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Writing Historically

By. Dr. J. Ross-Nazzal

Houston Community College, Southeast

Last updated: 24 AUG 2013

I. Introduction to Writing Historically

Each discipline has their rules for writing. If you write for a history class like you did for an English class, or Anthropology class, or a math or science class, you will not do well (i.e, you won’t pass). The purpose for writing in history is to convey a new idea, challenge an existing belief, or to add a new interpretation to an old idea. Unlike math or science writing, you never “prove” anything in history writing. Rather you use evidence to suggest the veracity of your thesis. And many students find writing for history frustrating because there is no right answer in history. One plus one rarely equals two in history. This is frustrating for undergraduates because they’ve spent their entire K-12 career being instructed on finding the right answer on every state mandated test. History writing is not about finding the right answer. History writing is about successfully arguing a specific argument by using sufficient evidence to, again, suggest the veracity of your thesis.

II. Thesis

Proper history writing begins with a thesis. In history, a thesis is a statement of what the writer is going to examine. The history thesis is not a conclusion. And the shorter the essay, the earlier in the essay the thesis needs to appear. For example, in a monograph, the thesis might be buried somewhere in the middle of the Introduction or maybe even at the very end of the author’s introductory remarks. Most of the writing you will do for a survey history course is relatively short (12 pages or less) and some of my assignments are very brief to the tune of 750 words (that’s approximately three double spaced pages). In my classes, I want to see your theses as the very first sentence of your submission.

Again, a history thesis is not a conclusion, rather it is a general, ever so brief, statement of what the author is going to examine. And, make your theses idiot proof: write them in such a way that the reader (me) has no question as to what your essay or paper is going to examine. A very simplistic thesis, and one that I instruct my first year students to use goes like this: “This essay will examine . . .”.

Let’s say that you are writing about the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, or the foreign policy aspect of the Emancipation Proclamation, or the changes in Hip Hop between “New York State of Mind” (1994) by Nas and “Empire State of Mind” (2009) by Jay Z. A clear, concise thesis statement would be “This essay will examine the presidency of Benjamin Harrison,” or “This essay will examine the foreign policy aspects of the Emancipation Proclamation” or “This essay will examine the changes in Hip Hop between 1994 and 2009.” Simple. Clear. Concise. And, you are not tipping your hat. Don’t write, “This essay will examine how the presidency of Benjamin Harrison was a success.” In part because that’s a conclusion and in part because maybe the reader already thinks that the presidency of Benjamin Harrison was a failure and so your thesis on how it was a success might prejudice the reader’s ability to honestly analyze your writing. You want to draw readers further into your writing. You don’t want readers to dismiss your writing at the get go.

III. Body

Here is where the rubber meets the road. In the body you will narrate your story and analyze the evidence. Narrate less and analyze more. In high school you offered linear narratives. Not in academia. In college you need to explain how and why stuff happened as well as how and why this stuff is important. Again, it is simplistic however I advise my first year students to use certain trigger phrases such as “this is important because . . .”. Also, the body is where you will first draw conclusions however conclusions must follow evidence or logic. You don’t start a paragraph with a statement of fact (a conclusion). You start each paragraph by discussing and analyzing evidence, then you can draw a conclusion.

The body needs to make sense and there are two ways to construct the body: either chronologically or thematically. What you do not want to do is to detract the thinking of your readers by jumping all over the place. So, either start at the beginning and follow the narrative through the end, chronologically (such as the Civil Rights era starting with the Plessy decision and ending with the US Supreme Court striking down the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013) or thematically (by examining how the Civil Rights movement affected American religious beliefs, then the economy, then politics, et cetera).

And you must progress logically. You need to take the reader by the hand, show him, or her, your evidence, tell the reader why the evidence is important, then draw conclusions for the reader, the conclusions that you want the reader to also conclude. Again, you do not want the reader to diverge from your intellectual path.

IV. Conclusion

Proper history writing is not unlike a date. After dinner, or the movie, or whatever event you two experienced, you don’t slow the car down and push your date out the door. You stop your car, you chit chat about what you learned about the other person, you walk together to the front door, and you say goodnight and something like “Let’s do this again.” End your date on a positive note! The same with writing history. Your conclusion needs to be a summary of your evidence and your conclusions and then draw the BIG conclusion: “Thus Benjamin Harrison’s presidency was a resounding success” or “Thus the Emancipation Proclamation kept England from ever entering the war on the side of the Confederacy,” or “Thus Hip Hop transformed from a musical genre to an entire subculture of the American experience between 1994 and 2009.” Do not allow the readers to form their own conclusions. However, you must have used sufficient amount of evidence in the body to suggest the veracity of your minor and major conclusions.

V. Evidence

There are many kinds of evidence to include primary, secondary and tertiary. Now, while you might use secondary sources to support your general narrative, you must rely on primary sources to support and forward your thesis and conclusions. The best evidence and the kind from which you may best analyze, dissect, and discuss, come from people who witnessed these historical events: primary source. What some historian (such as the author of your textbook) or even worse –a journalist, thinks about the success or failure of Reconstruction is not as important as what some Freedmen, Redeemers, Scalawags, or Carpetbaggers thought about Reconstruction. Build your arguments squarely on the shoulders of primary source evidence.

VI. Analysis

To analyze evidence means you need to explain how it happened, why it happened, and the historical significance of it all. But then you need to critically analyze the evidence. To critically analyze the evidence means to examine what pros and cons exist in the primary source evidence. For example, years ago (when the internet was in its infancy) I had students write an essay on the Civil Rights movement using only internet based evidence. One student argued that the Civil Rights movement was inherently racist. His evidence came from the website of the Texas Ku Klux Klan. Do you think that maybe the Klan might have a different interpretation of civil rights than say the Southern Poverty Law Center or CORE or the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee? So, critically analyze the evidence. If you are writing a paper on the success and failure of the Bush administration and you use the autobiography of Dick Cheney, you might want to explore why he might not be the best source for understanding the Bush administration. His words are important because he was there, however you need to take them with more than just the proverbially grain of salt. Critically analyze the evidence. Do not dismiss it because it may be lopsided just critically analyze it.

VII. Citations

Just like every discipline has their rules for writing, every discipline has their rules for citing. In history we use the Chicago Manual of Style or the Turabian Method (both are nearly identical to the neophyte). In a nutshell, you will cite as either footnotes or endnotes and each citation will include the author’s name, title of the source, date and publisher and if appropriate a page number. For a thorough self-tutorial on proper history citing, see my Learning Web page.

VIII. Bibliography

The final part of any history submission is the bibliography page. A bibliography page is an alphabetical list (by author’s last name) of all sources used. Basically each bibliographic entry is very similar to the citation, except you don’t include the page numbers. Again, for a thorough self-tutorial on how to write the Bibliography page, see my Learning Web page.