History SurveyHistory SurveyThis blog contains information and advice about studying history and writing well. It is aimed at students in my survey courses on European history and Western civilization. 
Articles
Wikipedia in the History Survey
2007-08-27 14:13:00 Wikipedia offers one-stop shopping for information of all kinds. Need to know when the first man landed on the moon? Type moon landing into Wikipedia and you have your answer. Or maybe you hear about the women's suffrage movement, but have no idea what that means. Here again, Wikipedia can be useful. But you probably know this already. As far as as most students today are concerned, Wikipedia has always been around. Founded in 2001, it has been a constant companion through high school and into college. You have probably also had teachers tell you not to use it for research, which is good advice. After all, anybody can write in Wikipedia, and they do not have to know anything about the subject. They just have to be interested and motivated enough to write. Nonetheless, I too use Wikipedia to look up quick dates, names, and events. Sometimes I even read the articles. There is nothing wrong with this practice. Indeed, I hope that you use Wikipedia often when you run across people a... More About: History , Survey , Wikipedia , Tory
Movie Recommendations: The Interwar Era
2007-08-24 23:25:00 Here are some good movies that came out between the twentieth century's two World Wars. Most of them are fictional. Nonetheless, they have primary-source value, insofar as they reflect attitudes, concerns, dreams, and fears from the period. What do the films suggest to you about the times? What questions do they raise in your mind? Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov [The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks], directed by Lev Kuleshov, U.S.S.R. 1924 — Silent slapstick comedy about an American businessman's prejudices towards Communist Russia. Note the Soviet stereotypes of who was productive and who was parasitic. Die freudelose Gasse [The Joyless Street; also: Street of Sorrows], directed by G. W. Pabst, Germany 1925 — Silent melodrama that contrasts the lives of rich and poor in a destitute street in postwar Vienna. Inflation and hunger make prostitution the only option for some, while the local butcher l... More About: Movie , Recommendation , Dati
Movie Recommendations: Early Modern Europe
2007-08-18 01:46:00 Here are some films that highlight different aspects of early modern Europe . I have linked them to the Internet Movie Database so that you can find out who plays in them, what they are about, and so on. Wikipedia can also be a useful first stop for this kind of information.Keep in mind that such films are interpretations of the past, not a record of what actually happened. They can help us to visualize the past, but they are just as likely to reveal something about the assumptions and concerns of the people who made them.To learn more about the historical value of these and other films set in early modern Europe, see Sharon Howard's excellent Earl y Modern ity on Film, which has helped me many times over the years.Le Retour de Martin Guerre [The Return of Martin Guerre], directed by Daniel Vigne, 1982.Winstanley, directed by Kevin Brownlow, 1975.Vredens Dag [Day of Wrath], directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943.Barry Lyndon, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1975.Ridicule, directed by Patr...
Hist 100 Reading List (Fall 2007)
2007-08-11 06:42:00 I will post syllabi no later than August 20th. Meanwhile, here is the book list for Hist 100-011, Hist 100-021, and Hist 100-29.Required TextsShaw, Brent D., ed. Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A BriefDocumentary History. Boston and New York: Beford/St.Martin?s, 2001. [ISBN: 0312183100]Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo, ed. by Eric Bentley and trans. byCharles Laughton. New York: Grove Press, 1966. [ISBN: 0802130593]Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. New York: Schocken Books,1987. [ISBN: 0805205721]Duras, Claire de. Ourika, trans. by John Fowles. New York:Modern Language Association of America, 1994. [ISBN0873527801]Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto.New York: International Publishers, 1948. [ISBN9780717802418]Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll?s House. Dover Thrift Edition. [ISBN:0486270629]Graham, Loren R. The Ghost of the Executed Engineer:Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA:Harvard UP, 1993. [ISBN 0674354370] Friel, Brian. Translations. London: Faber & Faber,... More About: Reading , List
History Survey on YouTube
2007-08-07 19:17:00 YouTube contains a lot of interesting history video clips. There is contemporary comedy that pokes fun at the past, documentary footage from the past, and excerpts from old twentieth-century feature films. Some people also create their own videos using old footage and images, often mixing in their own words and music. I have created a channel on YouTube called History Survey , where I am organizing the most interesting history videos that I find on YouTube. Besides browsing my favorites, you can find video clips organized by category by clicking on the playlists button.Keep in mind, though, that YouTube has some serious limitations. Here is the warning I have posted on my YouTube profile page: CAVEAT EMPTOR: All titles and descriptions are from the people who posted [the videos]. Their presence on this channel does not constitute an endorsement on my part. Many of these videos come with uninformed, inappropriate comments too. Videos depicting the Third Reich, for example, often attra... More About: Youtube , Tory
Movie Recommendations: The Great War
2007-08-04 02:01:00 All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone, 1930.Westfront 1918, directed by G. W. Pabst, 1930.La Grande Illusion, directed by Jean Renoir, 1937.Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir, 1981.Capitaine Conan, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, 1996.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Movie , Great , Recommendation , Great War , The G
