On June 29, 2023, Professor Anne Foster of Indiana State University posted a query on Twitter: “For all the #twitterstorians , what’s your favorite methodology article? Particularly interested in ones that helped you “get it” in grad school. Looking for inspiration/readings for my “intro to grad study of history” class.”
Having received dozens of helpful suggestions, she compiled them in a bibliography, which she has graciously permitted me to reproduce here:
Continue readingEvery few months history Twitter runs a thread about what software to use for note-taking. (See, e.g., threads recently started by Austin McCoy and J.Meléndez-Badillo.)
I wrote a whole chapter of The Princeton Guide to Historical Research on this topic, the gist of which is that historians have mostly abandoned our simple, easy-to-teach system based on 5 x 8 inch notecards, but we have yet to settle collectively on a computerized system to replace it.
Here are some more thoughts along those lines, and an explanation of the centrality of FileMaker Pro to my workflow for major projects.
In April 2021, I recorded a six-part series, “Scrivener for Historians,” which I then forgot to make fully public on YouTube. I’ve now set it to public, and here’s the link.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOQOKzw5SEQCKly7YYF4Km_D1sRSz8Ktc
Inside Higher Ed has published my essay, “5 Paragraphs in Defense of 5 Paragraphs.” Among the other claims, I write that “five-paragraph essays also serve as building blocks for longer works. Three body paragraphs are enough to get students thinking about how one idea relates to the next, as well as to signal those relationships with appropriate transition words and phrases. Once students have mastered that skill, they are ready to assemble those blocks into larger structures.”
Readers may note that The Princeton Guide to Historical Research has five parts.
The Princeton Guide to Historical Research is now on sale! It is priced at only $24.95 in paperback, and through August 31, 2021, use the code ZS30 to get a 30 percent discount. Ebook and audiobook versions are also available.
Watch this site for additional thoughts on the craft of researching and writing history.
Even street signs can have meanings distinct from their explicit message.
Dan Malouff, “Here Are Five Street Signs That Really Mean the Street Design Is Wrong,” Greater Greater Washington (blog), November 1, 2017, https://ggwash.org/view/65399/five-street-signs-that-really-mean-the-street-design-is-wrong.
This sign really means we’re happy to throw a guilt trip at outsiders, but not happy to give our children a sidewalk.
Image by Magnolia677 on Wikipedia licensed under Creative Commons.
Twitter directs me to Historians Being Mean: A Glossary, by Margo Shea. It’s a couple of years old, but quite helpful.
“Words to avoid include alterity, hybridity, semiotics, subaltern, parrhesia, affect, discursive, among others. If your mom wouldn’t use it in a sentence (and your mom’s not a feminist scholar) avoid it.”
“How would they know that?” Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. “Were they there?”
Nicholas Fandos, “In Renovation of Golf Club, Donald Trump Also Dressed Up History,” New York Times, November 24, 2015.
Historian Kevin Kruse explains how his sources surprised him and forced him to set his story earlier than he had planned:
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The Scholarly Kitchen links to a video of the great Kurt Vonnegut diagraming the shapes of three common plots.
Unfortunately, the YouTube clip ends before Vonnegut diagrams Kafka and Shakespeare. For the full text, see “Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard,” Lapham’s Quarterly.
Good advice here for historians: scholars unstuck in time.
