HIS 500SEM - Doing History

This course is intended to introduce incoming MA students to the study and practice of history. Some of the questions we examine will be theoretical: the nature of historical knowledge, the kinds of topics that historians address, the meaning of truth itself. Others, such as the way in which the assumptions and approaches of professional historians have changed over time, will be more historiographical. And still other questions will be methodological. We¿ll engage the ways historians read for argument; we will consider how to find historical sources, as well as the kinds of inference different sources permit; and we will analyze the ways historians balance a desire to write for narrative with a need to write for argument. We will consider the ways in which historical arguments are shared beyond the academic by examining the state of ¿public history.¿ This course¿s fundamental goal is to introduce MA students to the skills they will need in both their research and course work and to encourage students to think about how they might use those skills in history-related careers.

Credits: 3