Matthew Zang
Preconceptions about History as a Field
As I have stated in previous articles, many people look upon the field of History with confusion as to how it is actually useful. I created a list of what I thought Academic Historians do which is listed below:
- Historians mostly work in archives and libraries
Photo Courtesy of www.paperrecycles.org - Writing a paper takes careful planning and an outline
- Historians will nitpick others' arguments
- Research is a long and arduous process
- A thesis is just a historical question that is answered in a paper
To test these preconceptions about the field, I looked into Mary Rampolla's "A Pocket Guide to Writing in History". I found that quite a bit of work is done in archives but that is mostly the initial phase of the research. First you have to find the source but the larger question of analysis is done wherever one feels most comfortable! Most historians do in fact write an outline before the start a paper or book but not all do. Some just go through numerous drafts to refine what they would like they say. Historians do nitpick each other's arguments but this is done to get at the core of the issue at hand. Depending on how obscure the research is, it can be a difficult task. However, with the advent of digital archives, one doesn't have to search all over the world if they need a certain document. Again, the analysis is what takes up most of the historian's time. The most interesting thing I found though was that a thesis is not just a question. It must be argumentative so that other people reading the thesis can disagree and possibly disprove it.
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