Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Anybody ever used Howell and Prevenier?

Next semester I am teaching Historical Methods. It is a 200 level class and the follow on to the Historiography class I taught last semester. I intend to assign two texts. For the first half of the class which will concentrate on written documents I am assigning Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (London: Cornell University Press, 2001). The second half of the class will concentrate on oral history and use Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History Third Edition, (Oxford University Press, 2000). Has anybody had any success using these texts in an historical methods class? If so could they tell me the results in the comments below? I am a bit wary about the Howell and Prevenier even though it is short because it is very Eurocentric. None of its examples come from Africa, although it does have a number from the US, Middle East, and Russia. On the other hand, there really is nothing on historical methodology for undergraduates that uses mostly African examples. I may have to write my own undergraduate textbook on historiography and historical methods for African undergraduates.

No comments: