Mailbag
How Do You Do Research For A Podcast?
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Any historian knows that it is crucial to write to your audience. I’m writing to two audiences.
The mailbag is for all your questions about the nuts and bolts of doing history. How to research a topic, utilize an archive, navigate an issue in the classroom, make sense out of a primary (or secondary!) source—broad or narrow, solemn or goofy, hit us up with your question and we’ll answer it, or find someone who can.
Any historian knows that it is crucial to write to your audience. I’m writing to two audiences.
Just because something is cool doesn’t mean it belongs in an archive.
Frankly, even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.
“I want my reader to enjoy reading it as much as I want to challenge myself writing it.”
A single choice can branch out to infinite realities.
If an academic couple can’t get a partner hire, they’re faced with a life-changing choice.
In both versions of this question, the assumption is that there’s a pure history out there somewhere, perhaps with answers in the appendix.
Publishing off the tenure-track is possible, but not without its challenges.
For this historian, the key in telling her subject’s story was to marry the personal with the public, as honestly as it might be possible to do.
Start at the beginning. Work towards the present day. This sounds simple, but it often gets overlooked.
Many who reach for this cliché want it to function as a shield against judgment altogether.
Packs of historians roam the streets, name tags flapping in the breeze, only to disappear into hotel conference rooms for hours at a time. What are they doing in there? And why?
Why do historians go to archives? Hasn’t everything already been digitized?
In general, academic writing doesn’t earn you anything, and most of the time, it costs you.
Their jobs and salaries may differ, but you should still call them “Professor.”