Writing and Talking About History > History 299 Materials > History 299 Tips

Tips for an Easier Semester

Do not avoid a topic because it does not involve a blood-and-guts debate.

Some of the best HIST 299 historiographical papers have dealt with historians' agreement and the reasons for that agreement. Your research job is to investigate and to make discoveries. You may discover more debate than you expect; you may discover less.

Do not avoid a topic because historians have studied it extensively, e.g., the Dreyfus Affair, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Such extensive study will provide you with many sources--and probably even historiographical articles--to exploit.

Do not avoid a topic simply because historians have not studied it extensively, as long as they have studied it to some degree.

You will likely be able to focus on why they have not studied it more than they have.

If there are no (or few) books on your topic, there are still likely to be journal articles on it. In addition, many books and articles on related topics will likely touch on your subject, e.g., books on Robert E. Lee will discuss, or mention, many of minor figures and battles of the Civil War.

A historiographical paper requires taking notes on topics that will likely be new to you: the author (a historian? a journalist? a sociologist?), his/her approach and methodology (political history? social history? quantitative history? original? synthetic?), and sources (primary? secondary?).

You have collected "enough sources" when you have exhausted the finding aids and when you have answered all of your research questions, not when you have found a certain magic number of books and articles.

Mr. Bales needs to know -- through your Research Log -- how thoroughly you have searched for sources.

Therefore, he needs to know which finding aids were not useful, as well as which ones were. This means that your Log must include finding aids which do not help your research.