Theories and Methods in the Study of History

We will doggedly ask two questions in this class: “What is history?” and “How do you do it in 2010?” In pursuit of the answers, we will survey a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the last several decades. We will examine how these historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytical discussion of their topic, and the advantages and limitations of their approaches.

The syllabus, on MIT OpenCourseWare

The full course — syllabus, assigned readings, problem sets, exams, and lecture notes — lives on OCW. These open the real thing: