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Project Guidance
Under
Construction
Book
Review
Historiographical Essay
Research Paper
Thesis/Dissertation Prospectus
Book Review
I expect
your book reviews to conform more closely to those found in scholarly journals
than to those in newspapers and general interest magazines. In newspapers and
magazines, the main point of the review—besides telling what the book is
about—is often to give the reader a sense of the work's style and dramatic
qualities. Academic reviews, on the other hand, have a somewhat different
agenda. Their purpose is fourfold: (1) to explain briefly what the book is
about, (2) to analyze its thesis, (3) to offer a critical assessment of the
book's strengths and weaknesses, and (4) to appraise its historical value. While
this is not intended as a rigid formula, each of these points should be
addressed in the course of your review.
1. What the Book Is About - Offer the reader a brief overview of the books'
subject matter. Try to encapsulate each work within three or four
paragraphs. Identify the major events and personalities examined, key
concepts employed, etc., but do not summarize in detail. Write as if your
audience were an intelligent lay person, not the professor. It's
especially important not to assume that the reader knows the meaning of
specialized terms, events, etc.
2. Thesis
- What is the author's main argument? What are s/he trying to demonstrate or
refute? In the case of paired reviews, do the two authors reach similar or
divergent conclusions?
3.
Strengths and Weaknesses - What do you think of the author's theses? Does
s/he do a good job of proving it? What sources did were used—personal
experience, unpublished government documents, private manuscript collections,
published primary or secondary works? If the book deals extensively with
non-English-speaking nations, did the author consult sources written in
the appropriate foreign languages? Do you think the author addressed all the
relevant issues or can you think of some that they ought to have examined but
did not? (Be careful, though, not to review "the book the author didn't write."
What are the author's qualifications for writing the book? Did s/he have a
particular ax to grind? Is the writing style clear or is the prose convoluted
and difficult to follow?
4.
Historical Importance - How useful would an interested historian find the book
to be? What makes you think so? Whenever possible, place the book within the
context of one or more of the main themes and concepts discussed in the course
for which the review is being written.
These
questions and issues are intended as examples of what your paper should cover.
They are not a checklist. Some may be more relevant to the books you select than
others while you may come up with other questions not mentioned here.
5. Format
- Your review should be typed,, double-spaced, clearly written, and free
of grammatical errors and misspellings.
On a
separate cover sheet, give the review some sort of title and below it, place
your name, the course number, and the date. The book's bibliographical data
should appear at the top of the review: author, title, place of publication,
publisher, date of publication, number of pages. For example:
Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. New
York: Atheneum, 1988. Pp. xi, 446.
In
instances where you quote directly from the works under review, a parenthetical
citation [e.g., (Duffy, 242)] is appropriate. If other works are quoted, give
the full citation in a footnote [e.g., Christopher Duffy, The Military
Experience in the Age of Reason (New York: Atheneum, 1988), 242.] When in
doubt, consult an appropriate reference work. One of the best is Kate L.
Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Use the most recent
edition, which is available in paperback, reasonably priced, and contains the
most important elements of the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of
Style.
For additional guidance,
see
Book Reviewing in the AHR [American Historical Review] and Steven Stowe, "Thinking
About Reviews," Journal of American History 78 (September 1991):591-595.
Historiographical Essay
The
historiographical essay is a critical survey of the secondary literature
concerning a given historical topic or problem. Although it may track the
evolution of the literature over time, it more often assesses the present state
of the question. It offers a cognitive map of the intellectual landscape.
Here’s a checklist of things to think about as you get ready to write a
historiographical essay. It is suggestive rather than exhaustive. Let me
underscore that it is a set of questions to think about, not a template for
writing the essay itself.
With regard to the topic or problem you have chosen: Why does it matter? Beware
of wasting time on an unworthy subject.
What are the landmark books and (sometimes) articles? Usually these will be no
more than thirty years old, since scholarship is generational. Interpretations
older than that have usually been overthrown or subsumed into the more recent
literature. If you are writing an essay for a 700-level course, six to ten works
is sufficient—and of these, concentrate on three or four major works. For
800-level seminars and dissertation prospectuses, be more comprehensive.
For each book, your approach will be similar to that of a book review except
that the emphasis should be much more on critical assessment than summary. (With
regard to summary, often you will do little more than give a short précis of the
thesis and argument.)
Consider each author. Is she part of the academic world and if so, from what
field (history, political science, American studies, etc.)? Where did she
receive her training, and by whom? Has she always been engaged in the same
general work, or have her intellectual interests migrated over time? What was
going on in the world during her intellectual formation that may have influenced
her work?
