what is an historiographical essay

Write a Historiography

What is historiography, what is the purpose of a historiography paper, what are the different branches of history, what are the parts of a historiography paper.

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Historiography means “the writing of history.” In a research paper, the writer asks questions about the past, analyzes primary sources, and presents an argument about historical events, people, or societies. In a historiography paper, the author critiques, evaluates, and summarizes how historians have approached, discussed, and debated certain topics over time. 

Scholars who work with the same historical records and archival materials can often come away from their research with vastly different opinions about why things happened the way they did. In some cases, historians who study the same sources are not even interested in the same topics or people! This variety of approaches is precisely why we write historiographies.  

Historians arrive at such different conclusions for many reasons. One is that historians are individuals with unique experiences, and our experiences and identities often affect how we approach our work. Historians are also influenced by social, cultural, political, and technological events in their lifetimes. For example, the introduction of computers allowed historians to use more quantitative data in their research, while social and political developments (e.g., civil, gay, and women’s rights movements) continue to influence the kinds of questions historians ask about historical subjects. 

In a historiographical paper, the author (that’s you!) examines the sources, theories, and assumptions that historians have used to conduct their research. Your job is then to explain why and how the history of a particular subject has been written the way it has.  

Writing historiography is a lot like writing a literature review . For this reason, many of the links and resources in this LibGuide will direct you towards existing Library resources for writing literature reviews.

Historiography assignments typically have two goals:  

• They encourage you to explore secondary studies and familiarize yourself with scholarly debates within the history of a given topic.  
• how historians have treated a topic in the past,  
• how they have used novel approaches and methodologies to ask new questions, and 
• how other disciplines like anthropology, sociology, literary critique, and psychology have influenced the work of historians.  

Your instructor might leave the approach up to you or they might encourage you to write a specific kind of historiography. For example, your paper might:  

• analyze how contemporary or near-contemporary historians interpreted or explained past events as or just after they occurred,  
• review how historians have approached a specific topic over time and explain why their methods and assumptions have produced different or similar arguments, or 
• compare how historians from different “schools” of thought have treated the same topic.  

Depending on the nature of your paper and argument, you might end up combining some of these approaches, for example, by dividing your paper chronologically and discussing the branches of history that were popular during each period.  

There are many fields and subfields within history, each with its own theoretical assumptions and methodological trends, but this list of the most common ones will help you get started: 

• Art history  
• Cultural history  
• Diplomatic history  
• Economic history  
• Environmental history  
• History of science  
• Intellectual history  
• Political history  
• Social history 
• Women’s and gender history 

Like most history papers, the historiography follows a traditional essay structure with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The major difference is that the analysis focuses on the secondary sources, as opposed to the primary sources.  

What is the difference between primary and secondary sources?

Primary sources are the sources created by or about our historical subjects, during or slightly after the period we study. They can be firsthand accounts of historical events (newspapers, chronicles, diaries, letters, memoirs, or court documents) or sources that were produced during or just after the period we study (books, songs, films, art, or artifacts). The most important distinction is that most of these sources do not contain any big-picture analysis of the past: they are sources or materials that get us as close to our subjects as possible, to help us understand how they thought, believed, and lived.  

Secondary sources are the texts that contain research produced by historians who have analyzed primary sources to learn more about the past. To help the reader understand their arguments, the authors of historical studies interpret, analyze, and synthesize information from primary sources and the research of other historians. Peer-reviewed articles, books, and conference papers are all considered secondary sources.  

Introduction

• To explain the focus and show the importance of the subject.  
• provide the framework, selection criteria, or parameters of your historiography.  
• provide brief background context for the topic being discussed.   
• outline what kind of work has been done on the topic.  
• briefly point out any controversies within the field or any recent research that has raised questions about earlier assumptions, if they are relevant to your paper.  
• In a stand-alone historiography paper, the thesis statement will sum up and evaluate the current state of research on this topic.  
• In a historiography paper that introduces or is preparatory to an argumentative history paper or graduate thesis, the thesis statement will situate your original research within the existing historiographical debates and help to justify your work by proving what is new or interesting about your chosen approach.  
• To summarize and evaluate the current state of historical knowledge about this subject.  
• To note major themes or topics, the most important trends, and any findings on which researchers agree or disagree.  
• Can be divided by subheadings, but this is usually not necessary in papers shorter than 2,000 words.  
• For example, a historiography section in a dissertation on memories of the Second World War might discuss how commemoration has been studied in the context of the First World War and the American Civil War, as well as broader cultures of commemoration in Britain, Canada, Australia, and the US.  
• To summarize the evidence presented and show its significance.  
• Rather than restating your thesis or purpose statement, explain what your historiographical overview tells you about the current state of the field.  
• If the historiography is an introduction to your own research, the conclusion highlights gaps and shows how earlier research has led to your own research project and chosen methodology.   
• If the historiography is a stand-alone assignment for a course, the conclusion should summarize your findings and discuss implications and possibilities for future research.  

