What is History?

Many of you may think the answer to that question is relatively easy. History is, we learn in high school, the past. It is a series of names, events, and dates, salted perhaps with some trivia about the everyday lives of people who are now long dead.

However, that definition conflates history with the past.

The past, you see, is what happened. History is the attempt to make sense of the past, to get to know it better.

Historians try to discern both the facts of the past and the truth of the past.

The facts of the past can be difficult to determine with any certainty. After all, even eyewitness accounts of the same event can differ. However, historians often can, by looking at a variety of artifacts from the past—including letters, legal documents, paintings, photographs, architecture, objects, film, and more—get a fairly clear sense of what happened. Those are the facts of the past.

Historians also, however, try to determine the truth of the past. We want to ferret out what mattered to people who lived long ago, and sometimes we can even come to understand what motivated them to make the decisions they did. This, to me, is the interesting part. In this class, we’re going to examine how historians use facts to assemble a narrative—that is, a story—that represents some kind of truth about the past. We’ll also consider how we might use the past to make thoughtful decisions in the present or prognostications about the future.

It’s important to remember that historians are people, and as such, are never fully objective. You and I see the world based on our experiences. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, the kind of education you have, the things you read or watch, where you were raised, and everything that happened to you up to this point in your life shape your perspective on everything else you encounter. Historians call this perspective a “lens” because it’s a filter that stands between us and the world. Our lenses color how we see and interpret the actions of other people, for example, or how we respond to a work of art or to a link a friend shares on Facebook.

It’s important for historians to be aware of their own lenses, though traditionally not all of them have been. In the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, for example, the vast majority of historians employed by colleges and universities were white men, and the books and articles they wrote tended to be of interest to people like them. There weren’t a whole lot of books being published, for example, about women’s domestic contributions to the Civil War or Japanese-American children’s experiences of internment during World War II.

Fortunately, that has changed. All kinds of people now work as professional historians, and they bring diverse perspectives to their writing. Their interests and perspectives have enriched historical scholarship and increasingly influence public history projects like documentaries, museum exhibits, and memorials.

That said, lenses aren’t entirely positive. If we can’t recognize we’re seeing the world through a specific lens, then we might not realize we’re looking at an artifact or document in a way that might be downright biased. We need to remember to consider others’ perspectives in order to broaden our own.

So, for example, during the summer of 2015, people across the U.S. were talking about what the Confederate flag represents. To some Southerners, the flag represents a Southern heritage that comprises a willingness to stand up to authority, a history of gracious hospitality, and a proud “redneck” culture that includes certain leisure activities, sporting events, foods, and dialects, as well as conservative politics and religion.

To others, including those born outside the South, African American Southerners, and most professional historians, the Confederate flag represents a history of rebellion, insubordination, racism, hate crimes, and segregation.

The truth is the Confederate flag represents all those things and more. A conscientious historian writing about the flag would include both perspectives. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t take a side or come to a conclusion about what the Confederate flag represents to the majority of Americans. However, she would acknowledge the complexity of perspectives on the flag.

Considering history has traditionally been a very text-based discipline, historians read a lot. Not surprisingly, then, I’m going to ask you to read a lot for this course. In fact, it’s a good idea to start reading The Devil in the White City now, before the semester gets too busy.

We’re going to be drawing on several different kinds of sources and resources in the course. As a college student, you need to figure out how best to learn from books, from multimedia, from instructors, and—perhaps most importantly, though it might not seem like it at first—your peers. They will prove especially important in this course.

Over the course of this semester, I hope you come to see history as a conversation. Historians ask questions about the past and try to listen for the answers in the stuff of the past—the documents, artifacts, photos, and more that we call “primary sources.” However, historians also are constantly in conversation with one another. We write articles and books to respond to, refute, or build upon the narratives and explanations crafted by other historians. We call these articles and books “secondary sources.”

In this class, we’re going to look at both primary and secondary sources. I’ll show you how to approach each one by asking you questions about them, and by teaching you to ask your own thoughtful and productive questions.

All right. Go ahead and move on to Module 1.1, which asks you to reflect on your own lens. I look forward to reading what you share!