11. Define and explain historiography.

Return to History 8 Historiography Manual Assignments

Historiography is the writing of history through examination of many sources. It is the study of the way history was and is written. According to the Origins Manual "Historiography is writing of history based on a critical analysis, evaluation, and selection of authentic source materials and composition of those materials into a narrative subject to scholarly methods of criticism. When one is studying historiography these are some things that they may think about, who wrote the article, how authentic is the article, what was the interpretation of the history at that time, and how was there evidence compiled. There are some very famous historians that are often studied by historiographers these include; Plutarch, Toynbee, and Darwin. A good example of historiography at work is when Kenneth Stampp studied the diaries of slaves and compiled his findings into a book called The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South.

Sources:

Origins Manual Page 3 For further reading- http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Historiography

-Ben Morris