Friday, November 21, 2008

Carl's Working Research Topic

I'm going to do something related to historiography. Historiography is the subject of studying how history is recorded. My specific question will be, "how does the narrative affect the interpretation of history?" I might also look at oral history, but specifically in relation to story telling not oral history in general. The paper is on how the narrative form of rhetoric can influence history, and so falls into the parameters of the class. If that is maybe too specific I could broaden it, and less historiography related, to how genres/types of historical writing (and author) can influence the meaning of history. This would look at primary documents, narratives, textbook like, and academic writing.

2 comments:

Laura Wallace said...

Some questions to consider:

Are you going to focus on a specific time period?

How will you do your research...I think this is a really interesting topic but is there enough information out there that you could look up about it?

XX said...

I'll consider the specific time period depending on how my research unfolds.

I think there's plenty of stuff out there. The problem I might have is getting it. My history professor has already lent me a book on historiography before I had picked my topic. It has a section on narratives along with additional reading. It also has a section of Oral History, also with an additional reading page.