History and its Literature

1. History and its Literature LIS413 Simmons College Brendan Rapple 19 July, 2006

2. Types of History • History in terms of nations very common • Sometimes regional history is studied • e.g. • Latin America • Eastern Europe • Middle East • South East Asia

3. It’s More Fundamental Sometimes • A Civilization: • Romans • Europeans during the Middle Ages, • Moslem Civilization of North Africa, • Native American Civilization of South America. • Sometimes it’s Periods: • Renaissance • Reformation • 30 Years War • The Enlightenment • The Dark Ages

4. More Specific Topics • Columbus discovering or rediscovering America • The Vietnam Conflict • Watergate • Salem Witch Trials • Battle of Leningrad • Battle of Agincourt

5. Topics are often Categorized • Intellectual history • Cultural history • Social history • Economic history • Religious history • Educational history • or, indeed, the history of any discipline Many of these can be Subdivided: • The HISTORY OF WOMEN as a category of cultural or social history • Historical analysis may be directed toward an individual, an idea, a movement, or an institution.

6. Sometimes Questions can be very Broad • What caused societal revolutions in China, France, Russia? • How have major social institutions, like medicine, developed and changed over two centuries? • How have basic social relationships, like feelings about the value of children, changed over the centuries? • Is race declining in significance compared to social class as a major division in the U.S.? • Why did South Africa develop a system of greater racial separation as the U.S. moved toward greater racial integration? • What caused fall of Roman Empire?

7. How Sure Can we Be of "Facts“ or “Evidence”? • Historians who challenge generally accepted historical facts are often termed: • revisionist • or radical • or leftist • or new historians.

8. Interpretation • Historians rely on records of events that were made by others, e.g. • journalist • court reporter • diarist • photographer • These recordings involve interpretive acts. • They involve certain biases, values, and interests of those who recorded them, i.e. they attended to some details and omitted others. • Thus, interpretation exists even before historian enters the picture.

9. Interpretation • Historians rely on records of events that were made by others, e.g. • journalist • court reporter • diarist • photographer • These recordings involve interpretive acts. • They involve certain biases, values, and interests of those who recorded them, i.e. they attended to some details and omitted others. • Thus, interpretation exists even before historian enters the picture.

10. Historian adds still another layer of interpretation • She stresses or ignores certain data. • She organizes data into categories/patterns.

11. History is a Representation of the Past But representations may be hindered by • lack of ability of historian • lack of evidence • historian’s biases • historian’s interpretation • sheer desire to present a false picture

12. Very Different Treatments • Teaching of History in • Palestinian Schools • Israeli Jewish Schools • Zulu Schools • Afrikaner Boer Schools

13. History often very Specialized • Today historians often have a methodological specialization: • Historians who study the Depression of the 1930s need to have quite a sophisticated knowledge of economics. • Historians who study social mobility in the U.S. should be trained in aspects of social science. • Historians who study farming in Central America must have a strong knowledge of agricultural techniques. • Cultural historians must have strong backgrounds in such subjects as literary theory, anthropology, art history, or musicology.

14. Recent Developments in Historical Writing • Change from political to social history, from the public life of the nation to the private life of citizens • Many studies of • lives of women and children • slaves • ethnic groups • factory workers • the family, etc. • Thus, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality have supplanted traditional political, diplomatic and intellectual history. • There are now no more “people without a history” (Wolf, 1982).

15. “In reality, for the most part, these earlier historians were concerned overwhelmingly with a decided minority of the population in terms of class, ethnicity, region, and gender, and tended to confuse the history of one group with the history of the nation” (Lawrence W. Levine, Amer. Hist. Rev. June, 1989)

16. Change to More “Democratic” History was Resisted • “Today we must face the discouraging prospect that we all, teachers and pupils alike, have lost much of what this earlier generation possessed, the priceless asset of a shared culture. Today imaginations have become starved or stunted . . . Furthermore, many of the younger practitioners of our craft, and those who are still apprentices, are products of lower middle-class or foreign origins, and their emotions not infrequently get in the way of historical reconstructions. They find themselves in a very real sense outsiders on our past and feel themselves shut out. This is certainly not their fault, but it is true. They have no experience to assist them, and the chasm between them and the Remote Past widens every hour . . . What I fear is that the changes observant in the background and training of the present generation will make it impossible for them to communicate and to reconstruct the past for future generations.” (Carl Bridenbaugh, Amer. Hist. Rev. Jan., 1963 – Bridenbaugh was President of the Amer. Hist. Soc.)