Politics in the Classroom
2007-07-31 06:09:00 Do partisan politics have a place in the classroom? No. On the other hand, in a history class it is hard, even impossible to discuss many subjects without politics forming a subtext of the conversation. This difficulty is especially inherent in modern history. How, for example, can we talk about state-building, gender roles, participatory politics, and political ideologies without entering terrain in which we have a personal stake? And once we do that, how do we keep out partisan politics? The trick is to make that difficult mental leap into the past and try to understand it from the point of view of people who lived in that time. We do not need to take sides with our ideological forefathers, and we do not need to attack their opponents. Nor do we need to respond to problems in the past with solutions from the present. Instead we need to try to think historically. We need to try to understand people in the past in their historical contexts. Making that leap is difficult, but possibl... More About: Politics , Poli , Politic
Back up your work
2007-07-24 03:27:00 We all know that we should back up our work, but we never do so as often as we should. I will not tell you what kind of strategy you need in order to back up everything valuable on your hard drive, but I want to encourage you to back up your history papers frequently, especially the ones you write for me. Why? If you come to me with a sad story about your crashed computer, I will ask about the backups you surely made, and I will still expect you to submit your essay on time.Besides using an external hard drive or USB key, have you thought about using email for backups? Access your email account with your web browser—Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer, for example. Next create a draft message with no address, so you do not send it anywhere. Then attach your essay file to that draft email message and save the message. Done. Or you can email drafts of your essay to your second email account, the one you had before you came to university. Either way, you will have online access... More About: Work , Back , Back-up
Read and Follow the Directions
2007-07-14 00:38:00 When I assign short papers in my classes, I specify which primary sources students must draw upon and what other sources they should consider. For example I recently gave the following assignment for Hist 033-10:Analyze the image of women in early modern Europe. Use Heptameron and relevant documents from the sourcebook and class handouts. You might also draw on Lessing?s Nathan the Wise. Heptameron was the main book we had read and discussed on the subject. Hence, I mandated its use in the paper. Our sourcebook also contained a wealth of information, so I asked students to draw on that. Still, I left open which sources they analyzed, because the book contained an embarrassment of riches. Lessing's book also contained interesting images, but its main emphasis lay elsewhere. Moreover, students had enough material anyway. That is why I made this book optional for the paper. To sum up, both Heptameron and the sourcebook were mandatory, but Lessing was optional. Nonetheless, one student... More About: Read , Directions , The D , Dire , Rect
More Writing Advice
2007-07-13 06:34:00 I recently ran into an excellent resource, "How to Write With Style" by Kurt Vonnegut. Here is how it ends:In Sum:1. Find a subject you care about2. Do not ramble, though3. Keep it simple4. Have guts to cut5. Sound like yourself6. Say what you mean7. Pity the readersAlthough Vonnegut was a novelist, his advice is still relevant to students writing academic papers. The only major difference is that he could use colloquial language when he wanted, and we cannot. Please read the whole article, which is short and to the point. What do you think of it? Do you agree or disagree? Do you have any questions? Would you add anything?© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Advice , Writing , Vice
Reading, Analysis, and Logic
2007-06-29 17:40:00 Reading critically and asking good historical questions are two of the most difficult problems for students of history. Indeed these two issues form an implicit subtext of most of our class discussions. Prof. Patrick Rael at Bowdoin College offers some useful advice on these matters in his Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students. See especially the sections called "Reading" and "Historical Arguments."Related to these issues is the occasional appearance of a logical fallacy, either in students' own work or in the sources they read. Want to learn more? See Dr. Michael C. Labossiere's helpful list and explanation of 42 fallacies.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Reading , Analysis , Logic , Logi , Anal
Names and Dates
2007-06-26 00:22:00 History is all about names and dates, right? For me the answer is a big "No" and a small "Yes." You do not need to memorize names and dates for their own sakes, but you must figure out what events, personalities, cultural achievements, social structures, and modes of thought and behavior were historically significant. You must also consider how these various things were related to one another. Once you begin this process, you will find yourself constructing a historical narrative. In so doing, you will want to put names on people, things, and concepts, and you will need to know that some things happened before or after other things. As you reconstruct the past (thereby making it your own), you will learn which names matter to you and why. You will also have a fair idea of which dates matter and how precise they need to be.I suggest that you focus not on memorizing names and dates, but instead on constructing one or more narratives of the past based on key themes revealed in the cour... More About: Dates , Ames , Names
Narrating European History: Progress or Regress? Celebration or Condemnatio
