Studying, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin Faculty, 2004
http://tutorial.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ 1
2.b.
Find out how to Learn a Main Supply
Good studying is about asking questions of your sources. Maintain the next in thoughts when studying
main sources. Even when you consider you may’t arrive on the solutions, imagining attainable solutions will
Help your comprehension. Studying main sources requires that you just use your historic creativeness.
This course of is all about your willingness and capability to ask questions of the fabric, think about
attainable solutions, and clarify your reasoning.
I. Evaluating main supply texts: I’ve developed an acronym that will Help information your analysis
of main supply texts: PAPER.
C Goal of the writer in making ready the doc
C Argument and technique he or she makes use of to realize these targets
C Presuppositions and values (within the textual content, and our personal)
C Epistemology (evaluating reality content material)
C Relate to different texts (evaluate and distinction)
Goal
C Who’s the writer and what’s her or his place in society (clarify why you might be justified in
pondering so)? What may or may it’s, based mostly on the textual content, and why?
• Why did the writer put together the doc? What was the occassion for its creation?
C What’s at stake for the writer on this textual content? Why do you assume he or she wrote it? What
proof within the textual content tells you this?
C Does the writer have a thesis? What — in a single sentence — is that thesis?
Argument
C What’s the textual content attempting to do? How does the textual content make its case? What’s its technique for
undertaking its aim? How does it perform this technique?
C What’s the supposed viewers of the textual content? How may this affect its rhetorical technique?
Cite particular examples.
C What arguments or considerations does the writer reply to that aren’t clearly acknowledged? Present
a minimum of one instance of a degree at which the writer appears to be refuting a place by no means
clearly acknowledged. Clarify what you assume this place could also be intimately, and why you assume it.
Studying, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin Faculty, 2004
http://tutorial.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ 2
C Do you assume the writer is credible and dependable? Use a minimum of one particular instance to elucidate
why. Ensure that to elucidate the precept of rhetoric or logic that makes this passage credible.
Presuppositions
C How do the concepts and values within the supply differ from the concepts and values of our age? Provide
two particular examples.
C What presumptions and preconceptions can we as readers deliver to bear on this textual content? For
occasion, what parts of the textual content may we discover objectionable, however which contemporaries
might need discovered acceptable. State the values we maintain on that topic, and the values
expressed within the textual content. Cite a minimum of one particular instance.
C How may the distinction between our values and the values of the writer affect the best way
we perceive the textual content? Clarify how such a distinction in values may lead us to misread the textual content, or perceive it in a manner contemporaries wouldn’t have. Provide a minimum of
one particular instance.
Epistemology
C How may this textual content Help one of many arguments present in secondary sources we’ve learn?
Select a paragraph anyplace in a secondary supply we’ve learn, state the place this textual content may
be an applicable footnote (cite web page and paragraph), and clarify why.
C What varieties of data does this textual content reveal that it doesn’t appeared involved with
revealing? (In different phrases, what does it inform us with out figuring out it’s telling us?)
C Provide one declare from the textual content which is the writer’s interpretation. Now provide one instance of
a historic “truth” (one thing that’s completely indeniable) that we will study from this textual content
(this needn’t be the writer’s phrases).
Relate: Now select one other of the readings, and evaluate the 2, answering these questions:
C What patterns or concepts are repeated all through the readings?
C What main variations seem in them?
C Which do you discover extra dependable and credible?
II. Listed below are some further ideas that can Help you to consider main supply texts:
A. Texts and paperwork, authors and creators: You’ll see these phrases lots. I exploit the primary two
and the final two as synonyms. Texts are historic paperwork, authors their creators, and
vice versa. “Texts” and “authors” are sometimes used when discussing literature, whereas
“paperwork” and “creators” are extra acquainted to historians.
B. Evaluating the veracity (truthfulness) of texts: For the remainder of this dialogue, think about the
instance of a soldier who dedicated atrocities in opposition to non-combatants throughout wartime.
Later in his life, he writes a memoir that neglects to say his function in these atrocities, and
could in truth blame them on another person. Figuring out the soldier’s attainable motive, we’d
be proper to Question Assignment the veracity of his account.
