Researching for a Research Topic

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Digital photo, 2005, Magnifying Glass, Flickr Commons
Question

I am searching for an unique topic for the National History Day 2010-2011. The theme is "Debate and Diplomacy In History: Successes, Failures, Consequences". We have to choose a topic that reflects that theme, however, we can choose if we want an event that has to do with diplomacy or debate. So, I was wondering if there is a way diplomacy and the concept of spies is related. Is there any event in specific having to do with spies and diplomacy that can relate to the theme? Thank You!

Answer

Kudos on getting started on your NHD project. You ask a specific question about whether diplomacy and spies are related, and the shortest answer is yes, indeed, there are many events and issues you could explore that connect to both of these subjects. But before I get specific, let me share some approaches to finding those topics.

Choosing a topic for historical research can be a lengthier process that we expect. While you’ve done the key initial step of identifying a personal interest that connects to the theme, below are some tips to help you answer your own question.

Background Reading
Do some background reading on Spies and Diplomacy. You can start with something as simple as an encyclopedia or Wikipedia entry. Look for references to events, issues and people that you find intriguing or puzzling. Take notes on those specifics.

Using primary sources and secondary sources truly allows you to engage in historical research

As you do this background reading, also look for sources that are cited in the footnotes, bibliography, or “further reading” sections that look interesting or that you can find easily. You will want to read multiple accounts and overviews on these topics to get a more full range of the possibilities for specific topics.

The Importance of Questions
Ultimately, your project, given that is a historical research project, will answer a question. A good research question both bounds and guides your investigation. Indeed, questions are key to all your tasks—while doing background reading, record questions you have. Look for information that seems incomplete or unexpected. Ask yourself, what do you want to know more about?

Use your questions to help you look into a topic more deeply and extensively. Ultimately, you will need to revise and craft your question so it is neither too broad nor too narrow. But this will not happen in a day. Learning more about the topic will help you finalize your question.

Available Sources
One thing you will have to figure out is: are there sources available and accessible that address this topic and question? Remember you can’t do a project on a topic that has no available sources!

You will want to use a variety of sources, including texts, photos, and so on. Using primary and secondary sources truly allows you to engage in historical research, as you investigate the voices of the past while learning about how previous historians have made sense of them. And to do this, you will have to go beyond google and explore archives and library holdings. This may sound daunting, but at the end of this answer are some resources that can help.

Next Steps
So practically, after you do some background reading, your next steps could be:

Start with three specific topics (an event or person) or questions to explore and for each, ask the following four questions:
1. Is it interesting?
2. Are there sources on it?
3. Is there a problem or mystery that can be investigated?
4. What have historians already found out about it?

Spend at most a few hours on each topic. In that time, you will hopefully get a sense of whether there is an interesting question and available sources for that topic. (You will find this out by reading more and looking for sources, both on and off line.) Then eliminate two of the three. But be forewarned, you may also discover a different person, event, or question that you find more interesting and manageable for your project. Be prepared for that possibility. Better to change topic in the early stages, than stick unnecessarily with a dull or overly difficult one because you feel you have to.

A Recursive Process
One thing to keep in mind throughout your research is that it is an iterative process. As you read more about spies, you encounter more options for topics. As you search for sources about a specific topic (for example, French Spy in 1775, Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir), you will have additional questions. At some point, you will need to finalize your topic and question, but in these early stages, be open to changing and tweaking them. And while your topic will become more fixed as you proceed, you may find that the question you answer continues to be refined for months to come as you learn what the sources reveal.

Remember, researching the past is a complex process, these tips only scratch the surface

Finally, remember that espionage is a secret enterprise. If you pick a less current topic, you may find that more sources are available.

Good Luck!

For more information

Here are some other resources that may help you think through the process:

  • Historian William Cronon’s helpful site. Especially helpful for choosing a topic is the section titled “asking good questions.”
  • National History Day’s Eight Steps of Historical Research. Steps 2, 3, and 4 are most relevant to your question.
  • Local resources including school and local librarians, professors, teachers, museums, and historical societies. Use the search function at our "Content” page to find local museums and historical sites (scroll down and look in the right column).

