Evidence

Goals for this week (September 28/30, 2020)

By the end of this week, what should students know, be able to do and understand?

how to conceptualize the difference of primary and secondary sources
consider how primary and secondary sources require different ways of reading
consider how Medieval Studies has developed a range of sub-disciplines to understand how to read primary sources

Overview:

The foundation of History is the claim that it can say something truthful about the past. Historians for the past 50 years have debate how truthful our claims are, but fundamental to the historian's craft is an idea that our research is grounded in a search for truth. We are going to explore the basic premise that an honest search for truth matters, and that we need to think that everything we read is something trying to lie to us.

Online Time

On Monday, September 28th, we will be discussing questions raised by Marcus Bull's chapter on the "Evidence for Medieval History". In particular we will be thinking about what constitutes proof (and proof of what). In advance of class, think about all the possible ways why evidence survives to the present and how it gets lost.

On Wednesday, September 30th, we will visit the world of the Academy for the first time. My young acolytes, bring your questions.

Read/Watch/Listen

What do students need to read this week?

you will read a chapter in Marcus Bull's book, Thinking Medieval on "Evidence for Medieval History"
try to see if you can track down online some of the sources and evidence that Bull references in his book (add links as annotations on Perusall).
you will read another chapter of Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft

Practice

make sure you're logged into hypothes.is
let's start using Zotero. Make sure you're a part of it by Wednesday.

To Consider for Our Discussion

What questions should students be discussing with each other on the discussion board for this course?

students should think about what we expect to be able to say truthfully about sources from the past
and consider how, even if the sources are clearly lying to you, what kinds of things can we still use it to reveal about the past
what makes something evidence? Is some evidence better than others?
how does evidence survive to the present?
how does cultivating distrust help a historian?

Do

Submit an End of Week Report on Sunday night (each week) to let me know if you have any questions.

Assess

You will receive feedback from the previous week's writing assignment.