Description

Research Topic Selection Assignment Instructions

Overview

You will devise a research topic suitable for a graduate-level history course. The topic must relate to American history, modern European history, or the modern world before 2000. The topic must be specific and ground research that answers a specific question of historical interest. You will write a 1-paragraph statement of the research topic and explain the key historical questions to be answered or resolved.

Instructions

The first act of a professional historian is topic selection. When you choose well, your research falls into place, your argument fits within the issues raised broadly among the profession, and the project is easily finished. As you choose your topic, do the following:

1. Your research must answer a relevant historical question. All too often, we decide to write on a topic. Instead of framing a question, we embark on a long discussion or description. Historians do not merely describe; we analyze. Otherwise, we are merely journalists and chroniclers. Those professions have a place, but we are training to be historians. If questions do not drive our research, then all too often, ideology, scientism, or political agendas become our starting points, not a quest for historical truth.
2. Your research must have sources. Some things are now lost to us. This is why you are required to have a very basic, preliminary bibliography that outlines the main primary and secondary sources for your research. Remember, primary sources are the original documents and things related to the historical action of your topic. Primary sources can be writings, newspapers, personal papers, government documents, battle maps, furniture, oral history interviews, paintings, architecture, and even historic flower gardens. If you cannot find enough primary sources to answer your historically relevant question, then choose another topic.
3. Your topic must match your time frame for research. Big, bold historical questions are not suitable for this assignment. You will not have an exhibit to answer whether the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 successfully closed the experimental phase of the American Founding. However, you will have space, time, or exhibits to explain how Albert Gallatin’s congressional opposition to Federalist financial policies in 1796–1799 influenced the election of 1800.
4. Your topic will be subject to historiographic arguments. This is a tough one, but it is necessary for this course. Yes, there are plenty of historically relevant questions that historians have yet to ask, some of which will inevitably open up new ways of understanding the past, simply because nobody ever asked them. This assignment and course are not about coming up with brand new understandings. Do not choose esoteric topics that relate to such a narrow band of knowledge that other historians have not analyzed it, or your target audience will have no interest.
5. Be sure that your research topic is grammatically correct and that your bibliography of preliminary sources is in order.
6. Where do you find primary sources? One way of achieving the previous goals is to make sure historians have already written books and articles on your topic. Choose a few of these for your preliminary bibliography. Then thumb through the list of sources that each author used for his/her research. You will see lists of primary sources in the footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography. That is where you start.

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