Historiography, or the history of historical thought, is a central part of the historical enterprise. On the one hand, the sustained effort to trace and explain the evolution of historical researchCits objectives, methods, and outcomesChas developed into a thriving discipline (or subdiscipline within intellectual or cultural history). On the other hand, historiography has become an essential component of all professional research in history. This course is meant to introduce graduate students to both elementsCthe general development of historical scholarship and the uses of historiographical reflection in practical research.

At the level of theoretical reflection, we will survey a wide array of approaches and methods, including the most recent ones, which historians have used in their inquiries into the past. We will ask questions such as the following: What are the uses of historiography in any given society or period, and how are they related to the broader culture? What are the objectives and methods with which scholars of history have pursued their endeavors? How have these evolved over time? How have historians perceived and presented the results of their work? What lessons have they drawn, what truth claims have they made? With these questions in mind we will read some general works and critical essays on historiography. At a more practical level, we will study a series of significant, if not classic, monographs, to see how historians have practiced what they preached. How have scholars of history framed their subject? How have they placed their work within a tradition of scholarship? How have they selected and treated primary source materials? How have they presented their findings? Studying these relations between theory and practice is vital not only for enhancing one=s insight in these works (and in the historical enterprise generally) but for pursuing one=s own historical studies more critically and productively.

3. Students are expected to write two review essays on any of the monographs assigned in this course (4-5 pages). Due dates: 10/17 and 11/14. Feel free to take (one of) your in-class presentations as the basis for one (or both) of your reviews. The goal of each essay is to introduce the work and its author in the historiographical context in which it belongs. At the least, the essay should contain (in whatever order you deem appropriate): an introduction of the author, his/her intellectual/cultural milieu, and his/her other work; an introduction of the book (including a full bibliographic citation, the book=s argument and background, and a short summary); and in particular a critical discussion of how the work fits in a certain historiographical tradition (or traditions), and where its originality may be found. You may (and in many cases will have to) use secondary works to deepen your research; keep in mind, however, that those sources will all have to be fully acknowledged (on plagiarism, see AFormat of Assignments,@ below). In any case, the bulk of your observations should be grounded in your own reading of the book you are reviewing.

• Joyce Appleby et al., Telling the Truth About History, Norton 1994

• Michael Bentley, Modern Historiography, Routledge 1999

• Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives On Historical Writing, Pennsylvania State Univ Press 1992

• Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, Univ of California Press 1992

• Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The AObjectivity Question@ and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge Univ Press, 1988

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