HIS 501SEM - Historical Inquiry

What is historical knowledge? How is it put together, and what is it good for? Those are the questions on which this seminar focuses. We’ll address them partly by looking at recent work by practicing historians, asking how they define the problems they study, construct their arguments, and discover and use evidence. From these examples, we’ll try to deepen our understanding of the topics and interpretive strategies that engage the historical profession today. But those questions specific to the contemporary discipline of history can’t be separated from broader problems that surround all study of the past, and we’ll consider some of those as well. By definition the past is over and done, and we never have direct access to it; even our memories of our own experiences are incomplete, unstable, and often false, so how much can we really know about other peoples’ long-gone experiences and thoughts? At the same time, we historians aren’t the only ones thinking about the past. It also interests novelists, movie makers, social scientists, psychotherapists, and many others. Do historians have specific approaches to the past, and how widely do our approaches differ from those of the others who study it? What strengths and weaknesses characterize our specific methods, and what can we learn from other disciplines?

Credits: 3