17. Among Some New Approaches Cultural History: • Many dimensions. Quantitative History: • Statistical methods • Voting records • Population analyses • Literacy counts, etc. Feminist History: • Feminist historians frequently question male-dominated assumptions and data on women in other cultures. Biological & Environmental History: • Studies in nutrition, disease, such elements of the environment as plants, animals, land, and the atmosphere

18. Sources • Usually limited and indirect. • Historian is limited to what sources survive -- usually most evidence has been destroyed. • A surviving building looks different in 1997 than it did in 1790. • For example, today it's in the "old style"; back then it may have been very new.

19. Primary Sources • Manuscripts/Documents: Charters, Laws, Archives of official minutes or records, Letters, Memoirs, Official publications, Wills, Newspapers and magazines, Maps, Catalogues, Inscriptions, Graduation records, Bills, lists, deeds, contracts, etc., etc. • Objects: Relics, Coins, Stamps, Skeleton, Fossils, Weapons, Tools, Utensils, Pictures, Furniture, Clothing, Coins, Food, Books, Scrolls • Also Art Objects: Sculptures, Paintings, Pottery Also Films, Photographs, Buildings • Oral Testimony also important as primary sources • Thus, “evidence” or “sources” includes many categories beyond written texts.

20. Secondary Sources • Not ORIGINAL sources • No direct physical connection to event studied • Examples include: • history books • articles in encyclopedias • prints of paintings or replicas of art objects • reviews of research

21. External Criticism • Check if the evidence is authentic/genuine. • Researcher must discover frauds, forgeries, hoaxes, inventions. • Chemical analysis of paint, ink, paper, parchment, cloth. • Carbon dating of artifacts. • Ask such questions as • Was the knowledge the source aims to transmit available at the time? • Is it consistent with what is already known about author/period? • What about beautiful Greek coin just discovered and bearing the date 499 B.C.?

22. Internal Criticism • Evidence is genuine, but can we trust what it tells us? • Does document present a faithful/true report? • Was document's author a competent observer? • Was she too sympathetic or too adversely critical? • Was she pressured to twist or exclude facts? • Was documentary record made long after events described? • Does her story agree with that of other witnesses?

23. Scholarly Societies • American Antiquarian Society http://www.americanantiquarian.org/ • American Historical Association http://www.historians.org/ • History of Science Society http://www.hssonline.org/ • For a comprehensive list of Societies/Associations see http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/history_soc.html

24. History E-Journals • Examples of e-format only e-journals: • African Studies Quarterly: the online journal of African studies http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/ • CROMOHS http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/ • History of Intellectual Culture http://www.ucalgary.ca/hic/ For a more complete list see Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/

25. RLG Union Catalog - RLIN(subscription database)With records for over 45 million titles, this database provides unparalleled coverage across subjects and material types in almost 400 languages. The Advanced Search mode permits one to limit one's search to archival material.(New) • WorldCat(subscription database) This online union catalog has well over 60 million bibliographic records. In the Advanced search mode one may limit one's search to archival materials.

26. Library of Congress • The LOChttp://catalog.loc.gov/is extremely useful to historians. Much material is available online.

27. Bibliographies and Guides Harvard Guide to American History (Belknap Press; Revised edition (July 1, 1974) An excellent place to start for books and articles on a particular topic or period. 1348 pages in length, it is selective, and limited to books and articles published before 1972. Volume One has information on doing research and includes books and articles arranged by topic, and Volume Two has books and articles arranged by chronological period and a name and subject index.

28. Bibliographies and Guides Handbook for Research in American History: A Guide to Bibliographies and Other Reference Works. 2nd. ed. (University of Nebraska Press, 1987). An excellent guide to more specialized bibliographies and reference materials in many different areas of United States history organized by type of reference.

29. Bibliographies and Guides Guide to the History of Massachusetts (Greenwood Press, 1987) 325 pages. Part One is a survey of the historical literature on Massachusetts, and Part Two is a listing of the archives and sources for Massachusetts history with their contents.

30. Bibliographies and Guides Reader's Guide to American History (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997) Essays and substantial bibliographies on some 600 topics "to offer some help to those who wish to explore the riches of American historical writing in all its diversity."

31. Biographies American National Biography(print and Online) http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://www.anb.org/articles/index.html Very extensive. Short biographical articles, many with pictures, on deceased notable Americans. Online version includes more recent articles, in quarterly updates, than the print version.

