Historiography, or "the writing of history," is the examination of how historians have studied a historical topic or event over time. Historiographical papers analyze how history on a topic has been written, including the methods, theories and sources different historians have used to study the same topic, and how they have influenced the conclusions drawn by these historians.

Example: Historiographical Essay: Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground

Writing Historiography is an excellent overview of historiography that includes advice on structuring an historiographical essay, provided by the University of Guelph McClaughlin Library. 

​​​​​​Look for "seed documents" to introduce you to key authors, publications and historiography on your topic 

• Find a relevant book on your topic, the more recent the better. 
  • Historians discuss their own work in relation to  the work of other scholars; what other research and authors are mentioned there?
  • Look for reviews of the book in LibrarySearch or America History and Life. A good review will compare and contrast the book with existing - often influential or seminal - literature in the field. The review won't be peer reviewed, but it will point you toward peer reviewed sources.
     
• Look for a review article (also know as review essays, or essay reviews, or literature reviews) on the topic: Review articles attempt to summarize contemporary scholarship within a field, and will reference (and often compare) it to earlier research.
   
• ***Look for historiographical essays in history specific journals, which includes many historiographical essays. Use the "search inside" function, add historiography to simple keywords describing your topic, e.g., civil rights movement historiography

Follow the Citation Chain Backward: What research/authors informed your author?

• Carefully study the the introduction of the text you have chosen. What sources and scholars are mentioned there? Look for mentions of key or important or seminal works in the field
  • Example: The Forever War: New Perspectives on the Vietnam War, by Marcel Berni
     
• Mine the footnotes and bibliography - what research is cited in these books/articles? Do the footnotes offer any helpful commentary?
   
• Make note of key sources cited in the text, then look for them in LibrarySearch to see if MRU owns them

Follow the Citation Chain Forward: What research has been informed by your author/text?

• Look in Google Scholar for "cited by" results for the titles you discovered above, then limit to more recent citations.
   

• Pursue the citation trails in LibrarySearch to see what other texts a source has cited, and also who has cited it. Note that in LibrarySearch, this is possible only for journal articles, book results are not included. 

• In the database Historical Abstracts, go to the Cited References button at the top of the screen. Enter your title and author name, then follow instructions for viewing cited articles.

MRU LibrarySearch: 

• Enter your topical search terms and add this search query to it:  ("review article" or "review essay" or "literature review" or historiography) 
  Example search: Vietnam War history ("review article" or "review essay" or "literature review" or historiography) 
• Note that you can also lock filters on and off - for example, to eliminate book reviews, or to do multiple searches with the same filters.
   

America History and Life is an important article database for the study of US history - try these tips for finding historiographical articles there:

• Use the drop down menus to search for the word review article, review essay, historiography or literature review in the subject or abstract of articles, along with your topic search terms.
   
• Try searching for variations of the terms historiography, historians, scholars, etc. in the abstract field, along with terms about your topic. This should also retrieve articles that discuss the work of previous scholars.
   
• Try the various advanced search features of this database - for example, limiting search results by historical time period for a topic that spans a very wide time frame, or by geographic area.

History Compass is a history specific journal that publishes many historiographical essays.

• Add the term historiography to simple  topical search terms within History Compass. 
   

Recent dissertations and theses: These can be valuable for their extensive literature reviews and bibliographies, and will often include historiographical discussions.

If our library does not have the journal or book chapter you need, you can request them through the InterLibrary Loan (ILL) service. The service is free, and the library will find the article for you at another university.

MRU Interlibrary Loan Service

or try Google Scholar. Make sure you have the Library Links settings configured to link you to MRU Library.