Episodes

  • 014 History and Historians in the Public
    Apr 27 2020

    Lonnie Bunch, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Founding Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of how historians do history for the public.

    During our exploration, Lonnie reveals why it’s important for historians to reach multiple audiences with their work and how museums allow them to reach those audiences; The importance of humanizing history; And, how history and the historian’s process helped Lonnie and his colleagues build the National Museum of African American History and Culture and interpret the history within it.

    Show more Show less
    33 mins
  • 013 The History of Genealogy
    Apr 20 2020

    History has a history and genealogy has a history. And the histories of both affect how and why we study the past and how we understand and view it.

    Today, we explore why it’s important for us to understand that the practices and processes of history and genealogy have histories by exploring what the history of genealogy reveals about the early American past.

    Our guide for this exploration is Karin Wulf, a Professor of History at William & Mary and the Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.

    Show more Show less
    42 mins
  • 012 How Genealogists Research
    Apr 13 2020

    History tells us who we are and how we came to be who we are.

    Like history, genealogy studies people. It’s a field of study that can tell us who we are in a more exact sense by showing us how our ancestral lines connect from one generation to the next.

    In this episode of the “Doing History: How Historians Work” seres, we investigate the world of genealogical research with Joshua Taylor, President of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and a professional genealogist.

    Show more Show less
    37 mins
  • 011 How Historians Publish History
    Apr 6 2020

    What do historians do with their research once they finish writing about it?

    How do historians publish the books and articles we love to read?

    This episode of our Doing History: How Historians Work series, takes us behind-the-scenes of how historians publish their writing about history.

    Our guide through the world of history publications is Joshua Piker, a Professor of History at William & Mary, and the Editor of the William and Mary Quarterly, the leading journal of early American history and culture.

    Show more Show less
    46 mins
  • 010 How Historians Write About History
    Mar 30 2020

    How do historians write about the people, places, and events they’ve studied in historical sources?

    We continue our Doing History: How Historians Work series by investigating how historians write about history. Our guide for this investigation is John Demos, the Samuel Knight Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and an award-winning historian.

    Show more Show less
    36 mins
  • 009 How to Organize Your Research
    Mar 23 2020

    What do historians do with all of the information they collect when they research?

    How do they access their research in a way that allows them to find the information they need to write the books and articles we enjoy reading?

    Billy Smith, a Professor of History at Montana State University, joins us as part of our “Doing History: How Historians Work” series to lead us on an exploration of how historians organize and access their research.

    Show more Show less
    37 mins
  • 008 How to Research History Online
    Mar 16 2020

    Not everyone has the means, time, or freedom to travel to archives. So how do historians conduct the research they need to do when they are limited to online resources? 

    To answer this timely question, we turn to Sharon Block, a Professor of History at the University of California-Irvine. She has made use of computers and digital resources to do history for years, which is why she serves as our guide for how to research history online.

    Show more Show less
    46 mins
  • 007 The History of History Writing
    Mar 4 2020

    Historians rely on secondary historical sources almost as much as they rely on primary historical sources.

    But what are secondary historical sources and how do they help historians know what they know about the past?

    Michael McDonnell, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney, guides us through how he used secondary historical sources to investigate the pivotal role Native Americans played in the history of the Great Lakes region and early North America.

    Show more Show less
    42 mins