Doing History
-- by Michael Gaunt, Hewitt evaluator (originally in "The Ash Heap of History" from The Corum Deo)
History, as everyone knows, is about the past. Doing history (the act of researching and writing works of historical study), on the other hand, is about analyzing evidence. This difference, though it may seem obvious, is quite important and demands consideration. “History,” the past, simply is. It sits there. It is a noun. “Doing history,” though, is a verb. It is an action, an activity. It requires work, sometimes hard work. Analyzing evidence, the heart of doing history, takes both work and practice. A person is not born knowing how to play basketball or ride a bike. Actions like these require work and practice, and so does doing history.
In this article I will talk about the kinds of activities we expect you to be performing when writing book reports for your history classes. You should consider the production of any paper or project for history class as an opportunity to do history. It is in those terms that they will be graded. Therefore, you should keep in mind while you are producing your various assignments what I said above, that doing history requires the analysis of evidence.
A favored activity of professional historians is assessing each others' work. This involves reexaming the evidence and deciding whether the conclusions drawn make sense. This is also the most common approach taken by our students. Whatever sort of book you read for history class, whether it be a work of history (like a biography) or of historical fiction, you must realize that certain conclusions have been drawn and judgements have been made based on the historical evidence. So, knowing that there are conclusions to be reanalyzed, the question remains how to go about it.
Approaching a work of history or historical fiction with a critical eye can be quite daunting, especially if one is not familiar with the task. But as with any job which seems too big and overwhelming, it can be helpful to cut it into small pieces and examine a few individually. Instead of trying to assess the entire sweep of the book in question, choose a few well defined facts in a variety of categories and look them up. The easiest facts to check, and unfortunately where many of our students begin and end their historical research, is with the other historical figures which appear in the the text being analyzed.
A book set during the American Revolution may contain Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and George Washington, but not Abraham Lincoln. This is something you should know without having to do any research at all. Remember that doing history takes effort if it is going to be worthwhile (or worth a good grade). Choose some other kinds of information to look into as well. These might include elements of the material culture (clothing, housing, styles, and everyday items), historical events, or even the motives of the characters (an aspect that different historians will likely have different understandings of). In short, while narrowing your search in one way by choosing individual facts to research, you should broaden it in other ways by choosing facts from a variety of categories. Be creative and don’t be satisfied with the easiest answers.
