This handout was written with several goals in mind: to explain what historians do and how they approach the writing process, to encourage you to think about your history instructor’s expectations, and to offer some strategies to help you write effectively in history courses. Easy, right? history is everything that happened in the past: dates, facts, timelines, and the names of kings, queens, generals, and villains. For many students, the word history conjures up images of thick textbooks, long lectures, and even longer nights spent memorizing morsels of historical knowledge.

For your instructors in the history department, however, history is a fascinating puzzle with both personal and cultural significance. Before shrugging off this abstract notion, ask yourself another easy question: why are you here at unc ch? maybe you’re at unc because it was the best school that accepted you, or because unc has great sports teams. You may be here in north carolina because you or some ancestor crossed an ocean several weeks, years, decades or centuries ago. You are here in chapel hill because, two hundred years ago, some people pooled their ideas, energy, and money to dig a well, collect some books, and hire some professors. You are here at an institution of higher education because long ago, some german scholars laid the groundwork for what we call the modern university. In other words, your presence on this campus is the result of many, many historical developments. Although we are all unique, we share parts of our identities with past peoples and cultures.

The problems we face today may have puzzled or even been created by past people and cultures. This same past has eliminated many hurdles for us think of the polio vaccine and may even offer possible solutions for contemporary concerns consider the recent revival of herbal medicines. Question: what did christopher columbus do? well, if you’re like many people, you’re thinking, he discovered the new world. It took a while before the spaniards realized he’d landed on an island off the coast of this new world. It took even longer for historians to figure out that the vikings crossed the atlantic long before columbus. And now we know that this world wasn’t really new there were civilizations here that far predated organized cultures in europe. So, historians study the past to figure out what happened and how specific events and cultural developments affected individuals and societies.

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The more we know about the past, the better we can understand how societies have evolved to their present state, why people face certain problems, and how successfully others have addressed those problems. As you can see, the questions of history include the immediate and personal how did i get here? , the broad and cultural why do universities function as they do? and the purely factual what exactly did columbus find?. The answers historians offer are all more or less educated guesses about the past, based on interpretations of whatever information trickles down through the ages. In other words, they frequently want you to use information to make an educated guess about some bygone event, era, or phenomenon. High school history exams and various nameless standardized tests often encourage students to guess. The hula hoop was invented in d none of the above in academia, however, guessing is not enough. As they evaluate assignments, history instructors look for evidence that students: know about the past, and can think about the past.

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Historians know about the past because they look at what relics have trickled down through the ages. For some periods and cultures 20th century america, for example , there are tons of primary sources political documents, newspapers, teenagers’ diaries, high school year books, tax returns, tape recorded phone conversations, etc. For other periods and cultures, however, historians have very few clues to work with that’s one reason we know so little about the aztecs. These ideas are presented in secondary sources, which include textbooks, monographs, and scholarly articles. Ideally, after thinking for a while, they come up with a story to link together all these bits of information an interpretation read: educated guess which answers a question about some past event or phenomenon.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? except when two historians using different sources come up with contradictory answers to the same question. Even worse, what if two historians ask the same question and use the same sources but come up with different answers? this happens pretty regularly and can lead to heated debates, complete with name calling. Even today, for example, historians still can’t agree on the extent of apocalyptic panic surrounding the year 10. To avoid unnecessary disagreements and survive legitimate debates, good historians explain why their question is important, exactly what sources they found, and how they analyzed those sources to reach a particular interpretation.

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In other words, they prove that both their approach and answers are valid and significant. It’s also why history instructors put so much emphasis on how you write your paper. In order to evaluate the quality of your answer to a historical question, they need to know not only the facts, but also: why your question is significant where you got your facts how you engaged and organized those facts to make your point to sum up: most unc history instructors will expect you to both know information and interpret it to answer a question about the past.

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Your hard won ability to name all the governors of idaho in chronological order will mean little unless you can show why and how that chronology is significant. For general tips on understanding writing assignments, see the writing center’s online handout. A typical carolina history course includes several kinds of writing assignments:

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Don’t be disillusioned, however these are rarely intended to be free flowing, last minute scrawls on the back of a napkin. Assuming you’ve kept up with the course, you should have all the facts to answer the question, and need only . All book reviews in history should explain the basic argument of the book and assess the argument’s strengths and weaknesses.