Some thoughts on my historical method

(The disclaimer at the end of my last post still holds.)

A bit of self-reflection on one's work never hurts, so here's a rough outline of how I go about scholarly research and writing, along with some of the rationales for why I do it the way I do. This is largely based on noting what I'm doing right now in preparing to write an essay on how examining gender has altered the practice of history, so this process probably doesn't accurately describe all my research and writing, particularly when it comes to primary sources. But it broadly captures my historical practice.

First, I make a great big list of all the books, articles, essays, primary sources, etc. that could possibly be useful. I typically compile this from bibliographies I already have, looking through library catalogs (Newton, at the moment) and ABC-CLIO, and fiddling around with the Web of Knowledge [subscription required] (here for UK readers; subscription still required).

Once I have my list, I'll start collecting the materials to actually read them. In theory, it'd be wonderful to have every relevant book and journal right on my desk. But as it turns out, having a limited number (say, ten or so) actually stimulates me to get through the books I have with me more quickly so I can go off to the library and get another batch. And I prefer having a hard-copy of journals, rather than reading articles through JSTOR since I tend to get distracted whenever I'm on the internet, though it's typically not a major problem for shorter articles.

Third, I start reading. For the essay I'm doing reading for now, it's not crucial for me to know lots about, say, Ukrainian feminism, so I'll typically only read the introduction and conclusion carefully, skimming the rest (I pay close attention all the way through journal articles, since they're shorter and the argumentation tends to be tighter). When I come upon a passage I think will be useful or that I find interesting, I mark it with a post-it. At this point, I'm inclined to marking anything that strikes me as remotely significant, since the writer's major points might not be clear yet. Better to err on the side of caution.

After I'm done reading the book in question, I'll go back to re-examine the passages I marked. If they still seem significant, I'll copy them, verbatim, into a waiting Word document. My rationale for recording the precise language is two-fold: 1) By copying verbatim, I eliminate the possibility of later placing an author's language into my own work and thinking that I'm paraphrasing. If everything is a quotation, it's easy to know when I'm quoting and when I'm paraphrasing. 2) Language matters. While ideas do exist independent of their expression in language, it's impossible for others to grasp or comprehend them without transmitting them through some language. If I'm going to analyze someone else's thoughts, I'm going to make every effort to analyze their ideas as close to the "original" as I can. Mostly, though, it's the first reason. The second strikes me as an ideological rationalization more than anything else.

A slight digression. By this point, I've created an entry for the book/article in question in EndNote. Footnotes and bibliographies are so much easier when there's software to do all the work. Plus, all the bibliographic information for every source I've used is all in one place. Awfully convenient.

Fifth (provided I'm counting accurately), I go through the notes I've written, looking for major points and themes that emerge. In an ideal world, I wouldn't have any preconceived notions of what I was looking for at this stage. This is never the case, but I try my best to let my framework emerge from the sources rather than imposing an already existing synthesis on my notes. We all have all useful myths. I'll note these major ideas in a separate Word document, along with any supporting quotations.

Sixth, I organize these ideas into an order that makes sense and "goes somewhere."

Finally, I write.

I've, rather deliberately, described these last two steps rather concisely. Not because I don't think they're important or that historians should downplay them, but rather that this is where the "art" of history comes in, and, at the moment, I don't have much in the way of fully-formed ideas about how to go about them.

On one hand, this process probably seems awfully systematic and old-fashioned. Time-consuming, objective, dry sifting of the sources for important information that is then carefully assembled into a coherent narrative or explanation of the past. But on the other hand, I'm struck by just how impressionistic the whole endeavor is. There's no guarantee that I'll catch all the salient points of a given book in my initial reading, nor can I confidently claim that the themes that emerge from my notes are the ones that are "really" there (whatever that might mean). Then there's the question of organizing these ideas and expressing them on my own that I too briefly touched upon above. My own preconceptions and ideas undoubtedly color my selection of what counts as significant or relevant.

That said, I firmly believe that my papers and essays are more than simply "filling in the blanks" of an analysis I've already conceived of. As stated above, I try my best to take my sources seriously and objectively, all the while recognizing that I'm never quite going to succeed. Most importantly, if there's not evidence to back up my central analysis, I do my best to recognize and accept that that analysis is wrong.

So there you have it. It's far from perfect, but it works for me. I'm sure other historians have their own procedures that are far more efficient... I'd be happy to hear about them.