I am fortunate that in graduate school, I had quite a bit of guidance in writing across the curriculum pedagogy. I have since taught approximately a dozen designated writing-intensive courses. Most history courses are writing-intensive by default, and many history faculty do find themselves teaching writing and research techniques. Here, I am focusing primarily on the strategies I use in survey courses, with a short list of monographs that I have found work well for this purpose.
The writing-intensive courses I have taught have all been capped by design, with the number and length of writing assignments increased over a standard survey. Part of my strategy entails teaching students what good writing is, and that means getting them to think critically about writing and the writing process. And that typically starts with some exercises to get them to recognize bad writing. In the past, I have provided students with a short essay called “How To Say Nothing in 500 Words,” along with a grading rubric, and tell them to read and grade it. The essay is from the 1950s, and a bit dated, so you may need to tailor it a bit. I also like to add a few footnotes, because the astute student will flag an essay lacking in citations as potential plagiarism. If you want to keep your more advanced students who show up in surveys later in their degree program from being bored, you can throw in some mis-formatted footnotes and/or typos, to give them practice at spotting what may be less obvious errors. You can use this exercise as a basis for a discussion with good, versus bad writing. Hearing these things from their peers can go a long way towards getting the less enthusiastic writing student to understand that this stuff actually matters.
The Ben Franklin’s World/OIEHC Doing History series has a pair of podcasts that can also be helpful for getting students to think of writing as a process, rather than something to be suffered through for a grade. Making the process more transparent, and also showing them that even scholars have to think about their writing can help those who want to improve, but who are overwhelmed and don’t really know where to start. (Or, are understandably frustrated by varying expectations across disciplines.) Of particularly use here are the John Demos “How Historians Write History;” Michael McDonnell, “The History of Writing,” and Zara Anishanslin, “How Historians Read Historical Sources.” Overall, the use of podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World has been well-received by students, because it offers transparency to what is often a private, individual process.
As part of this strategy, I also want to expose my students to good, well-written, accessible short monographs. The logic is that reading good writers helps students to recognize what good writing looks like. I have found that there is nothing more effective for teaching students the difference between summarizing and analyzing (a common struggle with novice writers) than having students read books by scholars who have mastered good, accessible writing. Depending on topic, here are some books that I found work especially well for this purpose:
- Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (New York: Harvest, 2003).
- Carp, Benjamin L. Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008)
- Rediker, Marcus. Slave Ship: a Human History (New York: Penguin, 2008)
- Rice, James D. Tales from a Rebellion: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
- Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from African to American Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
I ordinarily try to keep books for surveys at around 200-250 pages, but I will occasionally assign longer books and split them across multiple weeks with some relevant primary sources. Sometimes, they are primary sources that are specifically used by the historian we are reading, as a set-up to teaching the use of primary sources. My goal is to select monographs that model good, clear writing, well-researched, and are not overly complex or technical in their arguments. There are a number of other historians who are beautiful writers, whose monographs are excellent choices for the purpose of modeling good writing and use of historical evidence for students in advanced courses: Annette Gordon-Reed, Woody Holton, Joanne Freeman, Jennifer L. Morgan, Eric Foner, Alan Taylor, John Demos, and Eliga Gould, to name only a few.
My primary writing assignments in survey courses tend toward shorter primary source analyses and slightly longer exegetical pieces. For the primary analyses, they are tasked with finding their own primary source, either from an online source, or one of the university’s online databases. I go over the differences between primary and secondary sources and encourage them to make an appointment with an instructional or reference librarian if they have not had much research experience before. While I have an MLS and have worked in reference, it is important to encourage library use. The students then write a short paper that includes a short historical contextualization of the source, an explanation of the provenance (i.e. the context in which it was created), and an analysis of how they would use the source (including its weaknesses). I want to foster information literacy, as well as practice writing about sources. I encourage them to use course readings to help them formulate their context. In essence, they are learning both how to narrate history (in small chunks), and also how to be analytical.
The exegetical papers are designed to push students to think critically about the book. I typically provide them with a list of prompts they can chose to respond to, or they can come up with their own. In general, these prompts are designed to push students to think about a key historiographical debate in Early American History, as well as the historian’s use of sources. When grading these essays, I provide every student with a rubric (the one we used to evaluate “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words”), and some additional comments that give them 2-3 things to focus on for improvement in their writing. I strive to pick the writing challenges that are likely to give each student their biggest noticeable improvement, if they put in the work. When grading, it is tempting to flag all. the. things, but for students who struggle with writing, it is more likely to overwhelm them. Setting a realistic plan is more likely to result in progress.
And finally, I have also experimented with using Twitter as a tool to teach students precision. As part of their participation, I have students use Twitter’s 140 character limit, to come up with sentences that concisely describe their reactions to course topics. It is not without risk, but can both provide levity to the course, and makes them thing about sentence structure.