HIST 3991 A3: Environmental History

Assessment 3: Historiography Assignment (20%)
For this assignment you will write a historiographical essay https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/his423his489 of about 1000 words on the topic that you wish to explore in your research essay. The historiography assignment will be submitted to your Open Learning Faculty Member once you have finished Unit 3, topic 1.
This assignment is meant to be a step in the completion of your research essay project. In this essay, you will identify, explain, and analyze the contributions of three or four articles or books on your chosen topic. This will be a topic that you wish to explore in your essay project, from the list of topics provided, or your own idea based on the course topics and resources.
To begin your topic search, read the “Introduction” and “Instructions” sections of Assessment 5: Research Essay Project (35%).
Your essay will highlight commonalities in interpretation and argument, as well as points of difference. The idea is to gain an appreciation of how this topic has been approached in order to develop your own argument for the essay project. Understanding where scholars fit in the conversation on any given topic is a large part of what historians must do, as it is the first step to understanding how one’s own work will contribute or fit into that conversation or debate. It also forces us to develop our skills of critical reading, analysis, and thinking historically.
A simple definition of the term “historiography” is that it is concerned with what historians say and how they come to their conclusions. The latter is what we call their methodology. It is a useful way to think about how history is written, as it reminds us that it is not facts about the past but how we choose them and interpret them. Most topics in history undergo a similar predictable pattern of interpretation and re-interpretation, often (but not always) followed by something like a consensus. The original interpretation by historians is sometimes termed the “orthodox” explanation: the re-interpretation is called “revisionist” and what follows is a “synthesis” of the two.
To put it another way, historiography is not the history of a given topic (such as the history of energy) but how historians have written about that topic.
Some historical subjects have been subjected to so much scrutiny over the years that one can identify many competing interpretations. These re-interpretations are sometimes named for a specific scholar, such as the Namierist interpretation of the American Revolution, or the Beardian interpretation of the Civil War. Or for their methods: the Annales school being a very good example. Shifting interpretations reflect the culture of the day. For example, social history, or “bottom up” historiography, was the major innovation in the 1960s, signaling the transition from the dominant political and diplomatic history it largely replaced. To get a better sense of this, this article on Charles A. Beard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._Beard#Progressive_historiography may be helpful for you.
Historiographical approaches include sub fields such as feminist (the re-reading of history from a female perspective), Marxist (the same from a Marxist, or class conflict perspective), intellectual, and economic history. Each have their own methods and approaches. Economic, Marxist, and labour historians tend to use quantitative methods. Intellectual (history of ideas) scholars tend to use qualitative methods, or story.
In your essay project you will approach your topic through the lens of environmental history, which is a relatively new approach. In fact, there is little done on the historiography of environmental history because of its relative newness. But this doesn’t matter. Your task is to examine how your topic has been approached by different historians, whether or not they identify with the field of environmental history.
As with any essay, a historiographical essay should begin with a concise introduction, but it need not have an argument beyond the simple point that this topic has been presented in various ways, over time. You then move on to explain, chronologically, the methodology and contributions of each of your sources.
Marking Criteria
This assignment is marked out of 100 marks and is worth 20% of your final grade in the course.
The following criteria will be used to evaluate your work:
Substance (75 marks)
The essay provides evidence of critical thinking and analysis.
Research sources are relevant, credible, and clearly documented in the paper.
The essay provides evidence of adequate secondary source research (examines a minimum of three scholarly sources, including books and journal articles), and meets the length requirement.
The introduction offers a sense of direction for the paper.
The conclusion summarizes the main points.
Writing Style and Format (25 marks)
The introduction and conclusion are succinct.
Direct quotation is embedded properly (e.g.: As historian Bud Mack points out, “yada yada”).
Sources are cited, as is all information not commonly known and which comes from a source.
The format follows proper citations and a properly formatted bibliography (Chicago Manual of Style 17 Notes and Bibliography Style).
Paragraphs are unified, developed, and coherent, with transitions between ideas.
Sentences are grammatically correct. Spelling is as well.
Writing about historical places, persons, and events is in the past tense.