Research Guides
Historiography
On the Writing of History by
Written by one of the most eminent, (if sometimes disputed) historians of the 20th century, this book, originally published in 1939, gives guidance to the would-be historian on historical sources, research and evidence. Although inevitably a product of its time, this volume nonetheless remains one of the most comprehensive guides to historiograhy.
Publication Date: 2016
What?
Historiography examines a collection of historical writings on a particular topic and analyzes the different approaches to and interpretations of the topic. It also recognizes the major thinkers and arguments surrounding the topic as well as any major changes that have risen in approaching the topic over time.
Why?
Historiography operates as a dialogue between historians that emphasizes the main points of the discussion and informs the reader of the most important facets of the dialogue and in this way demonstrates the author's authority on the topic.
How?
It is important to become familiar with your topic on a broader scale. Your historiography should then establish and connect the major thinkers and arguments on your topic.
(adapted from: http://www.trentu.ca/history/workbook/historiography.php)
Why Use Books?
Books are a great resource to use when searching for general information on a topic. They are useful for understanding a topic in its context and provide summaries of existing research as well as offer a historical perspective.
Books are best found using the Search feature in our Library Catalogue.
Library Catalogue
Scholarly books are a great resource - watch this video to learn how to recognize one. (2:29)
This video explains how to enter keywords into the catalogue to find books on a particular topic. (1:13)
This video shows you how to search by book title using the library catalogue. (0:47)
e-Books of Interest
The American New Woman Revisited by
In North America between 1894 and 1930, the rise of the "New Woman" sparked controversy on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world. As she demanded a public voice as well as private fulfillment through work, education, and politics, American journalists debated and defined her. Who was she and where did she come from? Was she to be celebrated as the agent of progress or reviled as a traitor to the traditional family? Over time, the dominant version of the American New Woman became typified as white, educated, and middle class: the suffragist, progressive reformer, and bloomer-wearing bicyclist. By the 1920s, the jazz-dancing flapper epitomized her. Yet she also had many other faces. Bringing together a diverse range of essays from the periodical press of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Martha H. Patterson shows how the New Woman differed according to region, class, politics, race, ethnicity, and historical circumstance. In addition to the New Woman's prevailing incarnations, she appears here as a gun-wielding heroine, imperialist symbol, assimilationist icon, entrepreneur, socialist, anarchist, thief, vamp, and eugenicist. Together, these readings redefine our understanding of the New Woman and her cultural impact.
Framing Our Past by
With introductory essays by historians, Framing Our Past emphasizes the lived experiences of women: their participation in many areas of social life, such as social rituals with other women; organized sporting clubs; philanthropic, spiritual and aesthetic activities; study and reading groups. The authors then focus on women's roles as nurturers and keepers of the hearth B their experiences with family management, child care, and health concerns. They consider women's varied contributions within formal and informal educational systems as well as their instrumental political role in consumer activism, social work, peace movements, and royal commissions. Canadian women's shaping of health care and science through nursing, physiotherapy and research are discussed, as is women's work, from domestic labour to dressmaking to broadcasting to banking. Using diary accounts, oral history, letters, organizational records, paintings, quilts, dressmaking patterns, milliners' records, posters, Framing our Past offers a unique opportunity to share what is rarely if ever seen, offering insights into the preservation and interpretation of historical sources.
Publication Date: 2001
The Practice of U. S. Women's History by
In the last several decades, U.S. women's history has come of age. Not only have historians challenged the national narrative on the basis of their rich explorations of the personal, the social, the economic, and the political, but they have also entered into dialogues with each other over the meaning of women's history itself. In this collection of seventeen original essays on women's lives from the colonial period to the present, contributors take the competing forces of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, and region into account. Among many other examples, they examine how conceptions of gender shaped government officials' attitudes towards East Asian immigrants; how race and gender inequality pervaded the welfare state; and how color and class shaped Mexican American women's mobilization for civil and labor rights.
Publication Date: 2007
Reading Canadian Women's and Gender History by
Although Canadian women’s history is now nearly forty years old, no volume exists that reflects explicitly upon the field’s evolution and assesses its historiographical context. This retrospective is not merely summative; the essays in this collection are analytical engagements with the current state of the field, which draw on its rich past to generate new knowledge and propose innovative avenues for inquiry. The dual purposes of this collection are to contemplate the field’s past and to contribute productively to its future. These thirteen original essays are written by scholars at all career stages. The diversity of these authors’ perspectives illustrates the contributions that Canadian scholarship has had in international dialogues about women’s and gender history and that it continues to be a vibrant area of research. The collection includes chapters about the principal sub-fields in Canadian women’s and gender history, including specialized chapters on Québecois, Indigenous, Black, and immigrant women’s histories, religious history, labour history, war and society, history of sexuality, the history of reproductive labour and reproductive justice, two essays on the history of feminism that, taken together, cover the period from 1850 to the present, and a thematic essay on the colonial period.
Publication Date: 2019
