History Practicum: 1968

Time and Location

Last taught Fall 2014

Not offered in the upcoming academic year.

Description

“Practicum” means doing practical work, and the history department’s practicum is a required course designed to introduce students to the basic practices of historical investigation and to help students develop fundamental skills in critical reading, analytical thinking, historical research, and argumentative writing, all of which are needed to succeed in the major.   These skills include being able to find and interpret various kinds of evidence; read and understand scholarly arguments about historical events; compose lucid analyzes of historical problems; effectively communicate ideas about history, both orally and in writing; and provide constructive feedback on others’ work. Such skills will serve students well in their future endeavors, no matter what profession/occupation they pursue after graduation.   

To gain insight into how historical knowledge is created, this course focuses on events from 1968, including student protests, the Vietnam War, Women’s liberation, and the Civil Rights movement. The course explores how historians think about social change: how do historians analyze the origins and impact of social movements? What kinds of sources have historians uncovered to help them understand such phenomena?  How did these movements “spread”?  How do historians know when/if they are “over”? 

Objectives

  •  To understand the kinds of logic and inductive reasoning that historians find credible (causes, contingencies, coincidences)
  • To learn why dates, facts and details matter so much to historians and how they go about interpreting such information to make an argument about the significance of specific events
  • To appreciate and be able to distinguish among the different kinds of approaches and methodologies that historians use in trying to make sense of historical data
  • To develop the skills in critical reading, thinking and writing that are necessary to succeed in the history concentration
  • To practice some of the basic steps in researching and writing a paper on an historical topic, including identifying a topic, formulating a historical question about that topic, identifying and analyzing relevant primary sources to help answer the question, coming up with an hypothesis (an answer to the question) and “proving” the hypothesis by supporting it with relevant information and persuasive argumentation.
  • To learn how to follow style sheets and instructions for the presentation of work

Syllabus

[Most Recent] Syllabus.pdf