Going “Gentle into That Good Night”? Historiography and the Undergraduate Curriculum

AHA Session 229
Saturday, January 6, 2024: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Mission II (Parc 55, Fourth)
Chair:
Carrie Hoefferle, Wingate University
Papers:
Historiography Today through the Lens of Recent Textbooks
Paul E. Kerry, Brigham Young University
Historiography: A Useful Category of Analysis?
Eileen Cheng, Sarah Lawrence College
Historiography as a Comparative Subject
Michael Bentley, St. Hugh's College, University of Oxford
Comment:
The Audience

Session Abstract

What has happened to teaching historiography in the undergraduate curriculum? Across the United States and across the pond in the United Kingdom teaching historiography has dwindled. There is no hue and cry and, with apologies to Dylan Thomas, there is no raging against the dying of the light of historiography. Eileen Ka-May Cheng has observed: "Ask an undergraduate, 'What is historiography?' and you will most likely get a blank stare. Nothing can seem more esoteric to undergraduates than the idea of historiography." Perhaps our teaching reinforces such bewilderment for example if when we teach historical methods and draw on a textbook that introduces students to the historian's craft, we introduce historiography as if we were speed walking over hot coals. Similarly, in other areas of history we are careful to avoid teaching any subject as if it were a royal road to steady onward and upward progress. Yet, when it comes to historiography, there we or the textbooks we draw on often present the history of historical writing in a linear way, a greatest hits from Herodotus to the latest issue of the American Historical Review. Maybe we mumble something conscientious but vague along the way about global perspectives on historiography. This is of course a crude reduction, but this panel seeks provoke discussion by addressing how historiography is being taught by surveying recent history textbooks (Kerry) on historiography. We then present innovative ways to teach historiography by making at least two thoughtful suggestions. Firstly, we consider whether historiography should continue to be taught separately to "real history" and recommend instead that it can and ought to be integrated, for example, as a branch of intellectual history (Cheng). Next, we suggest how teaching truly comparative historiography can help students understand comparative history and why it is important (Bentley). We would like to gain insight from our colleagues on these and other ways that the history of historical writing may be productively revived in the undergraduate classroom.
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