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SoSe 20: Introduction to Historical Research and Writing

Joseph Prestel

Hinweise für Studierende

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THIS COURSE This course will be conducted online. We will meet as a group only three times during the semester, using Cisco Webex Meetings (on April 22 from 4 to 5pm CET, on May 27 from 4 to 5pm CET, and on July 8 from 4 to 5pm CET). These meetings are not mandatory; students can successfully complete the course without participating in them. The main focus of the course will be students’ writing, which they will upload and discuss on Blackboard and in individual online sessions with the instructor. While we will read scholarly texts on historical research and writing, students will mainly have to complete mandatory writing exercises each week. In the middle of the semester, there will be a longer writing exercise: Students will be asked to write a 600-word introduction to a term paper. They will then share their texts with other students, who will provide them with feedback. After one round of revisions, the instructor will provide students with additional feedback on the introduction. Moreover, we will schedule two individual meetings between students and the instructor via Cisco WebEx, Skype, or on the phone. During those meetings, students will discuss their writing and ways to improve it with the instructor. All literature that is needed to participate in the course will be provided via Blackboard. Please consult your FU email address regularly, since this email address will be used for all communication in the course. Schließen

Kommentar

This course will focus on one of the most important everyday activities of historians that is rarely discussed: writing. In the course, we will address oft-asked questions about the writing process: What makes a good text? How to structure one’s thoughts in writing? How can historians convey a compelling argument? To tackle these questions, we will also revisit central aspects of historical research in the first part of the course, including the outlines of history as a discipline, the question of objectivity in historical research, and the practice of analyzing sources. The second part of the course will be dedicated to reading exemplary texts by other historians to study their writing styles, writing exercises, and discussing texts that students prepare for the course. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer's English: An utterly correct guide to clarity and style (New York: Random House, 2019); Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity” Question and the American Historical Profession in Context (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). Schließen