32. Newspapers Most newspapers have print indexes of their past issues -- some of these indexes are now online. However, most online indexes are not free and print indexes may not be readily available

33. Newspapers • African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century(1827-1862) This database provides the complete word-for-word texts of major 19th century African-American newspapers. Newspapers in this database are made available in chronological orders, with the addition of a minimum of ten million new words each year. Currently the file contains Parts 1, 2, and 3 and covers the following newspapers: Freedom’s Journal 1827-1830 (New York, NY); Colored American 1837-1841 (New York, NY); The North Star 1847-1851 (Rochester, NY); Frederick Douglass Paper 1851-1859, completed through December 1852 (Rochester, NY); National Era 1847-1860, completed through December 1853 (Washington, D.C.); Provincial Freeman 1854-1857 (Toronto, Canada); The Christian Recorder 1861-1902, completed through April 1862 (Philadelphia, PA).

34. Newspapers • Times Digital Archive 1785-1985 (subscription database) The full text of the Times of London, includes news articles, editorials, obituaries, and advertising. It is is fully searchable and results are displayed as facsimile images of the article or page. Every word and image of 200 years of the newspaper is included.

35. Newspapers • New York Times 1857-1999 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers (subscription database) Full text access to historical content of the New York Times, including advertisements. Searching can be done for words in the entire text or in the citation and abstract (headline and first paragraph). Search options include simple keyword searching, natural language searching, or advanced searching (which includes searching by article type, for example death notices or editorials). Display is a pdf image of the citation article, including its extension to other pages.

36. Newspapers Boston Globe(subscription database) Full text of the Boston Globe newspaper, from 1980 to yesterday's edition.

37. Newspapers LexisNexis Academic(subscription database) Extensive full-text database of legal and business information including newspapers. Coverage of some newspapers goes back well into the 19th cent.

38. Documents Databases AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History. http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/ Links to selected documents from the fifteenth century to contemporary times.

39. Documents Databases Avalon Project at Yale University http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm Documents by century; also major collections, subjects, authors, and titles, and, importantly, a search engine for the entire project or its parts (there are a large number of documents).

40. Documents Databases A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1873 http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html Part of the American Memory site at the Library of Congress

41. Documents Databases National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ This site at George Washington University collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Includes documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Iran Contra controversy.

42. Documents Databases Documenting the American South http://docsouth.unc.edu/ Sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the twentieth century. Indexes first person narratives, a library of Southern literature, slave narratives, the Civil War home front 1861-1865, and the African American Church.

43. Archives and Manuscripts • ArchivesUSA(subscription database) This is a database providing access to holdings and contact information of more than 5,480 libraries. One may limit one's search to a particular collection name or to a specific repository name (in the latter case one may limit to a particular city). • Archive Grid(subscription database) Thousands of libraries, museums and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to Archive Grid. Types of material include oral histories, letters, unpublished notes and manuscripts, records of corporate and governmental operations, family histories, personal papers, and historical records held in archives around the world.

44. Archives and Manuscripts American Memory Project at the Library of Congress http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html A wealth of documents, oral histories, photographs, maps, motion pictures, recordings-- and all within efficient search engine which can search topics across collections.

45. Archives and Manuscripts National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections http://lcweb.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/nucmc.html Known as "NUCMC," the printed source consists of annual volumes with index volumes indexing names, places, subjects, and form and genre, and containing a list of repositories. This is the place to look to see where historical figures' papers and letters are located in the United States.

46. Archives and Manuscripts National Archives and Records Administration http://www.nara.gov/ The National Archives of the United States.

47. Archives and Manuscripts Repositories of Primary Sources http://www.uidaho.edu/specialcollections/Other.Repositories.html A useful list of over 3,700 archival web sites with links by world region and for the United States by state. Kept at the University of Idaho, this is one of the most complete lists of archives.

48. Other Electronic Indexes America History and Life1964- (subscription database) U.S. and Canadian history in some 2,000 history periodicals covering prehistory to the present. The best place to go for recent academic history article citations.

49. Other Electronic Indexes • Historical Abstracts(1954-present) (subscription database) Covers articles, books and dissertations in the field of world history from approximately 1450, including political, diplomatic, military, economic, social, cultural, religious and intellectual history.

50. Other Electronic Indexes • ACLS History E-Book Project(subscription database) A project to publish high quality electronic books across a broad range of fields in history, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. The project includes hundreds of previously published titles and new publications which take advantage of electronic publishing capabilities. New titles in both categories are added annually.