Places you may want to browse to do some background reading and look for topics specific to spies include:

  • The International Spy Museum website: Spend some time with the “From Spy” and “exhibits” sections to find ideas for topics.
  • The National Security Archives: Browse the electronic briefing books for topic ideas. This list includes a variety of topics with accompanying sources, although they can be difficult to read. Also read about the Freedom of Information Act here—one major tool for finding out about espionage after the fact.
  • Use keywords (e.g., spy, diplomacy) in the History Content Gateway search function and explore some of those results.

Diana Laufenberg's What If?

Date Published
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Photo of illustration, Alternate Realities, May 24, 2010, jurvetson, Flickr
Article Body

NOTE: Deemed not acceptable for publication

  • What if Ben Franklin died in his electricity experiment?
  • What if Albert Einstein died before the theory of relativity was released?
  • What if Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were assassinated?
  • What if the Selective Service Act from World War I was not ratified?
  • What if Prohibition was not repealed?
  • What if Joseph Kennedy, Jr. lived?
  • What if JFK did not come to a diplomatic resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis?
  • What if Ronald Reagan did not survive his assassination attempt?
  • What if Britain and the U.S. did not have the Revolutionary War?
  • What if Nat Turner did not get caught?
  • What if Puerto Rico did not become a U.S. territory?
  • What if Amelia Earhart survived her 1937 flight?
  • What if segregation in schools was never overturned?
  • What if Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring did not "catch on" and DDT was never banned?
  • What if Osama bin Laden died in 1980?
  • What if Bill Gates's middle school never bought a computer terminal and made it available to students?
  • What if al-Qaeda was successful in the car bombing of the Twin Towers in 1993?

This is a sampling of questions asked by my juniors in their final project for American History. Counterfactual or alternate history is a fringe topic amongst academic historians. However, as a class activity it challenges students to understand history as more than a series of inevitable events. The What If? project focuses on the specific engagement of the individual student with a deep investigation of the historical record. The steps that take the student through the exercise are challenging, couched in research, and steeped in creativity.

Student Steps for Executing the "What If?" Unit:
  1. Brainstorm for ideas—think back to the most interesting units of study from the past year as a place to start; what are you most curious about in American history? The goal is to establish the Point of Divergence (POD).
  2. Investigate 2–3 PODs for the project.
  3. Choose one POD and fill out the contract for completing the project.
  4. Receive the graphic organizer that serves as a one-stop shop for writing down the pieces of the project. You will fill this out as you work through the project.
  5. Identify at least three primary source documents that PRECEDE your POD. (This establishes students' understanding of the historical record leading up to their PODs.)
  6. Use the National Archives Primary Source Document Analysis Worksheets to analyze your primary sources.
  7. Brainstorm three NEW events to add to the altered timeline that results after the POD.
  8. Create two primary source documents for each new event, to establish the events as 'real.'

    9. Finally, after they complete these eight steps, students use all the pieces amassed on their graphic organizers to pull together multimedia projects that utilize each piece of their evidence, real and created, in order to represent 2011 as it exists after their PODs. Students then post their work on their blogs and each writes a lengthy reflection. They answer questions including

  • What did you like about this project?
  • What was most challenging?
  • Describe the most interesting fact or event that you investigated.
  • How do the actions of individuals impact the historical record?
  • How do systemic changes impact the historical record?
  • How influential can one decision be in the historical landscape?
  • How could this project be improved?
  • If you had it to do over, what would you change about your process for the project?
Student Responses to the Project

Many times over I hear the students say things like, "You have no IDEA how much I know about this topic." They push back when I try to poke holes in their logic with events from the historical record; they cite primary sources when I need more proof. Their reflections often are the most telling records of the learning that occurs during this process. They write:

The thing that I found most fun about this project, was coincidentally the same thing I thought was the most difficult, and that was the fact that there were so many different possibilities. It was very fun to see how different events related to one another, and how changing one could set off this long domino effect about all of history. —Dennis

