What is History?!

History is…

is NOT THE PAST, but the evidence-based study and interpretation of changes oover time in human societies

3 Different History Meanings

• events that occured in the past (ex history of the company)

• account of passt events (ex book)

• academic discipline that investigates and interprets past human life

  • history asks questions!! (who, what, when, where, how, why)

Historical Evidence

Surviving traces that may provide info about the past (ex letters, buildings, tax records, photos)

Historiography

Study of how historians have interpreted a topic (ex analysis of changing explanations)

When researching, historians must…

• select a topic

• identify relevant evidence

• evaluate it

• explain its significance

History focuses on change over time by…

asking how institutions, beliefs, tech, envitonments, identities and relationships developed

Historical arguments MUST…

be connected to evidence (identifiable sources)

Evidence doesn’t always provide a direct answer so…

historians often infer conclusions by combining incomplete sources and explaining why those sources support one interpretation more strongly than another

Context

• Actions and statements must be understood within the conditions they occurred in

History requires context to…

• prevent researchers from projecting present day assumptions onto historical actors

History is revisable…

history can change when researchers discover new sources, compare evidence, etc.

History is uncertain, so…

responsible historians identify the limits of their claims

Written Sources (examples, what it reveals, what’s important)

• letters, diaries, laws, reports, etc

• language, decisions, beliefs, institutions

• literacy, survival and record keeping may favor powerful demographic

Oral Sources (examples, what it reveals, what’s important)

• interviews, testimony, songs

• memory, experience, identity, community knowledge

• memory changes

Visual Sources (examples, what it reveals, what’s important)

• photos, paintings, posters, films

• representation, appearance, symbolism

• images can be staged, edited, or detached

Material Sources (examples, what it reveals, what’s important)

• buildings, clothing, tools, archaeological remains

• tech, trade consumption, everyday practices

• function and meaning may be uncertain

Quantitative Sources (examples, what it reveals, what’s important)

• censuses, prices, tax lists, election results, etc

• patterns, scale, distribution, long term change

• categories may reflect administrative bias

Spatial and environmental

• landscapes, pollen, climate records, geographic data

• land use, mobility, and environmental conditions

• interpretation may require scientific collaboration

Digital-born

• Emails, websites, databases, social media records, digital photos

• recent communication, networks, public culture

Primary Sources

• provides evidence directly relevant to the period, person, institution or process being studied

• court judgement, census return, political poster, payroll, archived website

• “Primary” describes source’s relationship to the research question

Secondary Sources

• analyzes or interprets primary evidence and earlier scholarship

• biographies, historical docs with research, literature reviews

Tertiary Sources

• Summarizes established info from primary and secondary sources

• encyclopedias, textbooks, timelines

• not typically used for advanced research, but good for orientation

Stages of Historical Research

1. Formulate a research question

• focused, researchable, historically significant

2. Review the historiography

• study what other historians have argued about the subject

3. Define the scope

• limited by time period, geographical area, population, source base, analytical theme, feasibility, and access

4. Locate relevant sources

5. Evaluate provenance and authenticity

• Who, what, when, where

• is it complete?

• is it an original, copy, or translation

6. Analyze purpose, audience, and context

• source created to accomplish something

7. Corroborate the evidence

• historian compares the source with independent evidence

8. Identify patterns and explanations

• change & continuity, intention & outcome, etc

9. Construct an argument

• more than a narrative sequence; states what the evidence shows and explains why that interpretation is persuasive

10. Cite sources and revise

• transparent citations allow readers to inspect the evidence

Questions to ask to decide whether to accept a source

1. authorship: who wrote it?

2. purpose: what was it written for?

3. audience: what did intended readers expect?

4. timing: when was it produced? (what came before or after?)

5. language: does it use vague or defensive wording?

6. silences: which voices are absent?

7. corroboration: do sources support it?

8. representatives: what type of conditions does it decribe?

Archaeology

• study of past life through material remains and their contexts

Memory

• how individuals/groups remember and represent the past

• an important source and research subject, but not same as verified

Chronology

• arrangement of events in temporal order

• sequence, not causation

Genealogy

• study of ancestry and family relationships

• can contribute to social, demographic and family history

Public history

• presentation and application of history outside conventional academic publishing

Microhistory

• studies a tightly defined person, event, object, or community to illuminate larger historical questions

Periodization

• Division of the past into analytically meaningful periods

  • divisions are created by historians and vary across regions

• Prehistory refers to periods before the use or survival of written records

Social science or humanities?

Both!

• uses stats and data like social sciences

• uses textual interpretation like humanities

History is not entirely objective, but…

can be strongly corroborated by evidence.

History is important because…

• explains how present developed

• develops evidence-evaluation skills

• improves causal reasoning

• reveals change and continuity

• broadens human understanding

• supports informed citizenship

• preserves experiences that might otherwise be lost

Digitization

• increases access, but not all material available due to cost, fragility, etc

• digital tech, digital archives, etc

Optical Character Recognition

• OCR

• Converts images of printed text into searchable text

• Related systems attempt to recognize handwriting

Historical databases

• Databases help organize people, places, events, relationships, sources, etc

• Categories are interpretations

GIS

• Geographic Info Systems

• allow to map spatial history

Text mining and network analysis

• computational methods can identify patterns and relationships across large collections

AI in history

• AI can assist with discovery, transcription, translation, etc

• AI should NOT be used as an independent authority or a sub for source verification

  • it is NOT reliable

• Cite AI if used

Limitations of historical research

• incomplete evidence

• archival inequality

• survival bias

• retrospective knowledge

• problems of memory

• translation and terminology

• limited generalization

• ethical restrictions

Common Mistakes when studying history

• treating history as a list of dates

• assuming primary sources are unbiased

• using one source as definitive proof

• confusing sequence with causation

• applying present day values without context

• assuming outcomes were inevitable

• reducing an event to one cause

• quoting without reading the surrounding source

• treating absence of evidence as evidence of absence

• relying on ai-generated citations