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
Its More Fundamental Sometimes

• A Civilization
• Romans
• Europeans during the Middle Ages,
• Moslem Civilization of North Africa,
• Native American Civilization of South America.
• Sometimes its 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
• historians biases
• historians 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.h
  tml

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 LOC http//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?urlhttp//www.anb.org/a
  rticles/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 Freedoms 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/Othe
  r.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 Life 1964- (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.

51
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.

52
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.

53
American Broadsides and Ephemera

• Based on the American Antiquarian Societys
  landmark collection, the database American
  Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I offers fully
  searchable facsimile images of approximately
  15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900
  and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between
  1760 and 1900. The remarkably diverse subjects of
  these broadsides range from contemporary accounts
  of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural
  disasters to official government proclamations,
  tax bills and town meeting reports. This digital
  edition also contains autobiographies and dying
  confessions of convicted criminals, theater
  playbills, sheet almanacs, publishers'
  prospectuses, advertisements, newspaper carriers'
  addresses, patriotic and popular songs and poems.

54
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.

55
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

56
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

57
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), scheduled for release
  in late spring 2005. An ongoing digitization
  project which covers the early years first and is
  expected to be completed up to 1980 by the end of
  2008

58
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.

59
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.

60
Other Electronic Indexes

• Oral History Online (subscription database)
• Oral History Online is an index to
  English-language interviews that are either
  publicly available on the Web or held by
  repositories and archives around the world. The
  database contains no full-text sources, but
  instead includes more than 100,000 index entries,
  with links to full text when transcripts are
  available online. Interviews with full text can
  be searched in great detail, including 20 fields
  of metadata. The database is updated quarterly
  and is intended eventually to include all
  important oral histories available worldwide.

61
Other Electronic Indexes

• Hispanic American Periodicals Index 1970-
  (subscription database)
• Indexes articles on U.S. Hispanic and Latin
  American topics inEnglish, French, German,
  Italian, Portuguese and Spanish from more than
  400 scholarly journals worldwide. Produced by the
  Latin American Center at UCLA.

62
Other Electronic Indexes

• PAIS International (Public Affairs Information
  Service) 1972
• PAIS Archive (1937-1976) (subscription
  databases)
• Public affairs in a variety of journals
  (including news magazines) and monographs
  includes such areas as environment and health.

63
Other Electronic Indexes

• Nineteenth Century Masterfile (1800 --)
• (subscription database)
• "The Digital Index of the Nineteenth Century"
  includes an electronic version of Poole's Index
  to Periodical Literature and a number of other
  indexes. A valuable index to nineteenth and early
  twentieth century magazines and newspapers.

64
Other Electronic Indexes

• International Medieval Bibliography
  (1967-present)
• (subscription database)
• Comprehensive and current bibliography of the
  European Middle Ages (c.450-1500) including
  articles in journals and miscellaneous volumes of
  conference proceedings, essay collections and
  Festschriften.

65
Other Electronic Indexes

• Iter Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
  (subscription database)
• Iter contains a Journals and a Books database.
  The Journals database is an electronic
  bibliography of interdisciplinary journal
  literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and
  Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for articles
  bibliographies catalogues editions abstracts
  and discographies are included. To date, the full
  runs of more than 400 scholarly journal titles,
  published since 1859, have been indexed. A
  complete list of titles is available for review.
  The Books database (under construction) is a
  bibliography of approximately 46,000 records
  encompassing monographs, material published in
  monographs, and collected essays pertaining to
  the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700).

66
Other Electronic Indexes

• American Civil War Letters and Diaries
  (1855-1875)
• (subscription database)
• Indexes full texts of first person accounts of
  events in the U.S. Civil War from hundreds of
  sources of diaries, letters and memoirs of people
  both famous and obscure.

67
Other Electronic Indexes

• Declassified Documents Reference System
  (1945-1970's) (subscription database)
• Selected US government documents declassified
  under the Freedom of Information Act and which
  were originally organized under the Declassified
  Documents Reference System (DDRS). The online
  documents selected deal with post World War II
  documents in international relations and domestic
  documents involving the military and White House
  which span the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson
  and Nixon.

68
Other Electronic Indexes

• Early Encounters in North America
• (subscription database)
• Early Encounters in North America, subtitled
  "Peoples, Cultures and the Environment," will
  include, when completed, more than 100,000 pages
  of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of
  early encounters. It includes descriptions of
  North America, either in its natural features or
  interactions among various cultural groups in the
  years between 1534 and 1860. Special indexing
  leads to the who, what, when and where of the
  encounters.

69
Other Electronic Indexes

• Bibliography of Asian Studies (1971-present)
  (Subscription Database)
• Contains more than 410,000 records on all
  subjects (especially humanities and social
  sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and
  South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the
  present.

70
Atlases

• Historical Maps of the United States (Perry
  Castaneda Library Map Collection, UT Austin)
• http//www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histus.html
• A wealth of online maps dealing with Early
  Inhabitants, Exploration and Settlement, U.S.
  Territorial Growth, and a section on Later
  Historical Maps (including 146 maps of U.S.
  cities) with links to U.S. historical maps at
  other web sites.

71
Atlases

• Rare Map Collection at the Hargrett Library The
  University of Georgia Libraries
• http//www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/ma
  ps.html
• Includes rare maps of the New World, Colonial
  America, Revolutionary America, Revolutionary
  Georgia, Union and Expansion, Civil War, Frontier
  to New South, Savannah and the Coast, and
  Transportation.