2007-06-24 22:20:00 History intersects not only with social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, or political science, but also with story-telling and those humanities that analyze narratives. These latter disciplines include comparative literature and English. History is narrative, and every history or piece of historical analysis one writes is informed by a particular plot line.Students and even professional historians tend to unwittingly fall into one or more narrative traps when they write. First, there is the question of progress. Can we narrate history as the triumphant forward march of progress? To some extent the developments in thought and culture that led to the Enlightenment invite us to write the history of early modern thought as a story of progress. But how do we explain the spike in witchcraft persecutions from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries? Did these interrogations, trials, and executions represent some kind of "progress" over medieval "superstition"?If we look... More About: History , European , Celebration , Progress , Brat
Confession
2007-06-24 22:00:00 When talking about Protestantism and Catholicism in European history, we do not talk about different religions. Protestants and Catholics were all Christians, after all, even if their leaders often made war on one another in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Instead we talk about different "confessions." This term stems from the sixteenth century, when reformers drafted confessions of their faith. See, for example, the Augsburg Confession from 1530, an early statement of Lutheran beliefs.On a related note, historians sometimes use the term "confessionalization" to refer to the gradual process by which the confessions developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The term is useful insofar as it took time to translate the religious disputes and decisions of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations into concrete practices in everyday life.By the way, do you know why I refer to the "Protestant and Catholic Reformations" instead of the "Reformation and Counter-Reformation... More About: Fess
Paper Grading Abbreviations
2007-06-17 00:48:00 Here is a list of abbreviations I typically use when grading papers. I will update it as necessary.awk. --- Awkward syntax or choice of words.C.II., etc. --- See the specific number mentioned of Schlabach's Ten Commandments of Good Historical Writingcol. --- This language is colloquial.c.o.w. --- Your choice of words is ambiguous or does not accurately convey your meaning.i --- Use italics here.n.i. --- No italics necessary.pl. --- Plural. I usually use this abbreviation in conjunction with its counterpart, sg., for singular, to point out that you are mixing up plural and singular nouns or singular and plural noun and verb combinations. There might also be a problem with a singular or plural pronoun.p.t. --- Write consistently in the past tense. (See Schlabach's ninth commandment.)p.v. --- Avoid the passive voice.rel? --- Relevance? You might make an interesting point, but is it relevant to the specific argument at hand?rep. --- Repetition. Either you are repeating a theme covere... More About: Paper
Grading
2007-06-17 00:44:00 I assign letter grades to papers, but I have to use numbers to calculate students' grades for the course. Here are the equivalents I use to do this math: A 95 A- 92.5 B+/A- 90 B+ 87.5 B 85 B- 82.5 C+/B- 80 C+ 77.5 C 75 C- 72.5 D+/C- 70 D 65 F 55 Anything above a 95 has to be amazing. Anything below a 70 is either a straight "D" or "F".When it comes time to assign a grade for the course, though, I use 93 as a cut-off for a straight A, 83 for a straight B, etc., and 90 for an A-, 80 for a B-, and so on.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman
Beware the Thesaurus
2007-06-10 17:53:00 The thesaurus is a useful tool, but it can also be dangerous. It is not enough to look for synonyms and assume that these words mean what you think they mean. If the word you found is unfamiliar, you must go the extra mile and look it up in a dictionary. Only then will you be in a position to decide whether you have chosen the right word or not.Students of foreign languages learn a similar lesson. If you want to translate English into French, for example, it is not enough to look for a French word in the English-French dictionary. You also need to double-check that word in the French-English dictionary.Fortunately, these days much of this work can be done electronically---if you have a reliable dictionary. Mac users can use the built-in dictionary and thesaurus application on their computers. (Use the application, not the widget.) What makes this dictionary so great is not simply that Apple makes it easy to use, but that is is based on the highly usable Oxford Dictionary of American... More About: Thesaurus , Beware
Use RSS to Keep Up
2007-06-04 03:58:00 If you want to keep up with the course websites, but you do not want to visit them unnecessarily, consider using RSS. Each of my sites (except the calendar) has an RSS feed that lets you know about new content.If you have never heard of RSS, check out the great little tutorial video called RSS in Plain English. You might also try reading Overwhelmed by the Quantity of News? on my Mac blog.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman
Emailing Your Professor
2007-06-03 22:11:00 Email is the best way to contact me outside of class and office hours. To ensure that I get your message and reply in a timely manner, please use your university email account, and include the course number in the subject line.If you have not already done so, please read "How to Email a Professor" by Michael Leddy, which gives advice both on etiquette and clarity. To his useful words I would add that you should use standard spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.Why does any of this matter? You need to cultivate the habits of communication that will serve you well in your professional life.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Esso , Fess
Why So Much Reading?