My favorite part of the actual creating of the project was definitely fabricating primary source documents. I felt so cool, like some kind of all-powerful, primary-source-creating being. —Luna

I liked that I had free control to change something in history. It gave me the opportunity to choose something I was passionate about and change it to my liking. On the flip side, it was hard to pick something to change that would give me the outcome I wanted. —Ayanna

I really liked the hypothetical part of this benchmark, it left a lot of room for creativity. I enjoyed making my primary source documents and making up a different future for our country. However, topic choice was definitely the most difficult thing for me. —Emma

What I like about the project was that it made me do a lot of thinking and I learned a lot of history by going out on my own and researching the information that I needed. —Sam

Learning through Challenge

This unit causes my brain to hurt. This project causes my students' brains to hurt. It puzzles, stumps, and perplexes us. Students choose topics poorly but do not realize it until well into the project. I approve a topic that is 'too big' and we are challenged to find a way out as the project comes to a close. There are contracts, organizers, analysis, predictions, and sweat involved in this project. In the end, each student learns. They learn content in an intense and curious manner. They learn skills with an urgency of 'I need to know this right now.' They learn their limitations and challenges in the most instructive of ways. This unit also pushes me in all these ways and more. It pushes me as a teacher and as a constant student of history to be the type of resource they need throughout this project. This is learning in its most messy and beautiful form.

For more information

In Ask a Historian, John Buescher looks at how complicated (and ultimately unanswerable) questions of 'what if? can be (here, for World War II history).

Ask students to 'stop action and assess alternatives,' suggests teacher educator Lori Shaller. This teaching strategy can help students realize that history, as it was happening, presented its participants with constant 'what ifs?'

Women Taking History: Women's History Month 2011

Date Published
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Photo, Woman with camera, White House, Washington, D.C., Apr. 8, 1922, LoC
Article Body

African American History Month ends, and Women's History Month begins! Take a glance around the internet, and you'll find plenty of resources for teaching women's history—whether it be the Seneca Falls Convention, heroes of the American Revolution and the Civil War, social activists, First Ladies, workers during the World Wars, jazz and blues stars, or presidential candidates. You'll find photographs of many of these women, too—working in factories, on the campaign trail, helping the wounded, conducting scientific experiments.

But who takes these photographs? Who makes these images that become the records of history? Aren't the people behind the camera as significant as the ones in front of it?

Of course they are, though they can easily be forgotten. When we look at photographs of Amelia Earhart, we rarely ask who took the photo. When we're struck by a picture of New York during 9/11, do we ever ask if it was snapped by a man or a woman?

Explore women's history behind the camera this Women's History Month. What have women chosen to capture on film, as they record and live through history?

Taking Photos and Making History
  • The Kansas Historical Society tells the story of Alice Gardiner Sennrich, a professional photographer early in photography's commercial history. Born in 1878, Sennrich purchased a Kansas photography studio in 1902, and ran it throughout her life, including after her marriage. Recognized by the National Association of Photographers, she was also active in the Photographers Association of Kansas (PAK), an organization that had active female members since its founding. You can hear more about Sennrich in this podcast by the Society.
  • During the Great Depression, the Federal Government gave photographers, both men and women, work documenting the lives of ordinary U.S. citizens and the social conditions of the day. The Library of Congress's American Memory collection From the Great Depression to World War II: Photos from the FSA-OWI preserves more than 150,000 of these photographs. Try browsing the collections' black-and-white and color photos by creator. Look for women's names and work—and remember to check names with only a first initial and a surname! These may be women, too. Giving only a first initial was (and remains) one way to avoid being judged (at least in print) by gender.
  • Photographs aren't always taken as documentation. Sometimes, they're carefully composed as art. The online archive Women Artists of the American West showcases the artwork of 19th- and 20th-century Western women. Photography exhibits include photographs by white women of Pueblo arts and crafts workers (many of them women), taken from 1900 to 1935; modern art photography by Native women; landscape photography by Laura Gilpin (1891–1979); and 1972–1997 lesbian photography (some pages contain nudity). The Women in International Photography Archive, collects essays on more than 25 women photographers.
  • For an example of a modern photographer using her work as part of a political journalistic career, check out Jo Freeman.com. A writer, lawyer, and activist, Freeman's site features her photographs of Democratic and Republican conventions, marches and protests, New York after 9/11, the Chicago riot following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 campaign for the presidency.

