HIS 400 - S04 Subaltern History [Fall 2024]

You need a topic

• that you care about;
• that addresses a historical question;
• for which you can identify primary sources that are accessible to you; and
• that's the right size for a 30-page paper due on December 13.

To start with, what questions have other historians asked about your general topic? If you are writing about something that already has been addressed by other historians, it can be very useful to survey that literature and ask yourself which approaches are interesting to you.

And remember: history is about change over time. Simply describing the events of the past isn't very interesting, unless there is disagreement about what actually happened.

In your junior seminar, you'll be introduced to many different ways of writing history. Some approaches have a long history of their own, like biography and the history of nations. Others are new, like transnational history or the study of race and gender in history. History has established subdisciplines, with their own ways of thinking about particular questions. So think about what you are interested in:

• Political history; the history of nations; the history of relations between nations; transnational history; history of government and administration; the history of power
• Economic history; trade, finance, taxation
• Social history; the history of particular social groups (workers, the poor, peasants); history of gender, race, minority and marginal groups; relations between social groups
• Intellectual history; the history of ideas, education
• History of religion; the history of religious beliefs, practice, and the structures of organized religion
• Cultural history; the history of elite culture and of popular culture; material culture and consumption; art in historical context
• Environmental history; the history of the built environment (cities); the history of the natural environment
• Biography (the history of an individual); prosopography
• Historiography (the history of the writing of history)

Do not choose a topic for which there is no secondary literature and no primary sources that are accessible to you. Some questions to ask yourself, your advisor, and me:

• Have other historians found your topic worthwhile? It's better not to choose a topic on which there is no scholarly secondary literature whatsoever. (Possibly what you have is a good Ph.D. dissertation topic, but more likely it is not feasible for some other reason.)
• Are the sources for your topic written in a language you can read?
• Are the sources for your topic published, or unpublished? Are they available in print, on microfilm, or online?
• Are the sources for your topic available at Princeton? If not, can you borrow them (through Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan) from another library?
• Are the sources for your topic available somewhere else nearby? Can you travel (on a Friday, or over fall break) to another library or archive, or do you have other commitments that would make that impossible?