| Historian’s Craft

Are all narratives of the past History? Is doing history a different mode of thinking about the past? What is the place of ‘traces’ or ‘sources’ in history writing? Are ‘traces’ and ‘sources’ found only in archives, or do they reside in everyday objects, songs, and memories? Are these ‘traces’ the neutral spokesperson of the time in which they are found? In this course, we examine how historians construct accounts of the past by working with time, space, and sources in distinct ways. The course invites students to critically study the imaginative and interpretive aspects of historical writing, understanding how narratives are constructed and how historical reasoning influences our understanding of the present.

This course will introduce students to the world of historical thinking by inviting them to understand the nature of and craft in the act of doing history. It begins by asking, are all stories of the past histories? Is history a science? Is there a singular historical method or multiple methods of historical research? What is the place of objectivity and the role of subjectivity in history? Do all pasts find representation in historical inquiry? Who is a historian? Whose accounts or narratives can we call history? As we find answers to these questions, we will learn how history has developed as a mode of thinking about the past in order to make sense of the present. We will learn to observe the nature of contexts that have (typically) drawn the historians’ attention, and the stylistic conventions that orchestrate the work of historical documentation. We also aim to familiarise students with different ways in which histories have been written.