In most history courses at the University of Guelph, you will use Chicago Manual of Style’s notes and bibliography reference style (footnotes). Follow the guidelines to format citations (footnotes) and create a reference list or bibliography at the end of your paper.  

To get started with basic Chicago style, see the library’s quick guide on how to  Cite Your Sources: Chicago Notes & Bibliography . 

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Types of Writing Assignments

• Narrative History
• Response Papers
• Creative Approaches
• Annotated Bibliographies
• Book Reviews

Historiographic Essays

• Research Papers

Basic Considerations When Writing on History

• Cause and Effect
• Establishing a Broader Context
• Common Fallacies

Types of Sources

• Secondary Sources
• Primary Sources
• Fiction/Art/Poetry
• The Internet

Critical Reading

• Historiography
• Bias/Prejudice
• Evaluating Contradictory Data and Claims

Preparation and Writing

• Time Management
• Note-Taking Tips
• Developing a Thesis
• Organization
• Formulating a Conclusion

Basic Quoting Skills

• Quotation/Annotation
• Bibliographies
• Advanced Quoting Skills
• The Ethics of Quoting

Style and Editing

• Drafts and Revisions
• Common Stylistic Errors

What is historiography?

Parts of a historiographic essay, a sample historiographic essay, works cited.

In a nutshell, historiography is the history of history. Rather than subjecting actual events - say, the Rape of Nanking - to historical analysis, the subject of historiography is the history of the history of the event: the way it has been written, the sometimes conflicting objectives pursued by those writing on it over time, and the way in which such factors shape our understanding of the actual event at stake, and of the nature of history itself.

A historiographic essay thus asks you to explore several sometimes contradictory sources on one event. An annotated bibliography might come in handy as you attempt to locate such sources; you should also consult the footnotes and bibliographies of any text you read on a certain event, as they will lead you to other texts on the same event; if your research is web-based, follow links - always bearing in mind the pitfalls of the Internet - and if you are researching in the library, check out the books on nearby shelves: you'll be surprised by how often this yields sources you may otherwise never have found.

For an example of an essay on multiple perspectives on the same event (for our purposes, the Rape of Nanking, an event also examined in the context of Book Reviews ), click here .

The purpose of an historiographic essay is threefold: 1.) to allow you to view an historical event or issue from multiple perspectives by engaging multiple sources; 2.) to display your mastery over those sources and over the event or issue itself; and 3.) to develop your critical reading skills as you seek to answer why your sources disagree, and what their disagreement tells you about the event or issue and the very nature of history itself.

Specific skills honed by such an exercise include your ability to discern bias or prejudice and to evaluate contradictory data and claims . As you will have to quote from your sources in order to make your point, you will also have to display basic quoting skills . The very nature of an essay on multiple sources also requires a Works Cited page, of course, on which, see Bibliography .

You will begin a historiographic essay with a thesis that presents the issue or event at stake, then introduces your sources and articulates, in brief, their authors' perspectives and their main points of (dis)agreement. In the main body of your paper you will elaborate upon and develop this latter point, pulling out specific points of (dis)agreement, juxtaposing quotes (and/or paraphrasing arguments) and subjecting them to analysis as you go along. As you do so, ask (and answer) why you think the authors of your various sources disagree. Is their disagreement a product of personal or professional rivalry, ideological incompatibility, national affiliation? These questions go to the heart of historiography. In your conclusion , finally, you will briefly summarize your findings and, more importantly, assess the credibility of your various sources, and specify which one(s) you find to be most compelling, and why. In final conclusion you might articulate in brief the insights you have gained into the event or issue at stake, the sources you have used, and the nature of history itself.

