HIST 3372 / HIST 5380: Historiography

This guide is intended to help you begin research in historiography: the writing of history; the history of history as a field of study; the study of a body of historical works written on a specific topic; the study of historical interpretations.

"Historiography is concerned with historical interpretations and representations of the past - put another way, the writing of history as opposed to history itself."

Source: "Historiography." The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Ed. Lisa M. Given. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008. 399-400. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 13 Mar. 2013.  

Historiography is "how historians' interpretations of it have developed and changed. Who has written what on the topic? When? ... How have they framed the topic and the question...? How has each secondary source used and taken account of (or taken issue with) previous sources? What different schools of thought on the topic/question exist?"

Source: Williams, Robert C. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History. Second ed. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2007, p. 53.

This guide is not comprehensive; it does not list all of the resources on this topic or in related disciplines owned by the Library or available on the Internet. This guide serves merely as a starting point for research.

Discover more general Historiography works, like those to the left.

Just click the links below to dive into the library catalog!

• Click on a book's title to view more details, including (in many cases) a summary or the complete table of contents.
• Always make note of a book's call number and location if you want to retrieve it.
• Use the "Keep" checkbox beside books of interest to bookmark them.

  Then click "Print or email kept records" in the blue toolbar to print a handy list of all the books you want to check out.
• When viewing one book, click on any of its Subject Terms to see a list of more books on that subject.
• When viewing a book, click the "Nearby items on shelf" link beside the title to virtually browse the bookshelf.