Reading Responses
Students will write a 2-3 page reading response each week. Students should write about what they found interesting in the reading(s) and/or what they found contradictory if more than one reading was assigned for that session. Responses can also address how the reading(s) tie into the larger field. The responses will be due before class (ideally at least 12 hours before class).
Journal Assignment
1. Select three journals from the following list according to these criteria:
- One you have read from already;
- One you have never heard of before;
- One you are interested in but may not have read from yet.
2. Review a recent full year (one volume number) of each journal, preferably using a physical volume of the journal. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the sponsoring organization, the composition of the editorial board, peculiarities of submission requirements if any, the front and back matter, the layout of articles, the division of contributions by categories of submission, and any other stylistic features.
3. Skim the articles for methodology and / or topic.
4. Write up your brief impressions of each journal (no more than a page each)
5. Conclude with an analysis of how publishing appears to “work” for the journals you have selected.
- American Historical Review
- American Journal of Sociology
- Continuity and Change
- Economic History Review
- Eighteenth Century Studies
- Enterprise and Society
- Environment and History
- Environmental History
- French Historical Studies
- Historical Methods
- History of Education Quarterly
- History Workshop Journal
- Isis
- Journal of American History
- Journal of Asian Studies
- Journal of Economic History
- Journal of Family History
- Journal of Historical Geography
- Journal of Interdisciplinary History
- Journal of Modern History
- Journal of World History
- Labor History Review
- Past and Present
- The Public Historian
- Signs
- Speculum
- Social Science History
- Technology and Culture
Final Paper
The final paper should be worked on over the duration of the semester with presentations to the class on the last day this course meets.
- Find an archive that you can access within the confines of this semester. Is there an existing literature that addresses either this archive in particular or is relevant to its contents? If so, consult it as you would for any course research paper.
- What questions seem well settled in that literature? What remain open?
- What questions could this archive help you to answer?
- Which of those questions do you want to investigate from that archive, or really, which questions interest you, and why?
- What answers (either preliminary research findings, or historiographical in nature) have you found in it?
Your final paper should be approximately 20–25 pages in length and written with an eye toward meeting the First Year Paper requirement for the HASTS program. It should address all of the above questions in the ways relevant to your particular archive and the literature in which you have embedded it.