Let us assume that the subject of your historiographic essay is the Rape of Nanking, an event discussed in some detail in the Book Reviews section. There, we examine the event as it is described and analyzed by Iris Chang in her bestselling book The Rape of Nanking . To this we now add several other sources, all of which are listed in the Works Cited section at the end of this page , and cited in the text immediately following, which exemplifies, in brief, some of the basic strategies of a historiographic essay.

• THESIS: The so-called Rape of Nanking of 1937, a six-week massacre of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanking perpetrated by the invading Japanese army, was presented to a largely uninitiated American mass audience by Iris Chang in her best-selling book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997). Chang's vivid book spawned international interest and a number of responses from fellow historians worldwide. Western historians generally agreed with Chang's insistence that the event - long a mere footnote in the popular historiography of World War II - deserved larger notice, but some criticized her for displaying personal bias as well as historical inaccuracies and methodological weaknesses of various sorts. The response from a number of Japanese scholars was overwhelmingly negative. They denied her account of a post-war Japanese "cover up," yet at the same time also, to varying degrees, denied that the event had even occurred.
• EXAMPLE (1): Tanaka Masaaki, for example, author of the website "What Really Happened at Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth," refers to Chang's work as one of "lies, hyperbole, propaganda." Chang's "mountains of dead bodies," according to Matsaaki, were mountains "that no one saw." Her "Reports of mass murders of prisoners of War [were] fabricated," he claims, offering as evidence that there was "no mention of the 'Nanking Massacre'" - a term he pointedly places in quotation marks - "in Chinese Communist Party Records"; and that "No protests against the 'Nanking Massacre' [was] submitted to the League of Nations [or] ... by the United States, Great Britian, or France." The event, he concludes - if there even was one - was "a massacre with no witnesses" (Masaaki).

ANALYSIS: Much of Masaaki's criticism smacks of precisely the kind of revisionism Chang critiques in her book, and is easily exposed as such. The fact that Chinese communist party records make no mention of the event, for example, is hardly surprising, as the Chinese communists were at this time in disarray, operating largely underground in the Nanking area. Not until 1949 did the communists begin their rule over China and begin keeping official records: why then should we expect there to exist records dating back to 1937? Nor should the silence of the League of Nations, the United States, Great Britain and France come as any surprise. In the same year that France and Britain stood by as Nazi Germany re-militarized the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles; and that the United States and the League of Nation stood by as Franco and Mussolini continued in their campaigns against the rightful governments of Spain and Ethiopia, why would we expect the United States or the League of Nations to have registered any protest over events halfway around the world?

• EXAMPLE (2): Other arguments by Masaaki are more compelling. For example, he notes of one of the many disturbing photographs in Chang's book - a famous one, apparently showing a Chinese prisoner of war about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer brandishing a sword - that its "fakery is easy to detect if you look at the shadow cast by the man at the center [the officer] and that cast by [a lower-ranking] soldier to his right. [The shadows] are facing in different directions" (Masaaki). The photograph does indeed seem to be a composite, and while stopping short of supporting Masaaki's claim that "not a single one of [Chang's photographs] bears witness to a 'Nanking Massacre'," even American historian Robert Entenmann concedes that several of the photos in Chang's book are indeed "fakes, forgeries and composites," including one (also singled out by Masaaki) "of a row of severed heads," which, according to Entenmann, in fact depicts "bandits executed by Chinese police in 1930 rather than victims of the Nanking Massacre" (Masaaki, Entenmann).

COUNTER-ARGUMENT: Faked though some of Chang's twelve pages of photos might be - perhaps even all of them, as Masaaki suggests - the fact that there exist literally hundreds of photographs of the Nanking Massacre, many of them "souvenir photos" taken by Japanese soldiers themselves, strains the credibility of his larger point and even more so the point made by his stridently anti-Chang colleagues Takemoto Tadao and Ohara Yasuo. In their The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's Rebuttal to China's Forged Claims , these writers state that "none of these photos are dated, and the names of places and photographers are not stated. In other words, there exist [no] photos that are rigidly authentic, and definitely, these photos can not be used as evidence of [the] 'Nanking Massacre'" (Tadao and Yasuo 101). In fact, several hundred photographs have been published in one volume - The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs , by Shi Young and James Yin, many of them showing female rape victims with legs spread and genitalia exposed - graphic photographs it is hard to conceive of as staged. Such pictures, while not settling the matter beyond dispute, offer powerful testimony that speaks for itself.

