Whether you’re writing a paper for class or drafting a journal article or book chapter (or book!) for publication, you will often be asked to 1) make an argument and 2) explain the significance of your argument. The question might take different forms. Someone might say, “what are you trying to tell us?” or “why does this matter?” for example. I once asked a student the latter question and they became incredibly distraught because they assumed that I believed it did not matter. Quite the contrary – I’m sure it does but I want to make sure other people understand why and how!
If your previous exposure to history was primarily as a consumer – i.e. you memorized facts, you maybe analyzed a primary source occasionally, you delved deep into details on topics that interested you – even if you were a rabid consumer, you likely didn’t get a lot of exposure to historical analysis. The work of producing history is not just a matter of collecting evidence and assembling facts in chronological order, like putting bricks together to make a complete wall, as our 19th century positivist forbears assumed. Historical thinking and the production of historical knowledge requires the careful analysis of historical sources using those historical thinking skills I’ve written about before – periodization, historical context, contingency, cause and effect, agency and structure, continuity and change. Historians deploy these skills all the time to make meaning out of the facts of the past. History is not the memorization of facts and dates. History is the act of producing arguments about the past informed by evidence.
In analyzing sources, historians deploy all 6 of these historical thinking skills. However, when we make an argument, we often highlight one or two of them as particularly significant. How do we know they are significant? Sometimes that is shaped by the primary sources – the discovery of new information that completely upends our previous understanding of a person or event or place. That, however, is extremely rare. More often, the evidence that we discover and the stories that we tell aren’t important in that obvious and earth shattering sort of way. They’re important because they help us think about the past in new ways, from new angles/perspectives, using new questions.
The process of developing that sort of argument is much less obvious. One time an engineer I knew asked me earnestly, “how do you know that what you argue is new or important?” He wasn’t being flippant or critical; he genuinely was trying to understand, and I get it – in the sciences, you test hypotheses to produce results through a rigorous method. For historians, while we might ask historical questions, they are not hypotheses in the same way and we can’t really test the accuracy of our answer in the same way. History is part social science and part humanities/arts; it is both analytical and creative. So while some of the analytical conclusions of our work can be verified by checking sources and confirming with multiple pieces of evidence, the real answer is that we determine whether something is new or innovative by reading a great deal of what already exists and evaluating what it says in light of our argument. In short: we read a LOT. Likely much more than you are currently reading, even if you already think you read a lot.
So, what does it mean to read a lot? And what do you read? Reading widely is essential to situating your work within the field. Most early career researchers focus on reading deeply in the literature focused specifically on their subject of research. That certainly matters. In doing so, don’t focus just on the most recent scholarship. While older scholarship might not seem fashionable, that work laid the foundation for current scholarship and shaped historiographical conversations. You need to understand where that came from. Earlier scholarship can also provide important historical context, connection to sources, and other helpful information. But also read widely:
1. Think about the broader themes that your work speaks to. If you are doing work on roads, for example, you should also do reading on the history of technology, infrastructure, space, and mobility, as well as trade and related technologies like railways.
2. Think about the time period of your study. Read to understand that period within its historical context. Try to understand the historical precursors to your period of study. If history is, at its core, a study of the relationship between continuity and change, then you must have a sense of what came before.
3. As you engage more deeply with your primary sources, think carefully about the relevant social, cultural, political, and economic frameworks that inform the topic at hand and read deeply in those areas as well. Class, generation, gender, ethnicity, nationality… understanding these frameworks requires that you read broadly.
4. Think about the interdisciplinary fields that could inform your study. How might analytical concepts, alternative methodological approaches, or other frameworks help inform your interpretation of the sources? Again, if you’re studying roads you should probably read work in the anthropology of infrastructure, mobility studies, and science and technology studies, for example. But maybe more depending on the kind of project you’re doing.
In engaging with this reading you should consider: How is your research positioned in relation to the existing scholarship? Does it challenge that scholarship, support it, open a new avenue of inquiry? Does it reframe something we thought we already knew? Answering these questions requires careful engagement. The answers do not have to be huge – it’s rare that someone fundamentally changes the field. Instead, we more often advance our understanding of the past by asking a new kind of question or approaching a source in a new way that helps us consider something about the past that we hadn’t before. But being able to talk about why your argument is important and what it helps us understand through rigorous, thoughtful, and informed engagement with the secondary literature and to do so with confidence is the sign of a mature historian. It’s one of the hardest things for people to learn to do, in part because it requires a depth of knowledge of the literature that is difficult to achieve when you’re first starting out.
Note that if you’re early in your career, it’s important to be a bit humble in your claims of significance, even as you are clear, and to ensure that you’ve gotten feedback not just from peers who will cheer you on and encourage you but from more senior colleagues who will challenge you. That’s not because they’re trying to gatekeep – any good historian should be able to see the merits of a bold argument and encourage it, not shut it down – but because they have a greater familiarity with the depth and breadth of the secondary literature and an awareness of the historigraphical trends in a way that is just difficult to achieve on your own when you’re first starting out. Their feedback can help ensure that you’re not overstating your claims or making a mistake that could have implications for your professional reputation down the road. It might be nerve-wracking to get feedback like that (trust me, I get it), but I’ve found that if I approach my work believing that there are always ways that it can be improved and that there are always ways that I can grow as a historian, I embrace these opportunities as tools that help me rather than scary criticism that inhibits me or hurts me.
You can set yourself up for success by engaging in good scholarly practice from the outset, though. I often describe that as being fair to the author. Regardless of what you are reading, avoid the temptation to cherry-pick from the text to only use what is convenient or to set up easy, bad faith criticisms. In your reading, you should seek to develop an understanding and respect of the author’s work on their own terms; only then can you levy fair criticisms. Criticizing an author for (not) doing something they never claimed is both unfair and intellectually lazy. Our colleagues deserve better than that. You would want your work to be treated with greater respect than that.
The significance of your argument is just as often built with the work of other scholars as it is against a piece or body of scholarship. Acknowledging and engaging with other scholars further refines your analysis and situates your work within the historiography. Historical scholarship is a conversation and, sometimes, a debate. Sometimes that involves legitimate critique, but that critique should be based on compelling evidence and a good faith reading of the text. Sophisticated critique isn’t made through theoretical frameworks or disciplinary jargon. It’s shaped through solid argumentation supported by clear evidence and creative research. And it never claims more than the evidence can actually support.
In the midst of the pressure to publish and the desire to distinguish yourself, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s really at stake. Your publications speak to who you are as a scholar, and your colleagues remember work that is ungenerous and unfair. They also remember work that is generous and insightful. We are able to weigh our arguments and understand their importance because they are crafted in community. Choose to use your work to elevate and engage, moving the field forward while recognizing that we all stand on the shoulders of others. And give credit to those who inform you.
