Course talk:HIST317

Here is a suggested sample document analysis. Some general questions to ask as you read and examine any historical document in this course.

  1. Who wrote the document?  Until you know this, you really know very little about the document. Sometimes you can figure out the author from the document itself. Was the author a political or private individual? Was he educated or not?  Was it a joint author?  Was there no single author, but is the document something that evolved over time?
  2. Who was the intended audience?  This will tell you about the author's use of any specific language or concepts and the knowledge that he assumed on the part of the audience.  It is no revelation that a document intended for a five-year-old child will be different than something intended for a mature adult.
  3. What is the story line?  What is going on in the document?  What is the information in the document?
  4. Why was the document written?  Everything is written for a reason. Is the document just a random note, or a scholarly thesis?
  5. What type of document is this, or what is its purpose?  A phone book is different than a diary, and both are different than an inscription on a grave. Thus, one can expect to extract different kinds of information from different kinds of documents.
  6. What are the basic assumptions made by the author?  For example, did the author assume that the reader could understand certain foreign or engineering terms in the language?
  7. Can you believe this document?  Is it reliable? Is the information likely or reliable?
  8. What can you learn about the society that produced this document?  This is what you will be concentrating on in this class. All documents reveal information about the people who produced them. It is embedded in the language and assumptions of the text. Your task in this course will be to learn how to "read," or analyze, a document to extract information about a society. You might wish to analyze each document in terms of various aspects of a society (economic, political, religion, social structure, culture, etc.).  This is not something that comes easily, but with practice you will be able to uncover what is really in a document.
  9. Finally, What does this document mean to you?  You might also consider this as the "so what does it mean to me" question, but it still requires an answer even if the answer is going to be a resounding, "who cares.".