Approaching History and Historiography Lecture Notes

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key historiographical terms, methodologies, and major academic debates discussed in the lecture transcript, spanning microhistory, gender, politics, culture, digital history, and more.

Historiography

The study of the writing of history, which evolves as historians introduce new concepts and employ different methods.

Microhistory

A historical approach that focuses on small-scale events or individual lives to reveal broader social, cultural, and political dynamics.

Menocchio

A 16th-century Italian miller whose trial by the Roman Inquisition for heretical beliefs was used by Carlo Ginzburg to illuminate rural worldviews in 'The Cheese and the Worms' (1976).

Serial History

An approach associated with the Annales model where historians study the past by collecting huge quantities of repeating quantitative data, such as tax records and census figures.

Pickett’s Charge

A 20-minute military event from 1859 analyzed by George Stewart to demonstrate how a tiny moment can have massive historical significance.

Cliometrics

The application of economic theory and quantitative methods to the study of history, often contrasted with the qualitative focus of microhistory.

Gender History

The study of how societies and cultures organized differences between men, women, and other identities, emphasizing that categories like masculinity and femininity are historically constructed.

Hegemonic Masculinity

As defined by R. W. Connell, the form of masculinity that is culturally dominant and legitimates men’s power over women and other masculinities.

Pariah Femininities

Forms of femininity that are socially punished because they refuse male control or violate modest norms, such as lesbianism or sexual independence.

Political History

The study of political events, institutions, ideas, and leaders, focusing on how power is organized, used, resisted, and justified in society.

Emic Perspective

An insider’s perspective that seeks to understand a past world through the terms and logic used by the people living in it at the time.

Etic Perspective

An outsider’s perspective where a historian applies modern analytical frameworks and patterns to explain historical societies.

Lordship

An alternative concept to the 'state' for medieval history, focusing on layered, fragmented power based on personal dependency and landholding.

Ordinary Politics

A concept by Tom Johnson referring to the everyday work ordinary people did to govern their own communities, such as managing common land or organizing resources.

Thick Description

An anthropological method introduced by Clifford Geertz involving the interpretation of the deep symbolic meanings behind cultural rituals and actions.

Moral Economy

A concept from E. P. Thompson used in cultural history to explain how popular protests are often driven by a sense that traditional customs or justice have been violated.

Digital History

The use of digital tools, digitized archives, and computational methods like text mining and network analysis to study and interpret the past.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

A technology used in digital history to convert images of printed text into machine-readable data, though often prone to errors in older documents.

Distant Reading

A digital methodology that involves analyzing large volumes of text at scale to find patterns and trends rather than reading individual texts closely.

International Society

A subject of study proposed by Erez Manela that expands international history beyond state diplomacy to include NGOs, scientists, and the global circulation of ideas.

The Paradox of Violence

Ian Morris’s theory that while war increases violence in the short term, it historically leads to strong states that reduce the overall proportion of violent deaths.

Comparative History

A historical method of analyzing two or more societies, regions, or time periods alongside each other to identify unique traits or general causal patterns.

Individualizing Comparison

A type of comparative history used to highlight and explain what is unique about one specific case, such as the 'Sonderweg' (special path) of Germany.

Entangled Histories

Approaches like 'histoire croisée' that focus on interconnections, mutual influence, and the flow of people and ideas between societies rather than treating them as separate units.

Nativism

An approach to African history criticized by Achille Mbembe for overemphasizing 'authenticity' and using rigid binaries like native versus settler.

Genetic Diaspora

A concept by Noah Tamarkin describing how people like the Lemba in South Africa use DNA and genetic data to imagine and negotiate shared identity and belonging.