John S. Ott
Portland State University
Summer 2005
ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES:
CRITICAL HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
(Due, in class, on Thursday, August 11)
General guidelines – grads and undergrads
Please follow these guidelines when preparing your papers. Basic
guidelines apply to all students; grad students should plan on submitting
papers around 20 pages in length; undergrads, around 15 pp. IMPORTANT NOTICE: THE BASEMENT OF MILLAR LIBRARY, WHICH
HOUSES THE HISTORY SECTION, WILL BE CLOSED FROM JULY 22 - AUGUST 8. THERE
WILL BE NO ACCESS TO THE BOOKS ON THIS FLOOR, DIRECT OR INDIRECT, DURING THAT
TIME. YOU WILL HAVE TO USE SUMMIT TO ORDER MATERIALS FROM NEIGHBORING
LIBRARIES.
- Papers should be typed, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins, and
should have a title (title page optional). Your bibliography, headed
as “References” or “Works Cited,” should appear last and should be paginated.
You must use 12-point font.
- You must follow an accepted citation format (e.g., Modern Language
Association or Chicago; I have no preference, other than that you be consistent).
Footnotes and bibliographical references must conform to accepted styles
of academic use found in those volumes. I highly recommend to everyone
Barbara Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations,
6th (?) ed. (U. Chicago Press, many reprints), which is widely available.
Other useful little tomes are William Strunk and E. B. White's The Elements
of Style (New York: Macmillan, many eds. and reprints), a short and inexpensive
guide to writing, and William Kelleher Storey, Writing History. A Guide
for Students, 2d ed. (Oxford, 2004).
- Your paper must (as any serious history paper should) have a thesis.
What this paper should not be is a subject report, in which you simply lay
out various data and let them stand as interesting in their own right.
Based on your readings and class discussions over the course of the term,
you should be able to formulate a broader argument about the subject and
historical interpretations of it. I am not looking for original research
here, even from the grad students, but you should be able to argue your way
around a particular critical or historiographical issue and defend your argument
with evidence drawn from and supported by your readings.
Late papers
Papers received Friday, August 12, will be deducted one-half grade step
automatically (e.g., from A to B+). I will not accept papers after
5:00 Friday, and under normal circumstances I will not give an “Incomplete”
grade. I must turn in final grades on Tuesday, August 16, thus, I will
not have time to read late student papers. Please consider yourselves
forewarned!
Assignment
During a regular academic term, I would normally assign a full-scale research
paper for HST 454/554. However, in the four weeks of summer term it
makes little sense to expect a satisfying research paper from students.
Therefore, students will do a limited research paper with critical historiography,
using primarily the texts we will read in class, supplemented by a minimum
of four sources from outside the class readings in their papers. I
expect undergraduates to use at least 10 sources, and graduates to use 15,
in writing their essays. These may be monographs, periodical articles,
and/or articles from scholarly encyclopedias (see below for PSU resources).
Using these combined sources, prepare a historiographical essay:
An historiographical essay examines historians’ approaches to a particular
problem over an extended period of time, up to and including the most recent
scholarship. In the context of this course, the historical problems
we have addressed concern visions of the world, legitimate authority, clerical
mores, the subject of 'reform', lay-clerical relations, and a host of other
subjects relating to 'church' and 'state' during the Middle Ages.
In this essay, using the combination of sources read in-class and the (at
least) four external sources you select from outside the class, you must
evaluate the past and current status of a historical question pertinent
to the class, as well as past interpretations of that question, and where
possible note future directions of historical inquiry. (When assessing
a field, think of how Reynolds summarizes previous scholarship and notes
its achievements and shortcomings.) Examples of historiographical
essays can be found in most of the more important journals and periodical
published on medieval topics, as well as in journals of general historical
scholarship like The American Historical Review.
You cannot, and should not try to be, comprehensive. In the end,
after reviewing and critiquing individual articles and monographs (usually
starting with the earliest published and working your way to the most recent),
you should be able to pronounce on the state of the field as a whole, how
its methodologies, criticisms, and conclusions about the field have changed,
note possible furture directions for research, and identify problem areas
with past historical writing.
We will go over this assignment more thoroughly in class.
Resources for medieval research at PSU
I have links to sites of interest from my personal web page (http://www.web.pdx.edu/~ott).
The basic starting point is the ORB (On-line Reference Book for Medieval
Studies, at http://www.the-orb.net/)
site, where all materials on the web pertaining to medieval history are collected.
Two good sites for primary sources and links are The Labyrinth (http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/)
and the Internet Medieval Sourcebook maintained by Paul Halsall (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html).
For a clearing house of different medieval studies links (all disciplines),
as well as many images and texts, see NetSerf (http://www.netserf.org/).
I also highly recommend the site for the so-called Ecole Initiative (http://www2.evansville.edu/ecoleweb/index.html).