If photographs aren't enough, branch out into art, journalism, fiction and nonfiction writing, and other ways of recording and responding to the world, all meant for the public eye. What have women created and documented? What were their (myriad, uncountable) reasons for crafting "snapshots" and composing reactions? Women make history when they're behind its lens, as well as in front!

Further Resources

Looking for more resources? Take a quiz on women in history, with our weekly quiz archive! See how well you do on quizzes with subjects like women in the West. Search our Website Reviews, as well—we've reviewed and annotated more than 200 websites with women's history content.

If you'd still like more, these organizations feature content and pages created just for Women's History Month:

For more information

Speaking of photographs, the Smithsonian is looking for help identifying women in photographs with missing or incomplete background information. Take a look and see if you can help out!

Finding Local History Resources

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Photo, The old neighborhood. . . , Christopher Frith, 1998, NYPL
Question

I have been unable to find teaching materials and/or curriculum for the teaching of local history. Our small town has a very rich history, including being the place where Lewis and Clark joined together to form their expedition, and the town that is the oldest American town in what was the entire Northwest Territory. It is also the site of the only home that George Rogers Clark ever owned. We also have extensive archaeology of Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods.

We would like to incorporate teaching our town's history into the curriculum of grades K-5, but find no curriculum help or materials to do so.

Answer

Learning history through a local lens can be an engaging and powerful way to study the past. It sounds like your town (in Indiana, I presume?) has a rich history to mine with elementary students. For curricular resources, first try local museums, libraries, and historic sites. Their local collections often have interesting and evocative primary sources and orienting secondary material that can be curricular building blocks.

Some of these local institutions even provide lessons, resources, and field trips designed especially for the K-5 classroom. See this site's Museum and Historic Sites search for locating institutions near your community.

But even without specific curriculum, repositories of historic photographs, documents, maps, and other sources can get you well on your way to creating classroom plans.

Here are some tips for creating local history curricula for the elementary classroom:

Remember your state's standards—these can help you identify important topics, themes, and concepts at each of the grade levels. (Click here to search state standards.)

Timelines and maps are invaluable tools for helping students of all ages study history. From using a timeline to understand photographs that show a changing town landscape to using maps to understand settlement patterns, these tools help young students locate primary sources in concrete ways and read and analyze these sources. Connections between local and regional or national events can also be more transparent for students when timelines and maps are compared. For instance, compare a timeline of national events with a timeline of local events to help students see these connections.

Guiding questions are important. Use them to help students read and look carefully at sources and consider the significance of what they see.

Remember that walking tours can help students engage with the past. Seek out local history experts to help you identify promising sources, stories, and sites.

Use existing curricula and lesson ideas on this site to help you plan questions, activities, and lesson structures. For example, see this teaching guide about reading historic photographs closely and using them as doors into larger historic questions, or this video for a teacher who uses walking tours to help students learn their local colonial history. And don't forget to explore our Primary Source Guides. The entry about the National Parks Service may be especially helpful.

Other national organizations also provide resources for teaching local history. See the Regional Education Resources of the National Archives, National History Day's state pages, and a list of resources from the Library of Congress's American Memory site. Finally, the New England Flow of History project has some teaching ideas and resources that can be helpful.

Please come back and tell us about your successes and challenges—this is a topic that is important to many educators!

A Patriot's History of the United States, Part Two: Reinterpreting Reagan and the Cold War Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/04/2008 - 14:04
Description

Professor Larry Schweikart argues that most popular textbooks today show a liberal, left-wing bias. He reexamines specific periods in U.S. history from a conservative perspective, focusing particularly on the slave market within the U.S. and then on Ronald Reagan's presidency and his role in ending the Cold War.

This lecture continues from A Patriot's History of the United States, Part One: Liberty and Property in the American Past.