Consider her approach. Is it principally political, social, cultural,
intellectual (intellectual in the sense of intellectual history), social
scientific, etc.? Does the author employ traditional conceptualizations and
methodologies or does she employ emerging ones? If the former, would the use of
more recent approaches have strengthened her work? If the latter, did the use of
“cutting edge” approaches enhance her grasp or merely dress common sense
conclusions in a cloak of jargon?
For the works as a whole: Are they in active dialogue with one another? Often
the authors will explicitly identify the scholars with whom they agree or
disagree. Even when they do not, it is usually possible to discern this
information implicitly. If they are talking past each other, that in itself is
important and should be highlighted.
Can you identify specific schools of thought—substantial numbers of scholars who
share a common way of defining the key questions and issues? Are the different
schools of thought antagonistic and if so, why? If there are no schools of
thought, why not? Is it because the topic or question is underdeveloped,
outgrown, or just plain not that important. (If the latter, it’s uh-oh time!)
After reading the books, be sure to assess the state of the question. Overall,
how good is the body of work? What are the on-going disputes and unanswered
questions? (If there are none, the scholarly dialogue may have exhausted itself.
If you you are unsure, and the key scholars train graduate students, it can
sometimes be useful to check Dissertation Abstracts to see if any of their PhDs
are continuing to tackle aspects of the problem.)
Also consult the following:
http://www2.bc.edu/~cashmaja/courses_1999/Methods_98/historiogr.html
http://www.southalabama.edu/history/faculty/rogers/hgy.html
http://www.cameron.edu/~richardv/syllabi/histesay.html
See also this section of the
Thesis/Dissertation Prospectus
Research Essay
This section is in preparation.
Thesis/Dissertation Prospectus
1. Overview
The purpose of a prospectus is twofold. First, it conveys to the dissertation
advisor (and perhaps other readers too) the historical problem the student plans
to examine, the way in which she intends to tackle it, the sources she expects
to use, the anticipated organization of the dissertation, and the time frame in
which she expects to complete the research and writing. Second, it should be
easily adapted for use in grant applications.
A prospectus should be written with a critical and busy reader in mind. It
should be succinct, pointed, and should anticipate the reader’s major questions
without belaboring the minor ones. It should be structured in such a way that
the reader can dive into it and find whatever information is desired within
seconds. While there is no set length, as a general rule it should not be
shorter than ten pages nor longer than fifteen.
The prospectus should have five parts: overview, historiography, problem,
sources, and schedule for completion.
The overview should explain, in one or two short paragraphs, precisely what the
dissertation is about. It must convey the thesis, the significance of the
historical problem, and the line of argument. If a student cannot do this in
four or five sentences, she does not yet have a coherent topic. (As a corollary,
the student should also have a one-sentence précis of the topic memorized for
use on occasions when Professor Big Deal Scholar asks what she is working on.)
The section on historiography should convey two things:
first, a sense of the current “state of the question” on the dissertation topic;
and second, a sense that the student has a firm grasp of the relevant secondary
literature. It is often tempting to present the historiography in negative
terms: historians have failed to grasp the importance of the subject, or have
examined it “insufficiently,” “superficially,” etc. Presumably the student
resorts to such characterizations in order to demonstrate that there is
sufficient room for her own work. However, such an approach is both needless and
unwise. It is needless because most scholars have little trouble believing that
any worthwhile historical dialogue can be extended. It is unwise because readers
ignorant of the subject matter may conclude that the necessary historiographical
foundation for the dissertation has not yet been laid. Or they may be put off by
the student’s gratuitous snot-nosed comments about books they themselves admire
or scholars they respect. It is better, therefore, to accentuate the positive.
Remember: One is not filling a gap; one is extending a dialogue.
The next section offers a more in-depth discussion of the historical problem
already summarized in the overview. Its point of departure is the historiography
to date. Its exact structure depends on the nature of the problem, but here are
some examples of what a section on the historical problem might cover: questions
suggested by the current literature that have not yet been addressed, competing
interpretations that need to be reconciled or abandoned, etc.
The sources section refers less to bibliographical citations than to core
archives—collections of evidence (usually though not always documentary) that
are fundamental to the proposed research. For the American Civil War, for
example, the printed official records (128 volumes) form a core archive; so
might the papers at the Southern Freedmen's and Emancipation Project, the Henry
E. Huntington Library, etc. The purpose of this section is to principally to
show the reader the most important core archives, in the opinion of the student,
partly to reassure the reader that the student has a good handle on this, and
partly to invite (implicitly) suggestions about important collections that
should be consulted in addition.
As the name implies, the schedule for completion sets forth a reasonable
timetable by which the research and writing of the dissertation is to be carried
out. It might include something like the following: the time devoted to
preliminary research among the published literature; the time needed to conduct
research trips to various archives, and the time needed to write a draft of the
dissertation, circulate it for comment, make revisions, and defend it. It
matters more to get the order of the tasks correct than to predict exactly how
long each stage will take.
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