• EXAMPLE (3): Notwithstanding the many graphic photographs that exist, it is precisely the accusation of widespread rape - most likely because of its abhorrent nature - that Chang's Japanese critics wish to deny. "The number of 'cases of rape' [the Chinese] claim is from 20,000 to 80,000 cases," Tadao and Yasuo note. "Suppose we took this number, there should have been from 500 to 2,000 cases of rapes...daily [during the six week period of the Massacre]. This number is absolutely not trustworthy," they conclude, citing instead the number of only 361 official complaints of rape actually registered during this period (130). Of course, they are parsing numbers here. The fact is, whether there were three hundred rapes, thirty thousand, more, or less, rape perpetrated by an occupying force against a civilian population (and that such was the case is amply documented in Chang and virtually all extant sources on Nanking, including the Japanese sources, although they, of course, acknowledge only 361) is a crime of war. But that it is an individual crime of war, rather than a collective, government-sponsored crime against humanity (such as the Holocaust) is precisely the point for the Japanese historians: "[Holocaust] killings were indeed ... 'crimes against humanity', [but] those crimes are fundamentally different from the 'war crimes' which the Japanese troops are said to have committed. ... Those acts of crimes [were] the responsibility of each individual soldier" (136, 130). Following this line of reasoning, the Japanese government is absolved of any blame for the rapes that did occur in Nanking, the exact number of which remains unknown. (On this issue, see Evaluating Contradictory Data and Claims ).
• EXAMPLE (4): More trenchant criticism of Chang than that offered by Japanese historians comes from the American academy. Robert Entenmann, for example, a China expert and senior faculty member in the History department at St. Olaf College, faults Chang on the very premise of her book. He denies that there is a conspiracy of silence surrounding Nanking in Japan; maintains (in contradiction to Chang's claims) that Japanese textbooks do address the event (it is rather quaintly referred to as an "incident" in Japanese historiography, if at all, rather than a massacre, far less a rape); states that those textbooks that do mention it offer fatality rates listed between 150,000 to 300,000 (the Western consensus is around 250,000; Chang claims 300,000); and that 80% of respondents to a 1994 opinion poll in Japan found "that their government had not adequately compensated victimized peoples in countries Japan had colonized or invaded" (Entenmann). On this last count, it is worth noting that the specific wording of the question does not appear to address Nanking explicitly, and that the opinion poll's finding thus bears little relevance to the question at hand. We might also be skeptical of Entenmann's generous appraisal of Japanese textbooks: on its role in World War II, Japan's high school textbooks in particular are subject to constant revision, much of it aimed at mitigating the government's role in wartime atrocities, as a 2007 New York Times article reminds us (Onishi 12).
• EXAMPLE (5): Entenmann's more fundamental criticism of Chang's work and perspective, however, goes deeper. As the granddaughter of former Nanking residents who barely escaped the city, she is guilty, he writes, of having fallen victim to "her own ethnic prejudice. ... Her explanations are, to a large extent, based on unexamined [anti-Japanese] ethnic stereotypes." Furthermore, she engages in "implausible speculations," according to Entenmann, for example, her claim that Emperor Hirohito himself exulted in the news of the Rape of Nanking (see Chang 179). In fact, Entenmann points out, Hirohito's response is unknown, and Chang may be guilty here of "confus[ing] Japanese leaders' delight in the fall of the Chinese capital with exulting in the massacre that occurred afterward" (Entenmann).

ANALYSIS: Such sleights of hand (which Entenmann himself indulges in, as his opinion poll example above shows) are perhaps conscious on Chang's part, or perhaps a function of her not being a professional historian and therefore applying a less-than-rigorous methodology in her efforts to tell a good story. She is after all, a popular (rather than an academic) historian, whom another bestselling historian, Stephen Ambrose, whose scholarship has also been faulted on several counts, once called "the best young historian we've got because she understands that to communicate history, you've got to tell the story in an interesting way" (Ambrose qtd. in Sullivan B6).

