Category Archives: teaching writing history
History over the Air
How much history do you listen to? What are the best history radio shows and podcasts, after this one? What makes them great? Continue reading
Spinning Yarns about this Spinning Planet
Narrative threads: reading, writing, talking after the conference is over Continue reading
Martha Sandweiss’s Passing Strange: Excellent History at the Edge of Knowability
The first thing to know about Martha Sandweiss’s Passing Strange is that it is gripping. When I first cracked it open, in a Seattle hotel room last March, I found myself one hundred pages in before checking the time. This … Continue reading
"Letters to a Tenured Historian" now available
My Writing of History class is now reading exemplary histories. In historiography-driven courses, so often the new trumps all. But when a course focuses on history writing, there is a fruitful dialogue between new books and old, often with a different … Continue reading
Stephen Pyne’s How-To of History: Thinking, Choosing, Writing
(Apologies to those of you who dutifully waited up Wednesday for this post; it’s that time of semester. But my book manuscript did get finalized as you waited, so it’s a step closer to store shelves!) I was quite impressed … Continue reading
Allan Megill and rigorous history in an age of fragmentation
Allan Megill’s Historical Knowledge, Historical Error should be required reading for historians. This collection of essays grapples with many of the profession’s current obsessions – memory, identity, narrative, objectivity, grand narrative, cultural history, counterfactuals, epistemology – in an open-hearted yet … Continue reading
After the Linguistic Turn, a Productive History of Silences?
Shall we seek the history of silences? Continue reading
Virginia Scharff, Fawn Brodie, and the lobster
Shouldn’t the proponents of writing history have more to say to one another? Continue reading
What Do We Teach When We Teach “The Writing of History”?
Tomorrow night my graduate course on the writing of history has its first meeting. With the students pre-registered and the syllabus pre-circulated, we plan to jump right in, reading many of the influential essays and articles on the choices made … Continue reading
Imagining the Future of History — Are you Isms or Ism-free?
AHA session recap: Imagining the Future of History — Are you Isms or Ism-free? This semester I am offering a graduate course on “The Writing of History” (syllabus here). I’ll talk more about my choices and its progress over the … Continue reading
