HIST 28800 - History of History

Course Credit: 1
HISTORY OF HISTORY Why and how do we tell stories about striking events or people we think are significant? Who tells these stories and what are their tools? In this class, you will learn the history of history, which refers to the craft of those who write history and of the life of what happens to those histories after they have been written. In history classes, you learn about the methods historians use in gathering sources or data, how we analyze or break down these materials, and our ways of communicating the results of our analyses. When our interpretations of the past and our conclusions are published and disseminated, they take on a life of their own, and the meanings of these same work shift over time. These long-drawn-out processes are complex and become implicated in contemporary politics and global affairs. This course introduces these processes, which we call “Historiography”, or otherwise also referred to as “meta-discourse,” when the subject and content of history writing becomes the object of study. Why is this important? As consumers of history, whether on the History Channel or in a museum exhibition, the past is presented as “they were,” and the craft of history made to appear as detective-like finds of previously undiscovered documents. This class will help to untangle you from those imagined figments. By studying historiography, you are introduced to the profession of historians, what makes history a distinctive branch of knowledge and the debates among historians. Besides the written word, we will pay attention to the use of non-textual materials and sources, and the use of history in museums, exhibitions, films and websites. Annually. [GE, HSS]