• CONCLUSION: It is this zeal to tell a good story and back it up with sensational evidence (even if - like some of her photographs - it is faked), as well as her occasionally emotional prose, sometimes bordering on hyperbole, that remains Chang's greatest liability. In an effort to place the Rape of Nanking into historical context, for example, she states that "[u]sing numbers killed alone" it "surpasses much of the worst barbarism of the ages." Its casualties exceeded those of the Carthaginians at the hands of the Romans, the victims of the Spanish Inquisition, and those of the Mongolian leader Timur Lenk, she writes in a series of specious comparisons that culminate with the observation that "the deaths at Nanking far exceeded the deaths from the American raids on Tokyo ... and even the combined death toll of the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (Chang 6). In The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography , an anthology generally sympathetic to Chang's project (if not to her methodology), George Washington University history and international affairs professor Daqing Yang, himself a native of Nanking, notes that "such a comparison [as Chang's] is methodologically sterile" and "morally misguided" (Yang 161). Indeed, it is precisely the sort of parsing of numbers for which Chang herself would most likely challenge the above-mentioned Japanese historians in their effort to deny the extent to which rape occurred at Nanking. Despite these failings, Chang's book ultimately emerges as a more persuasive argument of what did in fact happen at Nanking than those offered by her Japanese detractors. The enduring controversy surrounding the event, however, and the specific criticism against Chang from even those who support her premise, point both to the endlessly debatable nature of history, and to the need for a more rigorous, analytical approach in its telling. As Joshua Fogel notes in his introduction to The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography , "The Massacre and related events must be lifted beyond the popular level ... to be studied with greater nuance and with a wider range of sources" (Fogel 1). In such a project, the contradictory data and claims of Chang and her critics need not necessarily be mutually exclusive but, instead, might help establish a broader context within which the event can be understood more fully, from all sides.
• Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: BasicBooks, 1997).
• Entenmann, Robert. "Review of Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II." October 29, 1998. H-Net List for Asian History and Culture , 1998. Accessed July 1, 2007. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/481.html .
• Yang, Daqin. "The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre: Refections on Historical Inquiry." The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography. Ed. Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 133 - 180.
• Masaaki, Tanaka. "What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth." N.d. Accessed July 1, 2007. http://www.ne.jp/asahi/unko/tamezou/nankin/whatreally/index.html .
• Onishi, Norimitsu. "Japan's Textbooks Reflect Revised History." The New York Times , April 1, 2007, A12.
• Sullivan, Patricia. "'Rape of Nanking' Author Irish Chang Dies." November 12, 2004, B6. Washington Post , November 12, 2004, B6. Accessed July 1, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44139-2004Nov11.html .
• Takemoto, Tadao and Ohara Yasuo. The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's Rebuttal to China's Forged Claims. Tokyo: Meisei-sha, Inc., 2000.
• Young, Shi and James Ying. The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs, expanded 2nd edition. Chicago, Innovative Publishing Group, Inc., 1997.

The interested reader will find another brief exercise in historiographical inquiry - this one on the disputed relationship between the Catholic Church and fascism during the 1930s - in the Research Paper section of this site, under "Conducting Research for 'The Austrian Catholic Church and the Anschluss': Catholicism and fascism."

Historical Methods & Theory

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What is a Historiographical Essay?

Historiographical essays, evaluating secondary sources, acknowledgement.

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A historiographical essay:

• Is based on a broad, less focused topic or theme, e.g., Reconstruction in the United States)
• Critically examines secondary sources written by historians
• Puts emphasis on the historian, the historian's bias and how the writing of a particular topic has changed over the years
• Examines and compares other historians' arguments in opposition to each other

The purpose of an historiographic essay is threefold:

• To allow you to view an historical event or issue from multiple perspectives by engaging multiple sources;
• To display your mastery over those sources and over the event or issue itself; and
• To develop your critical reading skills as you seek to answer why your sources disagree, and what their disagreement tells you about the event or issue and the very nature of history itself.

Selected Titles About Historiography

• What information is given about the author? Is the author an historian?
• Can you identify the historian's school of thought?
• Read the table of contents, preface and other introductry material. Does the author set up his/her thesis (or point of view) in these sections? Who is the intended audience? Is it written for historians or for a general audience?
• What is the date of publication? If the book or article is old, it will not highlight recent scholarship. Is this important? Is it a reflection of the histories of the time or does it deviate from the norm?
• What primary source material does the author use? What primary source material may have been available to the author at the time?
• Consider the bibliography. Do the sources listed indicate serious works that are relevant to your topic? You may want to consult works used by the author. 

All materials from: Historiography: Ramapo College,   https://libguides.ramapo.edu/HIST201rice

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Historiography.

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Finding historiographic essays -- first steps

Historiography in library catalogs.

