History and its Literature

1. History and its Literature LIS413 Simmons College Brendan Rapple 17 July, 2007

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 • A Civilization: • Romans; 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

3. More Specific Topics • Columbus discovering or rediscovering America; The Vietnam Conflict; Watergate; Salem Witch Trials; Battle of Leningrad Topics are often Categorized • Intellectual history; Cultural history; Social history; Economic history; Religious history; Educational history 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.

4. 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?

5. 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.

6. Essential to Test and Evaluate Evidence • Free from bias? • Was source capable intellectually to provide a sound interpretation? • Is evidence (and the source’s interpretation) supported by evidence from other sources?

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

8. 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

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

10. 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.

11. 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).

12. “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)

13. 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.)

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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.?

17. 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?

18. 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

19. 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.

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

21. Bibliographies and Guides Harvard Guide to American History (Belknap Press; Revised edition (July, 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.

22. Bibliographies and Guides Handbook for Research in American History: A Guide to Bibliographies and Other Reference Works. 2nd. ed., rev. (University of Nebraska Press, 1994). An excellent guide to more specialized bibliographies and reference materials in many different areas of United States history organized by type of reference.

23. Bibliographies and Guides Reader's Guide to American History (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997) (880 pages) 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."

24. 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.

25. 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

26. 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).

27. Newspapers • Times Digital Archive 1785-1985 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.

28. Newspapers • New York Times 1857-1999 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers 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.

29. Newspapers Boston Globe Full text of the Boston Globe newspaper, from 1980 to yesterday's edition. Boston Globe (Historical Newspapers) 1872-1922

30. 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.

31. 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).

32. 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

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. 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.

37. 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.

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

39. Archives and Manuscripts Repositories of Primary Sources http://www.uidaho.edu/specialcollections/Other.Repositories.html A useful list of over 5,000 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.

40. 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.

41. 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.

42. Other Electronic Indexes • ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) (formerlyACLS 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.

43. Other Electronic Indexes • Gutenberg-e(subscription database) This collection of electronic books, adapted from prize-winning dissertations, covers a range of historical topics. The books are enhanced by links to primary source documents, images, and maps. The project is a collaboration of the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press.

44. Other Electronic Indexes • Early American imprints. Series I, Evans, 1639-1800 • Early American Imprints, Series II - Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819(subscription databases) Vast full-text resource of information about every aspect of life in 17th - and 18th-century America as well as the first couple of decades of the 19th. Subjects covered range from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, slavery, temperance, witchcraft and just about any other topic imaginable.

45. Other Electronic Indexes • Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876(subscription database) Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of historic newspapers, providing pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. The current release includes 141 titles from 23 states and the District of Columbia. The collection is based largely on Clarence Brigham's History and Bibliography of American Newspapers,1690-1820.

46. Other Electronic Indexes • Early English Books Online(subscription database) EEBO brings nearly every English language book published from the invention of printing in 1475 to 1700 to the Internet. Works by Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and other primary resources are all in full facsimile. This interdisciplinary database includes well over 100,000 early printed titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475- 1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and the Thomason Tracts

47. Other Electronic Indexes • Eighteenth Century Collections Online(subscription database) When complete, this database will deliver every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain between 1701 and 1800, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. It will comprise nearly 150,000 titles and editions and will allow full-text searching of more than 33 million pages of material. Titles included in ECCO are based on the English Short Title Catalogue bibliography and are sourced from the holdings of the British Library, as well as other national, university, research, and public and private libraries. The database includes a variety of materials - from books and directories, Bibles, sheet music and sermons to advertisements - and works by many well-known and lesser-known authors, all providing a diverse collection of material for the researcher of the eighteenth century. Variant editions of each individual work are frequently offered to enable scholars to make textual comparisons of the works. The database is divided into seven subject areas: History and Geography; Fine Arts and Social Sciences; Medicine, Science and Technology; Literature and Language; Religion and Philosophy; Law; General

48. Other Electronic Indexes US Congressional Serial Set - Digital Edition(subscription database) A full text searchable collection of sources on all aspects of U.S. history compiled by Congress in numbered sequence (hence its name the Serial Set), including government reports, journals, hearings, messages, petitions, resolutions, monographs, treaties, presidential communications, maps and so forth from 1817 to 1980. Also includes the full text of the American State Papers (1789-1838).

49. Other Electronic Indexes • Gerritsen Women's History(subscription database) This database covers the study of international women's history, feminism and the feminist movement. It consists of periodicals, books, and pamphlets in 15 languages.

50. Other Electronic Indexes • North American Women's Letters and Diaries(subscription database) A collection of women's diaries and correspondence covering colonial times to 1950. This database is being released in stages until completion.