teaching resources — News and Notes

Historiography (2): Taking Notes Using the "Historiography Worksheet"

There are many different ways to introduce students to historiography. One of my primary tools is a "Historiography Worksheet." The purpose of the Historiography Worksheet is threefold. First, it teaches students about the complexities of historiography--as both a practice and a field of study. Second, it provides a framework for classroom discussion. Third, it offers students a standardized note-taking format that helps students develop their skills analyzing and synthesizing historical arguments.

TeachingJason KellySeptember 7, 2021historiography, history, research methods, research, teaching, teaching resources, note-takingComment

Historiography (1): Introducing Historiography

Historiography is essential to the historian's craft, so it is worthwhile spending some time understanding what it is as field of inquiry, how historians use historiography in their work, and what historiographical techniques might be valuable to the practicing historian.

Blog Posts, TeachingJason KellyAugust 15, 2021historiography, teaching, teaching resources, podcastComment

Rights-Making and Rights-Taking: A Module on Stonewall and Intersectionality

In the end, I decided to frame rights in the context of "rights-making" and "rights-taking." By "rights-making," I asked the students to reflect on the fact that civil, human, constitutional, etc. rights are always made in a historical context. In practice, rights are never constant. They are negotiated, claimed, and fought for. By "rights-taking," I wanted them to think about how, in these historical contexts, rights are taken (i.e. claimed) by activists or taken away by those with power. Rather than working from a history-of or a taxonomical approach to rights, we would focus on rights as an assemblage of ideas, concepts, social relations, symbolic forms, claims, laws, practices, and materialities in motion.

TeachingJason KellySeptember 23, 2020teaching, teaching resources, intersectionality, LGBTQ+, oral history, historical memory, filmComment

Digital Audio for Public Historians (3): Microphone Types

We’ve finally gotten to microphones. A quality microphone might be the most important factor in creating a good recording rather than a bad recording.

I have already talked about onboard microphones a bit in the first entry in this series on recording devices. That’s pretty much all I have to say about built-in mics. They’re fine for getting the job done—if content is more important than quality.

For many public history applications, we would much prefer to have great content and a quality recording. To do this, we need good microphones that are set up so that they record what we want them to record and ignore what we want them to ignore.