Reading Historiography - Department of History, UC Berkeley

"The 'underclass' debate has moved in three – sometimes overlapping – directions. The first,
and most influential, focuses on the behavior and values of the poor, and the role of federal
social programs in fostering a culture of joblessness and dependency in inner cities …. The
second offers structural explanations for inequality and urban poverty …. A third explanation
focuses on politics, emphasizing the marginalization of cities in American social policy,
particularly in the aftermath of the urban unrest and racial conflict of the 1960s …. [W]hat is
largely missing from the 'underclass' debate is the perspective of history. My examination of
Detroit in the quarter-century after World War II suggests …"
What is the question (or questions) to which the work of historiography offers an answer?
Historians arrive at their projects in a number of ways. Sometimes they identify (or stumble
upon) a curious or anomalous set of circumstances or confluence of historical events. Other
times, they are driven by more presentist concerns - a current issue or event whose historical
lineage they'd like to trace. Still other times, perhaps most of the time, they simply have an issue
or event from the past about which they'd like to know more. Starting points such as these, in
turn, give rise to a research question or questions to which historians propose to offer an answer
(or, more accurately, an interpretation or argument). Sometimes historians make that question
explicit to their readers, usually in the introduction. Sometimes it's only implicit. Identifying the
question to which a work of historiography proposes to give an answer often provides an
important leverage point for grappling with the onslaught of historical details that follow. Here is
an example to illustrate:
Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism,
1930-1965 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 1:
When I ask students to describe the 1950s, they offer two types of adjectives and images.
Conservative, suburban, apathetic, they begin. Stay-at-home mothers in aprons, fathers
coming home from work, teenage girls in poodle skirts at high school dances – these are
some of the images that come to the minds of those reared on reruns of Happy Days and
Leave It to Beaver. But many of these same students also associate this period with the early
years of the civil rights movement: they use adjectives like rebellious, courageous, and
dignified to describe Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, the "Little Rock Nine" in
Arkansas, and other icons of grassroots activism.
I began this book with similar associations. It was not clear to me what they had to do
with each other. It was difficult to understand why, what Betty Friedan later called the
"feminine mystique," flourished in the same era that the civil rights movement gained
momentum. How was it that liberal ideas about race relations gained ascendance in the same
period that conservative ideas about gender relations seemed so entrenched?
What is the thesis? The thesis is the analytical heart and soul of any work of historiography.
Thesis statements almost always appear somewhere in the introduction. They may vary in length
from a few sentences to a few pages. They may be straightforward or multifaceted, comprised of
a number of different strands or sub-theses. Sometimes the historian cues you into the thesis
with statements such as "I argue," or "I contend," etc. Other times the thesis is less explicitly
presented. Whether explicit or implicit, the thesis is the interpretive posture assumed, argument
to be made, position to be defended, etc., in its most pithy analytic articulation. If history is, as
an old adage goes, philosophy reasoning by example, then the thesis statement of any historical
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