088 The History of History Writing (Doing History)

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2016

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Historians rely on secondary historical sources almost as much as they rely on primary historical sources. But what are secondary historical sources and how do they help historians know what they know about the past? Michael McDonnell, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney, guides us through how he used secondary historical sources to investigate the pivotal role Native Americans played in the history of the Great Lakes region and early North America. Doing History Series This episode is part of the "Doing History: How Historians Work" series. “Doing History” episodes will introduce you to historians who will tell you what they know about the past and reveal how they came to their knowledge. Each episode will air on the last Tuesday of each month in 2016. This series is part of a partnership between Ben Franklin’s World and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/088 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Ben Franklin's world and the Doing History series comes from the
0:04.3	Omaha Institute of Early American History and Culture. As we've been exploring in
0:08.9	the doing history series, historians spend a lot of time conducting the research they need to write the history books and articles we love to read.
0:16.0	One way the Omaha Institute helps to support this painstaking work is with its fellowships.
0:22.0	Presently the OI offers seven different types of
0:24.9	fellowships to support scholars at all career levels. To find out more about
0:29.4	how fellowships assist scholars with their work I spoke with Mary Beth Norton, an award-winning
0:34.8	historian at Cornell University and the author of five history books.
0:38.6	It's hard to say how long it took me to do the witchcraft book because I was thinking
0:42.4	about it for many years
0:43.7	before I actually started to do the research.
0:46.4	I read all the secondary sources of course, but the actual research for the book once I decided
0:52.3	to do it took me about five years
0:53.8	which is very short for me
0:55.1	Liberty's daughters took me eight years founding mothers and fathers took me
0:59.6	sixteen years
1:00.8	my most recent book separated by their sex took me about five or six years.
1:05.0	Fellowship have been very important to me when I've been writing.
1:09.0	In fact, I've written most of my books while I've been on fellowship.
1:12.0	When you have a fellowship, you're free from teaching and from other kinds of university obligations.
1:17.5	Oftentimes you can leave your normal place of residence, go somewhere else, which means you can truly focus on your work.
1:24.7	This is exactly the kind of work that Institute Fellowship support.
	...

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