• More places to look

For topics that are of wide interest, you may be able to find an essay that reviews the literature on that topic, and that sets it in context by discussing how other historians have approached that topic. This kind of essay is invaluable when you are starting a research project. There are two easy ways to find them:

History Compass is an online journal that publishes historiographic essays. If there is an essay on your topic, it can be an excellent place to start. Caution: if you do not find what you need with your first search, don't choose Edit Search, because you will then be searching all the publisher's online journals. Return to the starting point for History Compass to continue searching just within this journal.

If your topic is covered, check Oxford Bibliographies Online (currently, covers African Studies, Atlantic History, Medieval Studies, Military History, Classics, Criminology, Islamic Studies, Philosophy, and Renaissance and the Reformation, and many other fields)

America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts In both of these bibliographic databases, "historiography" is a Subject. For example, in AHL, to find historiography on the American Civil war, do a Subject search for: civil war historiography

Annual bulletin of historical literature History Reference (SH). Firestone Z6205 .H65 and online

The "Blackwell Companions" are a series published both in print and online in Blackwell Reference Online . If there is one on your topic, it can be an exceptionally useful place to start reading. Note: to find print copies of the Blackwell Companions, do a keyword search in the Main Catalog for " Blackwell companions to history," "Blackwell companions to American history," " Blackwell companions to British history," " Blackwell companions to world history," or " Blackwell companions to European history " to see if there is a volume in this series that covers your topic. Some copies circulate, and others are in the History Reference room on A floor.

When you are searching the library catalog for books on your topic, "historiography" is a useful keyword, because it is used in Library of Congress Subject Headings. For example:

• Historiography--Great Britain.
• United States --Politics and government --1783-1865 --Historiography.
• World War, 1914-1918 --Historiography.
• Europe--Historiography.
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About this guide.

This guide will provide you with information on researching for a historiographic essay , guide you to Pace resources to use for research and link to additional resources that may be helpful in completing your assignment.  

Use the links on the left side to access information. 

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For questions on the guide, please contact librarian, Jessica Kiebler at [email protected]. For questions about research for the assignment, contact Jessica Kiebler or the Get Help tab on the left to contact a librarian. 

About the historiography assignment

What is a historiographic essay? 

"Historiography is the study of how history is written.  No single scholar’s approach is “correct” or unimpeachable, because no matter how much he or she tries to treat the subject at hand in a fair and unbiased manner, the final product is invariably shaped by political agendas and pressures, contemporary trends in academia, limitations of resources, and the inherent subjectivity of critical analysis....

A historiographical essay is one which summarizes and analyzes historians’ changing arguments and interpretations of a historical topic ."

(From  https://www.agnesscott.edu/writingandspeaking/handouts/f12-historiographical-essays_rev.-2018.pdf ) 

The links below provide descriptions and step by step details on crafting a historiographic essay. 

• Historiographic Essay Manual This manual provides guidance on selecting a topic, getting started and building a bibliography.
• The Center for Writing & Speaking: Historiographical Essays This PDF provides example perspectives and questions to ask as you research your historiography.
• VIDEO: Difference between a literature review & a historiography This video from Central Connecticut State University Libraries explains the differences between a literature review & a historiography as both deal with collecting past writings on a topic.
• Hints for Writing a Historiographical Essay A professor provides some strategies for writing a historiographical essay.
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HIST 300 - Introduction to Historical Studies: Historiographic Essay (Literature Review)

• Getting Started
• Ask-a-Librarian
• Annotated Bibliography
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• Historiographic Essay (Literature Review)
• Types of Searches
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• Evaluating Websites for Credibility
• Search Strategies for Books
• Specialized Reference Resources - Definitions
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• Online Statistical Resources
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• Primary Sources for China scholarship
• Important Journals on Modern China
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What is a Historiographic Essay / Historiographic Review?

A Historiographic Essay (also known as a Historiographic Review or, outside of the history discipline, a Literature Review ) is a systematic and comprehensive analysis of books, scholarly articles, and other sources relevant to a specific topic that provides a base of knowledge. Literature reviews are designed to identify and critique the existing literature on a topic, justifying your research by exposing gaps in current research. 

This investigation should provide a description, summary, and critical evaluation of works related to the research problem or question, and should also add to the overall knowledge of the topic as well as demonstrating how your research will fit within a larger field of study.  A literature review should offer critical analysis of the current research on a topic and that analysis should direct your research objective. This should not be confused with a book review or an annotated bibliography; both are research tools but very different in purpose and scope.  A Literature Review can be a stand alone element or part of a larger end product, so be sure you know your assignment.  Finally, don't forget to document your process, and keep track of your citations!

