digital history, and analyzing the history of material culture.
Evaluate changes and evolution in historical methodology over time through historiography.
Achieve a critical understanding of and assess the different and sometimes contradictory approaches to historical studies through a synthetic and interpretive study of historiography.
Understanding how historical methodologies are employed by historians through historiography.

Course requirements

Weekly assignments

We have a weekly discussion assignment and most weeks also have VoiceThread assignments.

VoiceThread assignments are due by Thursday night at 10:59 pm;
the weekly discussion essay is due by Friday night at 10: 59 pm; and two comments on others' weekly essays are due by Sunday night.

Two take-home papers

The first take-home paper, a discussion of historical methods through cases you collect, is 7-8 pages and due by the end of week 9; the second take-home paper, on how the historical approaches studied during the first half of the semester are reflected in historiography, is due 6-7 pages and due by the end of week 16.

All readings are available in Canvas modules by the week.

Grade distribution:

Weekly discussion: 45%
Two take-home papers: 40%
Weekly VoiceThread assignments: 15%
Extra credit for the course evaluation: 1%

Class Schedule

Week 1 (Aug.22-28): Thinking historically and thinking like a historian

Readings: Mandel & Malone, "Thinking like a historian," "What is actually being taught in a history class."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 1: After finishing the two readings, how do you understand thinking like a historian and how to think historically?

Week 2 (Aug.29-Sept.4): Facts and arguments, and primary and secondary sources

Readings: "The wikipedia war that shows how ugly this election will be." "Primary sources in history: breaking through the myths."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 2: How do we develop criteria to distinguish facts and arguments? Give some examples and include how you distinguish facts from arguments in group 1 readings above. Also, discuss a few examples of primary and secondary sources. You can focus on different aspects, e.g. limitations of both, when primary and secondary sources change places, how to verify sources, etc.

Week 3 (Sept. 5-11): History versus empirical studies in social sciences, and historical contextualization

Readings: "Reading methods often used in empirical studies." "Teaching the skills in contextualizing history." "Philosophically curious George and the limits of empiricism."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 3: Find examples in online readings either from this class or from outside the class (newspaper articles, other online history narratives) to discuss how historical methods resemble or differ from Research methods often used in empirical studies (Links to an external site.) (include the links to the online readings you cite). Also, Name some key elements in historical contextualization and why they are important. Find an example from online to illustrate good (or bad) contextualization.

Week 4 (Sept.12-18): Reading history through art

Watch a video narrative of the American artist George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)'s The County Election of 1851-52 by Professor Keith Robbins of IUPUI.
Assignments:
Discussion question 4:What possible interpretations can you make about the way George Caleb Bingham presents the dog in the central foreground of the painting? What's the dog up to? Why is he there?? What's a common cur doing in a picture showing American popular democracy in action??? Why must historians of all cultures be interested in material objects from the past?

Week 5 (Sept.19-25): Historical narratives and their limits

Watch this discussion of historical narratives on CSPAN.
Assignments:
Discussion question 5: write an essay commenting on the discussion in the video, focusing on the limitations of a historical narrative, and what are some ways to overcome these limitations?

Week 6 (Sept.26-Oct.2): History through object analysis

Readings: "Mississippi birdman copper plate."
Assignments:
Discussion question 6: Address some of the following questions:

1. What are the chief characteristics of the indigenous Native American Mississippian culture that we now know produced this artifact?
2. Why, for years, did the first finder of this object and subsequent analysts refuse to attribute its creation to Native Americans? What does this refusal teach you about the early history of archaeology and anthropology in the United States?
3. In your opinion, what are the most important aspects of the Mississippian culture’s religious beliefs manifest in this object?
4. What three additional research questions would you pose inspired by and focused on this object? How can you justify the need to pose these new research questions?
5. Justify here why you believe that your three additional research questions merit address to this artifact.

Week 7 (Oct.3-9): Digital history

Readings: "When you find out what digital humanities is, will you tell me?"
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Highlighting and commenting on "Digitization and its discontents" with Hypothesis.is.
Discussion question 7: Discuss digital history, its characteristics, how it differs from regular history, and what you like (or dislike) about it.

Week 8 (Oct.10-16): Intercultural history

Readings: Yan Yunxiang, "Doing personhood in Chinese culture."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 8: Discuss the arguments in "Doing personhood in Chinese culture," and provide your critique of the subject.

Week 9 (Oct.17-23): First take-home paper

Use several outside sources to illustrate and discuss at least five of the historical approaches from the above. 7-8 pages. Please attach your paper as a WORD document.

The paper is due by Friday, Oct. 21. You need to make two comments on two other people's papers by Sunday, Oct. 23.

Week 10 (Oct.24-30): Historiography: Classical historicism and its crisis

Readings for the second half of the semester are from Georg Iggers, Historiography in the 20th Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). The book is available for download from IUCAT.
Readings for week 10: "classical historicism as model for historical scholarship," "The crisis of classical historicism." Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 9: What is classical historicism? What factors made historians decide on such an approach? What caused classical historicism to recede? What do you think of the professionalization of history and connecting history with science? Did it make history writing more scientific?

Week 11 (Oct.31-Nov.6): Social history, critical theory, and "historical social science"

Readings: "American traditions of social history," "Critical theory and social history: "historical social science."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 10: How did quantitative analysis impact American historiography and the types of histories written? How did theory and social history combine toward the goal of social science? What are the contexts of this historical approach?

Week 12 (Nov.7-13): The revival of historical narratives and the history of everyday life

Readings: "The revival of historical narratives," "From macro to micro histories: the history of everyday life."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 11: What led to a less enthusiastic embrace of theory in history? How would the focus on everyday life differ from the social history of an earlier era?

Week 13 (Nov.14-20): The linguistic turn

Readings: "The end of history as a scholarly discipline?"
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 12: Discuss the impact of post-modern theories on history writing.

Week 14 (Nov.21-27)Thanksgiving break.

Week 15 (Nov.28-Dec.4): The 1990s and beyond

Readings: "From the perspective of the 1990s," "Conclusion," "A retrospect at the beginning of the 21st century."
Assignments:
VoiceThread
Discussion question 13: Discuss the general approaches to history in the 1990s and beyond. Why do you think history continues to thrive despite the attacks on it from post-modernism and other sources?

Week 16 (Dec.5-11) : Second take-home paper due.

Paper topic: How do the turns in history that we have studied in weeks 10 to 15 impact your understanding of the historical methods we covered in the first eight weeks? Give at least four examples to illustrate how you understand the historical methods (e.g. primary and secondary sources, facts versus arguments, context, history as a science or not science, etc.) through the turns in historiography here. 6-7 pages.

Please attach your paper as a WORD document.

The paper is due by Friday, Dec. 9. You need to make two comments on two other people's papers by Sunday, Dec. 11.