MIT Theories and Methods of History, lecture 1

The author of the notes is Prof. Peter Perdue.

I was going to wait until next Monday to start a discussion on this lecture notes, but they were so good that I felt that we should start right away.

Here are a few sentences of the introductory lecture.

I believe that the best way to learn how to do historical research is to read model works in the field, critique them, then try to do something similar yourself. (This is an ancient Chinese method of teaching landscape painting, for example: copy masterpieces). But there are other approaches, more commonly employed in methodology courses. I should justify why we do not follow them, but you should become at least passingly familiar with each of these approaches, too.

If you don't mind, I would like it if we can have a discussion on these lecture notes. :) Read the notes for the first lecture, and copy and paste just the part that you find interesting, and hopefully other people will join into the discussion.

MIT Histography Lecture notes





Edited by hugoestr - 05-Apr-2007 at 17:06