What Did “Doing” History Mean To Me?

What Does It Mean Now?

What is history and how do we do it? History is the study of events, artifacts, ideas, disease, health, and social change to name a few. History really encompasses anything that we as historians can study and define, explain, or find significance in. Usually anything that has political, religious, philosophical, economic and social change is something we as historians fixate on. As historians it is important that we place ourselves in the place of those we are researching. By placing ourselves in their shoes based of time, place and culture it helps us better understand events that happened. Events we study and research each have their own causes and effects. We must apply proper context through lenses to understand the short term and long term effects. These lenses include things such as feminist lenses, Marxist lenses, cultural lenses and so many more. Our goal once analyzing historical evidence through lenses is to help our readers understand. We must use citations and various ideas to help our target audience understand things that may be culturally different from our own. Some people may view certain things in a different light than our own so by using other sources and clearly explaining our evidence strengthens our understanding and others as well. It is also very important to view sources and attempt to see particular biases and find certain counter arguments so we can understand both sides of the coin which only further increases our understanding of historical issues. As historians it is valuable that we are able to understand different people in different times, places and cultures in a historical context and a modern context. Utilizing lenses, and causes and effects help us understand history and allows others to also understand the topics we are passionate about. This is how I feel we do history.