Studying, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin Faculty, 2004
http://tutorial.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ three
C. The credible vs. the dependable textual content:
1. Reliability refers to our capability to belief the consistency of the writer’s account of the
reality. A dependable textual content shows a sample of verifiable truth-telling that tends to render the
unverifiable elements of the textual content true. For example, the soldier above could show to be totally
dependable in detailing the campaigns he participated in through the warfare, as proof by
corroborating data. The one hole in his reliability will be the omission of particulars
concerning the atrocities he dedicated.
2. Credibility refers to our capability to belief the writer’s account of the reality on the idea of
her or his tone and reliability. An writer who’s inconsistently truthful — such because the
soldier within the instance above — loses credibility. There are numerous different methods authors
undermine their credibility. Most often, they convey of their tone that they aren’t
impartial (see beneath). For instance, the soldier above could intersperse all through his
dependable account of marketing campaign particulars vehement and racist assaults in opposition to his outdated enemy.
Such assaults sign readers that he could have an curiosity in not portraying the previous
precisely, and therefore could undermine his credibility, no matter his reliability.
three. An writer who appears fairly credible could also be totally unreliable. The writer who takes a
measured, reasoned tone and anticipates counter-arguments could appear to be very
credible, when in truth he presents us with full balderdash. Equally, a dependable
writer could not at all times appear credible. It also needs to be clear that particular person texts
themselves could have parts which can be extra dependable and credible than others.
D. The target vs. the impartial textual content: We frequently surprise if the writer of a textual content has an “ax to
grind” which could render her or his phrases unreliable.
1. Neutrality refers back to the stake an writer has in a textual content. Within the instance of the soldier who
dedicated wartime atrocities, the writer appears to have had a substantial stake in his
memoir, which was the expunge his personal guilt. In an totally impartial doc, the
creator shouldn’t be conscious that he or she has any particular stake within the building and content material
of the doc. Only a few texts are ever utterly impartial. Individuals usually don’t go
to the difficulty to document their ideas except they’ve a goal or design which
renders them invested within the course of of making the textual content. Some historic texts, corresponding to
start data, could look like extra impartial than others, as a result of their creators appear to
have had much less of a stake in creating them. (For example, the county clerk who signed
a number of thousand start certificates doubtless had much less of a stake in creating a person start
certificates than did a star recording her life in a diary for future publication as a
memoir.)
2. Objectivity refers to an writer’s capability to convey the reality freed from underlying values,
cultural presuppositions, and biases. Many students argue that no textual content is or ever might be
utterly goal, for all texts are the merchandise of the tradition wherein their authors
lived. Many authors fake to objectivity after they may higher search for neutrality.
The writer who claims to be freed from bias and presupposition ought to be handled with
suspicion: nobody is freed from their values. The credible writer acknowledges and expresses
these values in order that they could accounted for within the textual content the place they seem.
Studying, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin Faculty, 2004
http://tutorial.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ four
E. Epistemology: a flowery phrase for a straight-forward idea. “Epistemology” is the department of
philosophy that offers with the character of information. How have you learnt what ?
What’s the reality, and how is it decided? For historians who learn main sources, the
Question Assignment turns into: what can I do know of the previous based mostly on this textual content, how certain can I be about it,
and how do I do know these items?
1. This may be a particularly tough Question Assignment. In the end, we can not know something with
full assurance, as a result of even our senses could fail us. But we will conclude, with
affordable accuracy, that some issues usually tend to be true than others (for occasion,
it’s extra doubtless that the solar will rise tomorrow than human will study to fly
with out wings or different Help). Your activity as a historian is to make and justify selections
concerning the relative veracity of historic texts, and parts of them. To do that, you want
a stable command of the rules of sound reasoning.
———]
History Studying, Writing, and Analysis
Bowdoin Faculty, Patrick Rael, 2004
http://tutorial.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/index.html
2.b.
Find out how to Interpret a Main Supply
Asking questions of your sources is a vital a part of good studying. When studying, maintain the next in thoughts:
firsthand accounts Even when you concern you will not be capable to discover the solutions, envisioning them will Help.
Help you to perceive Studying main sources requires that you just use your historic creativeness.
This course of is all about your willingness and capability to ask questions of the fabric, think about
attainable solutions, and clarify your reasoning.
I. Evaluating main supply texts: I’ve developed an acronym that will Help information your analysis
of main supply texts: PAPER.
C Goal of the writer in making ready the doc
C Argument and technique he or she makes use of to