Process of a Literature Review

The process of writing a literature review is not necessarily a linear process, you will often have to loop back and refine your topic, try new searches and altar your plans. The info graphic above illustrates this process.  It also reminds you to continually keep track of your research by citing sources and creating a bibliography.

• Know what the review is for; each assignment will offer the purpose for the review.  For example, is it for “background”, or a “pro and con discussion”, "integration", “summarizing”, etc.
• Create a “search plan”, decide where you will search for information, what type of information you will need.
• Research   - Preform Searches; choose sources and collect information to use in your paper.  Make sure you cite the sources used.
• Think  - Analyze information in a systematic manner and begin your literature review (e.g., summarize, synthesize, etc.). Make sure you cite the sources used.
• Complete  - Write your paper, proof & revise and create your finished bibliography.

Elements in a Literature Review

• Elements in a Literature Review txt of infographic

What to Avoid

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Gerstein Science Information Centre

His 423/his 489: historiography assignment, historiography basics, what is historiography, how to find seminal works & major thinkers, 1. start with what you have, 2. find a historiographical essay related to your topic, 3. search for specific article & cross-ref.

• Hist. of Med. Databases & Major Journals
• Soc. Hist. of Med. Historiography Examples

Your Librarian

What is Historiography? 

A historiography is a summary of the historical writings on a particular topic - the history of eugenics in America, or the history of epidemics, for example.  It sets out in broad terms the range of debate and approaches to the topic. It identifies the major thinkers and arguments , and establishes connections between them. If there have been major changes in the way a particular topic has been approached over time, the historiography identifies them.

Unlike a research paper, a historiography paper is not a study of a historical subject; instead, it is an analysis of the way in which historians have interpreted that topic. 

How to Write a Historiography?

The most important step in writing a historiography is to become familiar with the history of your topic in broad terms. A good historiography is written from a position of authority on a topic.

A historiography is best situated early on in an essay, preferably in the introduction in order to familiarize the reader with the topic and to set out the scope of previous work in broad terms.

Your historiography should establish:

• the major thinkers on the topic, and
• their main arguments (or theses).

Your historiography may also explain:

• the perspective from which the authors are writing (e.g. Marxist, feminist, postmodernist, structuralist, etc.)
• the type of history they have written (e.g. political, social, cultural, economic, etc.)

A good historiography will present this information in a way that shows the connections between these major works. For example, does one work respond to an argument set out in another? Does it expand on that argument or disagree with it? A good historiography will also situate the author's work within the dialogue, explaining whether his or her thesis builds on or rejects the work that has come before.

Still a little unsure of what a historiography is ? Check out these great examples  or get help . 

Adapated from: http://www.trentu.ca/history/workbook/historiography.php

Clear, quick video defining historiography. 

3. Search for Specific Article & Cross-Reference

The following may refer you to important works, thinkers, or schools of thought on your topic. 

• class notes
• course readings
• bibliographies/footnotes/endnotes of your textbook, journal articles, or other secondary sources
• sources for history of medicine background info

They can also help you identify relevant authors, concepts, works, or keywords for searching the library catalogue ,  history databases , or specific history of medicine journals .  

There are lots of ways to find historiographical essays. Here's one strategy: 

Did you know when a bibliographic database (ex. America: History & Life or MEDLINE) receives an article, indexers apply a certain number of SUBJECT HEADINGS to an article to describe the article's content? Did you know that those subject headings are searchable? Did you know that Historiography is a subject heading? 

The following sample search strategies in 3 databases of history secondary sources available in EbscoHost (ex. America: History & Life; History of Science Technology and Medicine; Historical Abstracts) are a quick way to find historiographical essays. 

1. DE "Historiography" AND (psychiatry OR psychoanalysis OR psychosurgery)

2. DE "Historiography" AND social AND medicine

3. DE "Historiography" AND (eugenics OR social darwinism)

What's going on here? 

DE "Historiography" -> searches Historiography as the SUBJECT of the article. The DE code tells these particular databases to search the subject field. Other databases use different codes (ex. CINAHL uses MH). Library databases all have helpful HELP features that tell you which code searches which field. 

