Doing History

Historians research history in archives.

But how do you gain access to one? And how do you use an archive once you find that it likely contains the information you seek?

In this fourth episode of our "Doing History: How Historians Work" series, we investigate how archives work with Peter Drummey, an archivist and the Stephen T. Riley Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

How did enslaved African and African American women experience slavery?

What were their daily lives like?

And how do historians know as much as they do about enslaved women?

Today, we explore the answers to these questions with Jennifer L. Morgan, a Professor of History and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and our guide for an investigation into how historians research history.

How did average, poor, and enslaved men and women live their day-to-day lives in the early United States?

Today, we explore the answers to that question with Simon P. Newman, a Professor of History at the University of Glasgow and our guide for an investigation into how historians choose their research topics.

History is about people, but what do we know about the people behind history's scenes?

Who are the people who tell us what we know about our past?

How do they come to know what they know?

Today, we begin our "Doing History" series with an episode about historians and why they do the work that they do featuring Rebecca Onion, History Writer at Slate.com and visiting scholar at Ohio State University, Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Thomas Jefferson Chair of American History at the University of Virginia, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and 300th Anniversary University Professor of History at Harvard University, and Caroline Winterer, Director of the Stanford University Humanities Center and co-author of the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project.

Doing History Series

This episode is part of the "Doing History: How Historians Work" series.

"Doing History" episodes will introduce you to historians who will tell you what they know about the past and reveal how they came to their knowledge.

This series originally aired on Ben Franklin's World with host Liz Covart. Both shows are produced by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.