Video Index
- Methods of analyzing historical data. Quantitative vs. qualitative - how to choose methods of data analyses.
- What about accidentally found data? How should those sources be categorized? How should they be looked at in terms of veracity and accuracy?
- Images and truth - what is actually true vs. what is a representation of period culture?
- How historians make sense of data and evidence that might be contradictory.
- Reporting of statistics in historical documents. Are they accurate? What is their purpose? Anonymous refereeing of journal articles - process.
- How does a History department work? What do the professors have in common? Is there a common thread through the department? Is there a concept of a coherrent curriculum? How should history be taught?
- Dealing with gaps in the historian's knowledge base. How much reading is enough? What about people who work in multidisciplinary areas (economics and history, sociology and history, etc.)
- What makes a historian a historian? A PhD? What do historians have in common? Postulate: historians are driven more by narrative than by analysis.
- Why do history at all? What is the difference between a historian and an antiquarian? History offers a unique perspective on the present - ability to take stock of where we are today by means of comparison.
- Easier to make connections to past if the gap of time is less vs. larger gap of time. Generation gap? Grandparents/grandchildren? Individual maintains own history. So far back, no personal connection at all.
- Anachronism vs. Antiquarianism - how does a good historian find a balance?
- Is pain historically constructed? Is pain today the same as pain in ancient times? Is pain a universal human experience, true for all time, or does it change?
- How do historians relate to each other? When disciplines are fractured, how do they communicate?
