Making History: How Do Historians Turn Evidence into Narratives?

Students will encounter multiple versions of several narratives from US and global history across multiple eras. These will include accounts of post-Civil War Reconstruction in America and ‘the rise of the west’/creation of the modern world. Personal, family, and national narratives will be incorporated, as well.

The first central question the module will help students examine is, How do historians and other scholars create, contest, and modify narratives as a way of interpreting the past? The second question, a related but much broader one, is, How do we use stories to understand the past?

This module will introduce students to the competencies that demonstrate an awareness of the constructed, contested, and contingent nature of historical narratives/interpretations. To that end, students will learn key skills regularly employed by historians, including contexualization, periodization, causality, historical empathy, source analysis, and evaluation of secondary sources. At a more advanced level, students will have the opportunity to practice constructing their own narratives and them subject them to claims testing.