A Patriot's History of the United States, Part One: Liberty and Property in the American Past Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/04/2008 - 14:04
Description

Professor Larry Schweikart argues that most popular textbooks today show a liberal, left-wing bias. He reexamines specific periods in U.S. history from a conservative perspective, focusing on Ronald Reagan's presidency and the colonization of the original colonies, particularly as documents from the latter discuss property rights.

This lecture continues in A Patriot's History of the United States, Part Two: Reinterpreting Reagan and the Cold War.

African American History Month 2011

Date Published
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Photo, Navy baseball team--Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, Sept. 1944, NARA
Photo, Navy baseball team--Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, Sept. 1944, NARA
Article Body

It's February! Resources throughout the web stand ready to provide you with lessons and primary source materials for Black History Month (also known as African American History Month), but African American history stretches far beyond the confines of one month and the narrative litany of a handful of cultural heroes. Maybe you want to go beyond Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Jackie Robinson. What stories can you uncover beyond the headlining stories textbooks provide? Remind your students of the complexity of African American history with these resources.

Documenting African American History
  • The New York Times' lesson plan "Stories to Tell: Curating an African-American History Exhibit" introduces students to the difficulties in curating a large museum—or even just one exhibit. How can curators for the developing Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture create a museum that honors all of African American history?
  • Search the Carnegie Museum of Art's Teenie Harris Archive Project for photographs taken by photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris for the Pittsburgh Courier. Published from 1907 to 1965, the Courier was a major African American newspaper, and these photographs show Harris's journalistic perspective on Pittsburgh events of all scales. Use the keywords "Teenie Harris," along with others related to your topic of interest, to find images of life at school, home, community events, church, work, and out on the town.
  • The Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Portraits of a City provides a similar photographic record of a place. The Scurlocks ran studios in DC for much of the 20th century, documenting African American life in the nation's capital.
  • The Library of Congress's American Memory collection The African American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 focuses on the themes of slavery, politics, and religion. Its wide range of primary-source documents, including thousands of newspaper articles, can help students construct a view of just what the collection's title implies.
  • High-quality photographs in the National Archives and Records Administration's "Pictures of African Americans During World War II" could give students a look into another kind of community—one that formed both overseas and on the home front during war.
Looking for More Suggestions?

If none of these resources fit into your curriculum or spark your interests, there's plenty where they came from. Search our Website Reviews using the topic "African Americans," and you'll turn up close to 300 websites, on topics ranging from Marcus Garvey to the construction of race to Seattle's Black Panthers to sheet music by and about African Americans. Or test your African American history knowledge in our weekly quiz feature! You and your students can take online quizzes on African American baseball players and other athletes, the historical accuracy of the film Glory, Jim Crow laws, and foodways.

You can also explore the African American History Month pages of history and educational organizations, including:

Documentary Heaven

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Photo, Documentary Challenge, 26 April 2004, guttersnipe.76, Flickr
Annotation

Documentary Heaven collects free-to-view documentaries from around the web. While making a wide variety of content available in one location, it should be noted that quality may vary widely. Documentary Heaven supports independent documentary makers. As a result, linked videos may or may not provide trustworthy information, and some cover topics or have collected user comments which may be considered inappropriate. Educators should decide on the merit of a particular film after previewing it personally.

A natural inclination is to jump to the history section. However, this section is devoted to all of history, so you will have to comb through to find U.S. history topics. The only section uniquely devoted to U.S. history is the 9/11 category. Further browsing issues arise as it becomes apparent that, for example, the biographical documentary of a deceased artist may be located within both the artist and biography categories, but not the history category, although the artist is undoubtedly part of history.

These detriments aside, the site provides access to a wide variety of films and topics. Consider simply reading through the site's list of titles rather than browsing category by category. If you are willing to invest time to locate topics of interest or if you know a precise topic that you wish to search, the site holds great potential.

Film and Video
documentaries
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Real or Fake

Description

Wes Cowan of PBS's History Detectives provides a brief overview of points to consider when trying to determine the authenticity of a perhaps-historical document.

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