Reflections by Caly McCarthy

I suppose I do have a general approach to history research papers, but it’s not particularly set in stone. When I have a general topic, I normally do some background reading to become better acquainted with key names, events, dates, etc. Yes, Google is usually a first stop. That being said, I try to limit myself to .orgs and .edus. I prefer to begin with Google because scholarly works tend to assume basic knowledge of the subject, and they seem to repeat the same limited introduction, which does not serve my purposes. From the context gained by my initial searches, I then begin to posit various questions that surround that topic. Such questions usually include causation and resulting effects of a particular decision/event/trend.

Once I settle upon a general idea (or limited number of guiding questions), I turn to online databases in search of scholarly articles. I play around with various search terms, and I also rely heavily upon footnotes from the works that have been most helpful to me. In order to keep up to date on current scholarly discussion, I also try (with limited success) to use the powers of Google Scholar, to identify where my sources have been cited. This is more or less the wandering path that I take until I need to identify a clear topic and begin organizing my evidence into a workable thesis.

The material on the difficulties of “doing history” from the workbook did not entirely catch me off guard, but it did emphasize certain concerns more than I would have. For example, what’s the final word on bias? Is it something bad that good historians try to expunge from their work, or is it an admission that all scholars focus on certain parts of evidence more (for a variety of reasons), which lead them to different conclusions? I feel like bias is the four-letter word of history, but if scholars admit that every contribution is a part of the whole and not the whole itself, I don’t think “objective” work seems possible or desirable.

Additionally, these chapters portrayed the difficulty (and necessity) of working with primary sources. What to do when accounts are in opposition? How to be sure that the document wasn’t falsified? I am not accustomed to putting together a story from primary sources alone, without the guiding hand of secondary works. I suppose I could have listed these difficulties in theory, but the exercises made clear to me the struggle of rectifying differing accounts.