History 302:
Discussion after quiz 2 (Brown, Cult of the Saints)
1. What did you think of this book? Did you like it? Was it hard to read? Clear? Engaging?
2. What questions do you ask when you read a secondary source? You are not passively absorbing information or the story of how things happened but assessing the validity of the author’s claims, how well she or he uses evidence and where they fit into the historiographical tradition.
a. What is the topic? (place, century)
b. What is the argument or thesis?
c. What evidence does the author use to support the argument?
i. Is there a lot of it? (If there isn’t a lot, how did the author proceed)
ii. Do they use diverse sources or close readings of a small number of sources?
iii.Does the evidence come from sources with an inbuilt bias (all men? All elite? All literature? All Christians? All Romans?) and how do we account for that?
iv. Does she/he use the evidence convincingly?
v. Do you think you could make different argument based on same evidence? Inevitably we pick and choose the evidence – can you tell if this is a problem here?
vi. If there isn’t a lot of evidence, then what rhetorical devices does the author use to persuade you?
d. What is the author’s methodology? Is there one dominant approach he or she applies (e.g. statistical) or do they pick and choose (PB – anthropological)
e. What is the author’s place in the historiography? Do they challenge old ideas? Build on them? Apply new methodologies from other fields?
3. Were you convinced? At what points did the author lose you or make you question the argument?
4. Was the argument logical?
5. What do you think would help you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the argument? (Search out the primary sources he/she cites; read other works that respond to this author and note their critiques and also the sources that they use; read review essays in journals (what are the leading journals in the field?); read other works on the area; search for the author and key words on the International Medieval Bibliography online through the library catalogue)
6. What is left to be done? (The author often points out some of these.) If you are interested in this topic, where might you take it? (Different groups, places, times?) What can you take away from this for your own work? (How might you apply these methodologies, for instance?)