DE "Historiography" is combined with keywords on a topic (ie. psychiatry OR psychoanalysis OR psychosurgery)

This query is applied to three databases, and results that have Historiography in the subject field AND psychiatry OR psychoanalysis OR psychosurgery in the text fields are retrieved. 

Now try to make a search strategy of your own!

Want more HELP with databases? 

Use a citation database like SCOPUS or WEB of SCIENCE to search for a specific article, and use the database features to find its references, see who has cited it, and search for any related citations. 

For example, if I search SCOPUS for ' Grand Narrative and Its Discontent: Medical History in the Social Transformation of American Medicine ' in the Article Title field, I see that it has been cited 7 times in the SCOPUS database and that there are 5,113 other citations that share references with my article. I can also easily link to the full-text or catalogue records for each of the author's references. 

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History: Historiography and Historiographical Essays/Literature Reviews

• Beginning Your Historical Research
• Primary Sources
• Historiography and Historiographical Essays/Literature Reviews
• Books and Ebooks
• Dissertations and Theses
• Review Sources (Including Book Reviews)
• Latin America
• Middle East
• United States
• History of Science
• Annotated Bibliographies and Literature Reviews

Strategy to Search for Historiographical Sources

In addition to using the sources identified below, a useful strategy to search for historiographical literature in library catalogs and article databases is to search for:

 historiograph* (historiography OR historiographical) AND particular subject area(s) 

What is Historiography

History is a classical intellectual/research discipline with roots stretching back for centuries.  As Such, History has its own, complex tradition of literature review called “historiography.”  Simply defined, Historiography is the History of History – that is, the study of the History produced and written on a given project, including:

• Approaches/angles to studying that history
• Subthemes beneath a wider historical umbrella theme
• Different historical traditions, including Social History, Cultural History, Diplomatic and Political History, the History of Science, Intellectual History, and much more
• Theoretical Frameworks used to shape that history
• Existing used and unused sources to research particular histories

There are also many books dedicated to historiography – both as a discipline (that is, books dedicate to the general theory, philosophy and practice of historiography) as well as books reviewing historiographies of scholarship in particular areas of history. 

The American Historical Review is the seminal journal published in the United States dedicated to Historiography on all (not just U.S.) historical topics.

Reference Sources to Assist with Historiography

There are several excellent sources to identify key historians and key works in particular fields (whether subject, temporal, or geographically based).  These may also be helpful in preparing for qualifying exams as they provide overviews of the historiography on given topics as well as the frameworks and theoretical orientations associated and/or applied with/to them.  Unfortunately the print works below are dated; much new history has been written since their publication!

• The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing by Kelly Boyd Call Number: Geisel Floor2W Reference D14.E58 1999 Publication Date: 1999
• A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing by D. (Daniel) R. Wolf Call Number: Geisel Floor2W Reference D13.G47 1998 Publication Date: 1999
• The AHA Guide to Historical Literature Call Number: Geisel Floor2W Reference D2.A55 1995 Publication Date: 1995 More than Historical Essays, this contains Bibliographies in Different Fields

Oxford Bibliographies :  Annotated bibliographies and Bibliographic Essays on a wide range of subjects which not only point to excellent publications, but also provide examples of bibliographic essays, which are closely related to historiographical essays and literature reviews.

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• Paper should be 10-12 pp., double-spaced ( graduate students : around 15 pp.), inclusive of bibliography.  Please number your pages and supply a title for the paper.
• You must follow an accepted citation format (e.g., MLA, APA, or Chicago; I have no preference, other than that you be consistent).  A quick guide to Chicago Style may be found here .  MLA and APA abbreviated guidelines are also available here . Footnotes and all end references must conform to accepted styles of academic use.
• Hard copies must be in my office by 12:00 noon on March 20.  You are responsible for making sure it gets into my hands, so if you have any question that it has not, please e-mail me to confirm.
• Undergraduates must annotate a minimum of 8 extra-class sources (graduate students: 12-15).  These may be a combination of monographs and journal articles, or, in appropriate instances, encyclopedia or reference materials.  You may include the article that you used in your review assignment, if you anticipate that your research paper will be on the same subject.
• I will accept late papers until Friday, March 21, at 5:00.
• For each day the paper is late, I will deduct 10% from the final grade (measured in points, thus 30/40 points per day).
• I will not consider Incompletes or extensions unless there are genuine, documented special circumstances, and ONLY IF the extension is requested on or before Monday, March 18.