Category History Methods
Interview with a Historian
In my ramblings through historical materials on youtube, I came across this fantastics Interview with historian Sir Brian Harrison. Harrison, former Professor of History at Oxford, talks about coming up as a history student in the 1950s in elite British circles. He reflects a bit on the uniqueness of his situation, and his surprise at […]
Populist v. Liberal Conceptions of History (in Dutch)
I recently published an article comparing the populist and liberal conceptions of history for a Dutch magazine/ journal called Liberale Reflecties. Naturally, I’m critical of the populist conception of history, which I see as an emotional (i.e. non-rational) desire to believe in inevitable cycles of history, in which the good, pure people must fight to […]
Counting pounds, shillings, and pence
I came across this back-of-the-page sketching in an 18th century collection the other day. It is simple addition of sums in pounds, shillings, and pence.
History Visualized with Epochs
It was common in the United States in the nineteenth century to speaks about history broken up into “ages” and “epoch.” Because time was moving quicker than ever before, and changes were all around to see, contemporaries needed to use language that divided time into distinct periods on the path towards progress and civilization. A […]
Why all history methods books on Amazon.com are highly rated
A curious thing happened today when I looked up a book on Amazon.com. I was reading Sometimes an Art, a book about history by the great historian Bernard Bailyn. I felt the book was pretty dry, uninspiring, and out-of-date. Certainly, it doesn’t match the quality of Bailyn’s other words, which have garnered him all of […]
A Doctor of History Fixes Broken Stories
I generally try to avoid using the title “Dr.” instead of “Mr.” because I don’t want to be called upon in an emergency to have to save someone’s life. I can imagine it now: the captain’s voice comes over the speaker system: “Is there a doctor on the plane?” When no one comes forward, the […]
Shake out a book: A Library Exercise for a History Class
Here’s a fun activity for historians and students in history classes: Go to your school or university library, open up old books and shake them out (not literally shake them, you guys!). How many books might you need to shake out before you find a piece of paper? Usually its about 20 or 30 books. […]
Brief, Briefer, and Briefest History
or A Brief History of Brief Histories. Once upon a time, history was long, boring, and cumbersome. It was full of facts, and it went on and on. Nobody could read more than a page of it without falling asleep at their desk. Something needed to be done. What if we could condense a history […]
Illustrated Course Notebooks
A few years ago, when I was still controlling the mic at the classroom podium, I gave my class an assignment to make an illustrated notebook, rather than a final paper. The purpose of this was to encourage students to go through their notes from 15 weeks of class and re-think them, integrate them in […]
