Historical Methods: What We Read This Semester

Today is the last day of my sophomore-level Historical Methods course at Messiah College.  I am now ready to reveal my reading list. Since I am an American historian, you will notice that it is highly driven by sources from my area of expertise



John Fea, “Research as Relationship”

Gordon Wood, The Purpose of the Past, 2-16. 

What Does it Mean to Think Historically?

John Tosh, “Historical Awareness” in The Pursuit of History, Ch. 1.

John Fea, “In Search of a Useable Past,” (book manuscript)

Roy Rosenzweig & David Thelen, The Presence of the Past, Ch. 1

Stephanie Lawson, “Is the Future a Foreign County?” Australian Journal of Politics & History   

Brad Gregory, “The Other Confessional History,” History and Theory 45 (2006).  (JSTOR) 

John Fea, “Thirty Years of Light and Glory.”

Donald Yerxa and Karl Giberson, “Providence and the Christian Scholar,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XI (1999), 123-140.

Peter Hoffer, “Historians Confront the Problem of Evil,” in The Historian’s Paradox, Ch. 9

John Fea, “Christian Resources for the Study of the Past.” (Book manuscript)

George Marsden, “Human Depravity: A Neglected Explanatory Category,” in Wilfred McClay, ed., Figures in the Carpet, 15-32.

John Fea, “The Power to Transform,” (Book manuscript) 

“The Way of Improvement Leads Home” series

“So What CAN You Do With a History Major?”

Williams College Introduction to Chicago Manual of Style 

James Banner, Being a Historian, Ch. 5

“Five Tips for New Public Historians,” History@Work Blog           

Suzanne Fischer, “On the Vocation of Public History.”

William Cronon, “Scholarly Authority in a Wikified World”

Websites (Browse before class):  History to the People, The Historian’s Eye, Understanding Oil

Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” The American Historical Review 108:3 (June 2003), 735-763.

Roy Rosenzweig, “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past.”

Marshall Poe, “Fighting Bad History with Good, or Why Historians Must Get on the Web Now.”

Websites (Browse before class): Valley of the Shadow, Digitizing Early Washington

Rhys Isaac “A Discourse on Method, Action, Structure, and Meaning,” in The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790

Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,”

Baylor Institute for Oral History: “Introduction to Oral History”

William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History 78 (March 1992), 1347-1376.  

Jill Lepore, Historical Writing and the Revival of Narrative, Nieman Reports, Spring 2002.

Allen Mikaelian, “Historians vs. Evolution,” AHA Today, May 9, 2012.

Jill Lepore: “Historians Who Love to Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” Journal of American History 88 (June 2011), 129-144.

Richard D. Brown, “Microhistory and the Post-Modern Challenege, Journal of the Early Republic 23 (Spring 2003).  (JSTOR)

John Fea, “Philip Vickers Fithian’s Rural Enlightenment,” Journal of American History (Sept. 2003), 462-490

“Is Intellectual History a Neglected Field?” Historically Speaking 

Scott A. Sandage, “A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939-1963,” Journal of American History 80 (June 1993): 135-167 

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “How Betsy Ross Became Famous,” Common-Place October 2007.