Thinking About History by Sarah Maza

Author:Sarah Maza [Maza, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780226109169
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-07-18T06:00:00+00:00

As subject matter, history toggles between description and explanation, the latter often shaped by debate. History as “just a story” survives in some forms of popular historical writing, although even best-selling biographies and military chronicles cannot help but embrace a point of view or value judgment, and frequently put forth an explicit argument. The production of books, documentaries, and museum exhibits inevitably involves more or less visible choices, and the most “public” forms of history—museums, heritage sites—occasionally find themselves embroiled in bitter dispute. Academic history openly embraces debate as the motor that drives research and interpretation: the ambition of every scholar, undergraduate to emeritus, is to enter the conversation by saying something new. In most cases, the questions historians ask drive the search for sources (rather than the source creating the project). Historical research involves much persistence, patience, and creative ingenuity, with sometimes a stroke of dumb luck: most of the time it takes years of training to “bump into” a terrific source, and what you find flows from the questions you ask. In the unusual case of oral history, researchers are able to take this proposition to its logical extreme by actually creating the sources they need. For many questions, however, there will never be sources, and the stories of those whose lives were deemed unworthy of record will forever remain untold.

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