2007-06-03 19:07:00 Many students complain about the reading load in their history classes. They do so, no matter how heavy or light the reading load in a given semester is, because history requires more reading than most other subjects. Why do history professors make students read so much?In some subjects you can move from the general to the specific. In sociology, for example, you can read about certain kinds of general social phenomena and the terms associated with them, and then you read about specific examples. The same is true of many other courses in the social sciences. In history, on the other hand, we begin and end with the specific. Yes, we also compare events, social structures, political systems, gender orders, and so on, but we always keep the specific differences in mind. To simplify matters at least a little, survey courses in history offer lectures and often use a textbook to introduce a core canon of events, terms, and themes. Still, nowhere in these lectures or readings will you hear... More About: Reading
The Most Important Thing You'll Learn
2007-05-30 05:32:00 The most important thing you will learn at university is how to learn. That is a skill you will need, no matter where you go or what you do. The corollary of this proposition is that you must spend a lot of time teaching yourself. Professors can show you possible paths to take by presenting information, engaging you in conversation, and offering feedback on your work, but you must choose your own path and then you must walk most of the way by yourself.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Learn , Thing , Import
Office Hours Matter
2007-05-29 20:09:00 Professors hold office hours so that students can come talk to them when they have questions or concerns, and most professors like it when students make use of this opportunity. If you are a junior or senior, you probably already know this, but if you're a freshman or sophomore, this might be new to you. I myself did not make use of this resource as an undergraduate until my junior year. I wish I had done so earlier! Some of my visits cleared up important problems.CAVEATS: [1] Do not expect your professor to go over material for classes you missed, unless there are genuinely extenuating circumstances. In other cases, you should contact a classmate for notes and handouts. [2] Make sure you have reviewed the syllabus and assignment before you talk to your professor. [3] Do not expect your professor to give you all the answers. Instead, expect your professor to help you to find answers through your own hard work.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Office , Matter , Hour , Hours
Primary Sources
2007-05-29 01:11:00 Historians and many other scholars distinguish between primary and secondary sources. Here are some links to good explanations:- What are Prim a ry Sources ? (Library of Congress)- Primary vs. Secondary Sources (Bowling Green State University)- How to Distinguish Between Primary and Secondary Sources (University of California, Santa Cruz)Many history classes---including mine---demand a significant amount of primary source analysis in discussions and papers, because the skill is fundamental to assessing the quality of information in any area of human knowledge. (Think about why over the course of the semester.) Here are some links on how to analyze primary sources:- Analysis of Primary Sources (Library of Congress)- Primary Source Analysis Sheet (Library of Congress)- Document Analysis Worksheets (National Archives)See also the National Archives' page for Educators and Students. Its examples are American, but the lessons are relevant for any field of history.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman
Sex and Gender
2007-05-28 22:17:00 In history the term "sex" usually refers to biological differences between male and female human beings. There is the female sex and the male sex. With rare exceptions, one's sex is a biological fact. On the other hand, the term "gender" refers to the historically and culturally contingent human constructions of what is masculine and feminine. To make things more complicated, this distinction is itself culturally and historically contingent.Sex and gender shape human experience in fundamental ways, but how this happens varies across cultures, places, and times. We cannot make any assumptions about what is masculine and feminine. We must look for their meaning in the primary sources produced in that culture. At the same time, we must not assume that notions of masculine and feminine were universal and stable in a given culture. Competing constructions of femininity and masculinity are not just realities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They have often existed ... More About: Gender , Ender
Social Hierarchy
2007-05-28 21:42:00 While all of us have certain things in common, the place each of us holds in our society's pecking order shapes our experience in fundamental ways. The role of social hierarchy varies over time and place, but we must always take it into account when studying the past.To discuss this topic in the medieval and early modern periods, we use the terms "estates" and "orders." We usually reserve the term "class" for the modern era, although sometimes we use it as a generic term in reference to social hierarchy. In medieval and early modern Europe, a man's estate or order depended on his legal position in society, which derived from---and helped to determine---his functional or occupational role. A woman, on the other hand, tended to derive her status from her husband (assuming she married, which was the norm, if often not the reality). Class came about after Europeans stopped making legal distinctions based on birth and a man's place in the social hierarchy derived from a combination of... More About: Social