The Ecole Initiative aims to create a hypertext encyclopedia of early church
history, and contains a glossary, articles on a hodge-podge of subjects,
and most importantly a large selection of source-texts in translation, many
also located at other sites. For medieval church history, it is a good
starting point.
There are separate sites for the study of women and gender in the Middle
Ages, as well as web sites devoted to aspects of monastic history.
[Note: Be extremely careful when using the web--the sites above are all fine,
but there is a lot of misleading and just plain inaccurate information in
cyberspace. The web should be used only as a supplement to research,
not as its central component. I will check all web sites cited in your
bibliographies when I read your final drafts.]
- On-line reference works and full text databases at PSU
ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (http://www.itergateway.org/) [This
database is AWOL at the moment.]
International Medieval Bibliography (1967- ) (http://www.brepolis.net/) [Click "Enter
Databases"]
JStor (Journal Storage, a full text database) (http://www.jstor.org/cgi-bin/jstor/gensearch)
Project Muse: Scholarly Journals On-line (a full text database) (http://muse.jhu.edu/)
- Bound reference works, journals, and bibliographies at PSU (highly
abridged)
The Cambridge Medieval History, 8 vols. (Cambridge UP, 1957-59).
Note that there is a newer edition to this; we may have individual volumes.
Dictionary of the Middles Ages, 13 vols., ed. J. Strayer (1982-1989).
For use when dealing with technical terms or particular events and people,
or for orientating oneself to a subject. [D114 D5 Gen. Ref. on 2d floor]
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, 4 vols. [DS35.53 .O95
1995]
Encyclopedia of Islam (1913) [DS37.E5] Old but still useful.
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, 2 vols., ed. Andre Vauchez, et al. (Chicago,
2000) [D114 E53 Gen. Ref. on 2d floor]
Encyclopedia of Medieval Church Art, ed. Edward Tasker (London, 1993)
[N7943 A1 T37]
Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. Richard Landes
(Routledge, 2000) [BT891 E53]
Index Islamicus. Quarterly bibliography of publications on Islam. [Z7835
M6].
International Medieval Bibliography. An annual compilation, of which we
have a limited run of volumes (Jan. 1985-1992). Fully indexed. [Z6203
I63]. Also on-line!
Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols. + index. In German. [2d floor
Gen. Ref.]
Medieval England: An Encyclopedia, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, et al. (New York:
Garland, 1998) [DA129 M43]
Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. W. W. Kibler, et al. (1995) [DC33.2.M44]
Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia, ed. John Jeep (2000) [DD157 M43]
Medieval Heresies: A Bibliography (1960-1979), ed. Carl T. Berkhout and
Jeffrey B. Russell (Toronto: PIMS, 1981)
Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Michael Gerli (Routledge, 2003)
[DP99 M33]
Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Christopher Kleinenz, 2 vols. (Routledge,
2004) [DG443 M43]
Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth (Routledge,
2003) [DS124 M386]
Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano, et al. (New
York: Garland, 1993) [DL30 M43]
The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 17 vols. (1967-1996) [BX841 N44]
Religion Index One, 35 vols. (1949- ). American Theological Library Association.
Some missing volumes. [Z7753 A5]
- Selected Periodicals at PSU
American Historical Review (1895- ) [E171. A57]. Most issues feature one
article on the Middle Ages and/or Renaissance; many reviews as well.
Cahiers de civilisation médiévale (1971-pres.) [CB3 C3].
In French.
Church History (v. 42-72, 1973-present). [BR140 A45]. One or more
articles per volume on medieval ecclesiastical history.
Crusades (v. 1-2, 2001- ). On order and not yet available.
Early Medieval Europe (1997-pres.) [E-resource]
Exemplaria. A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies [PN661
E9] (1989-pres.)
Hagiographica. Journal of Hagiography and Biography (v. 1-10, 1994-2003)
[BX 4655.2 H34]
Islamic Quarterly (1961-pres.)
Journal of Ecclesiastical History. One or more articles per volume
on medieval ecclesiastical history; oriented toward British Isles
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (1971-pres.) [CB3 J58]
Mediaeval Studies (1974-pres.) [D11 M44] Primarily devoted to medieval
literature and textual studies; published by the Medieval Institute at the
Univ. of Toronto.
Medieval Prosopography (1993-pres.) [D115 M4]
Medievalia et Humanistica (1970-pres.) [D111 M5]
Past and Present (1952-pres.) Every issue contains at least one article
on the Middle Ages.
Speculum (1926-present). The flagship journal of the Medieval Academy
of America. A complete index was compiled in 1988 of issues appearing
to that point.
Studi medievali, 3rd series [PN661.S83] In Italian, with some articles
in English
Studies in Church History [BR141 S84]. We have selected volumes only.
Most contain several articles on medieval history.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History (1964-pres.)
Traditio (1943-1991, 2001-). Some missing back issues. [D111 T7]
Viator (1970-1992, 2002- ). Annual journal published by the Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA. Some missing back issues.
[CB4.V5]