An English professor of mine once said that in our field “you can say just about anything you like, as long as you say it well.” As an English major, I am fairly comfortable with most aspects of “thinking like a Historian” as discussed in Wednesday night’s lecture and the online readings. Bias is a given in literary work (and one of the things that makes it interesting.) We frequently immerse ourselves in minutia (last semester I wrote a 2,000 word paper about a single word.) Story-telling, context, close reading, incorporation of background knowledge, listening to silences, and a comfortable acceptance of the lack of “right answers” in the universe are all part of the work we do in my department and of the personality that drew me to it.
The thing I do struggle with somewhat is the nitty gritty sourcing and citing side of working with historical documents. The idea of reading the Meta Data first, paying attention to the non-textual pieces of a document and sticking to the corroborated facts is, in part, what sets History apart from Literature. I have little experience with putting together a good, solid bibliography and am concerned about building a story for my soldier without wandering far from the documented facts. This project, particularly, is somewhat intimidating on that account because it seems our facts will be rather sparse. I have had a little bit of experience with primary source documents through a Renaissance literature course I took last semester, so I think that skills I began to develop there will be useful as I dive into this project and I look forward to further developing that skill set. I also feel like in Historical work there is more of a “right answer” that we are ultimately working to uncover. While Literary Criticism does need to be backed up by the text in question, it seems like there is more at stake in being careful to stick to the facts in historical writing and I feel a little bit intimidated by that.
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