History
his·to·ry · historia: inquiry, knowledge by investigation · histōr: wise one, judge
History is the study of human experience of all kinds, in relation to particular times and places — built from primary sources, read critically, and turned into an argument about the past.
- Find primary material you can actually reach: local archives, newspapers, census records, oral histories, digitized collections.
- Ask who made the source, for whom, and what they left out.
- Build an argument, not a timeline — a paper that only narrates isn't research.
- Chicago footnotes are the norm.
Related areas & concentrations
Almost every subject has a history, and history borrows tools from many of them. Those neighbors help you ask sharper questions of your sources.
Related research areas
- Anthropology & sociology: how communities, cultures, and social structures work
- Political science: states, power, and how institutions change
- Philosophy: ideas, beliefs, and how people have reasoned about the world
- Science & technology studies (STS): how science and technology shape societies
- Culture studies & art history: what art, objects, and everyday culture reveal
Sample concentrations
- The Scientific Revolution in early modern Europe: how new ideas about nature took hold
- Topics in the history and sociology of public health: disease, medicine, and society over time
- Qing China and the West: conflict and cultural exchange between empires
Four ways into a question
Most history papers work through one of these lenses. All are reachable for a student through digitized archives and local collections.
Political & Diplomatic
Governments, wars, treaties, and the decisions of people in power.
How did newspapers in two countries report the same treaty differently?
Social History
The lives of ordinary people — work, family, migration, and community.
How did your town's population change after a local factory opened or closed?
Science, Ideas & Culture
How beliefs, knowledge, art, and technology developed and spread.
How did pamphlets spread a new scientific idea in the 1600s?
Global & Comparative
Contact between peoples and empires — trade, conflict, and cultural exchange.
How did Qing officials describe European traders in their own records?
Turning an interest into a question
A period isn't a research question. Narrow to a specific place, time, and set of sources, and ask something you can argue rather than just narrate.
Start from sources you can reach
Digitized newspapers, letters, local archives, or oral histories — your question should grow from what survives.
Narrow to a place, period, and group
Not “the Industrial Revolution” but one town, one decade, or one group of people.
Make it a “how / why” question
Ask why something changed or how people understood it at the time, so you have something to argue.
Check it's arguable and answerable
Could another historian disagree, and do your sources actually let you answer it?
Methods & where to look
Pair a method you can carry out with the archives and scholarship historians actually use.
Common methods
- Archival research: working directly with letters, records, and documents.
- Source analysis: reading a document closely for its author, audience, and purpose.
- Comparative history: setting two places or periods side by side.
- Oral history: recorded interviews, with consent, about lived experience.
- Historiography: tracing how historians' interpretations have changed.
Keep careful notes of where every source came from — you'll need it for your footnotes.
Where to find sources
- Newspapers: the Library of Congress's Chronicling America.
- Digital archives: the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, and Europeana.
- Records: national archives and your local historical society or library.
- Journals: the American Historical Review and Past & Present, via Google Scholar or JSTOR.
Local archives are often underused — and a great source of original research.
Reading primary sources critically
A source is never just a window onto the past. Three habits keep your reading careful and your argument convincing.
Source
Ask who made it, when, for whom, and why. Every document has an author with a point of view.
Context
Place the source in its own time. Judge it by what people knew and believed then, not by today's standards alone.
Corroborate
Compare it with other sources. Where accounts agree or clash tells you a lot about what really happened.
Cite every source with Chicago-style footnotes, including where you found it.