Historiography
2007-05-27 19:59:00 Historians try to avoid the jargon that is common in many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, but sometimes special terminology is unavoidable. One example is periodization, which I cover elsewhere. Historiography is another term you will hear and read.Historiography refers to the writing that historians do. Sometimes we refer to historiographical debates, that is, debates among historians about how to interpret something. For example, "The historiography offers many explanations for the widespread persecution of witchcraft in the West during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." We also use "historiography" to refer to a body of research on a particular subject. For example: "The historiography on gender has grown significantly over the past three decades." Or: "The historiography of the First World War is too large for a single historian to master." Books that explore the subject of history per se also fall under the rubric of historiography. Two classics for an... More About: Graph
About History Courses
2007-05-27 18:28:00 Why study history? This might sound like an easy question if you like history, but I want to suggest that there are more reasons than you have thought about. And what if you do not like history and would never have registered for a history course if your university did not force you to do so? Peter N. Stearns offers some excellent insights into the purpose behind history courses. Read his article, and you will probably learn not only some reasons for studying history, but also what studying history entails in the first place. What kind of information do we historians want to impart, and---more importantly---what kind of skills do we want to foster in our students? Thinking about these issues will help you to get more out of your history course.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: History , Tory
Passive Voice as "Past Exonerative"
2007-05-24 14:46:00 In mid-March 2007 Attorney General Gonzalez said, "Mistakes were made." His boss, President Bush, echoed this sentiment, also using the passive voice. Many prominent citizens have resorted to this grammatical construction over the years, because saying "mistakes were made" enables them to avoid saying "I made some mistakes." In other words, they can apologize without apologizing. Hence, William Schneider has called this use of the passive voice the "past exonerative."* The passive voice is quite useful in politics and diplomacy, but this example illustrates why we should not use it in history, where the question of agency is important. It is not enough to know that something was done. We want to know who did it and why.*See John M. Broder, "Familiar Fallback for Officials: 'Mistakes Were Made,'" New York Times, 3/14/2007.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Voice , Past , VOIC , Passi , Passive
On Writing
2007-05-24 05:49:00 Writing is hard work for almost everyone, no matter how talented or inspired.Writing is thinking. Good writers do not usually have finished ideas that they then type out. The process of writing and revision is an act of thinking and discovery. That is why writing papers can be so frustrating and rewarding at the same time.Want to improve your prose? Keep a journal, in which you produce a page of text per day. The text can be about anything, but use standard prose, not the kind of abbreviations and lack of capitalization that you might use in informal emails or IMs with friends. The text should also be honest. This exercise is akin to doing regular physical exercise, practicing music, or learning a foreign language. The more you do it, the better you get. The less you do it, the worse you get.© 2007 Mark R. Stoneman More About: Writing , On Writing
Periodization
More articles from this author:2007-05-23 01:37:00 In order to make the past intelligible, we organize it into discrete chunks of time, that is, periods. In Western history we refer to the ancient era, the Middle Ages (or medieval period), the early modern era, and the modern era. The definition and delineation of each period is somewhat flexible, depending on what makes analytic and narrative sense for the subject at hand.Ancient history in the Western context refers to that vast period of time sandwiched between the advent of civilization in Mesopotamia and the end of the Roman Empire in the latter part of the fifth century.The term Middle Ages refers to a span of time lasting some 1,000 years, from the dawn of Christian Kingdoms in Western Europe to near the end of the fifteenth century. The term reflects the sensibilities of Renaissance humanists, who rediscovered the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, and who looked back on the millennium in-between with some disdain.Western historians used to begin the modern era righ... More About: Peri , Period 1, 2, 3 |
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