Category Archives: Writing
First reviews of The Essential Guide to Writing History are out!
Thanks to Contingent Magazine, an excellent general-interest history magazine written largely by contingent scholars, for the first reviews of my book about writing history essays for students: Review by a recent history grad Review by a history professor
Posted in EGWHE, History, Teaching, Writing
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The Essential Guide
Here’s a lovely writeup about my new Essential Guide to Writing History Essays from the CUNY SUM project: https://sum.cuny.edu/writing-history-essays-guide-book-queens-college/
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8 Reasons to Choose The Essential Guide to Writing History Essays
1. There’s a chapter for every common genre of history essay, including response papers, exam essays (short answer IDs and long analytical essays), primary source essays, historiography and imaginative essays + research and thesis-type long research papers. 2. It’s not … Continue reading
Posted in EGWHE, History, Teaching, Writing
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Essential Guide to Writing History Essays – Availability Questions
UPDATE!! The books are now going out smoothly again. Apologies for any hassle you may have encountered! I understand that copies of The Essential Guide are being held up right now by the press and people calling about their course … Continue reading
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The Essential Guide is available for pre-order on Amazon!
This might actually finally be real: get in line now for your copy of The Essential Guide to Writing History Essays on Amazon!
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The Writing Book is Finally in Production!
And there’s a cover! The book is in production and we’re hoping it will be out in time to be browsed at AHA 2020 in NYC (where you should also come find me at my roundtable on teaching writing in … Continue reading
Posted in Profession, Research, Teaching, Writing
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What I’m Reading
Hey look – that’s me: History News Network: What I’m Reading, An Interview with Russianist Historian Katherine Antonova
Posted in GradSchool, History, Profession, Random, Research, Russia, Teaching, Writing
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The Writing Book Is Done!
Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. Carl von Bergen. Illustrierter Katalog der Münchener Jahresausstellung von Kunstwerken Aller Nationen im kgl. Glaspalaste 1891, 3. Auflage, ausgegeben am 24. Juli, München 1891 (Digitalisat der BSB)[/caption] After 18 years and 136,771 words, … Continue reading
Restart
This blog went inactive for a while, so here’s an update to serve as a re-start. Regular posting to resume shortly. I went on hiatus while preparing my tenure dossier, and was very happy just now to edit the home … Continue reading
Posted in Random, Research, Writing
Tagged AnOrdinaryMarriage, GuidetoWritingHistory
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It’s That Time of the Semester
It’s mid-term exam season! These are some checks you should do before turning in any take-home essay exam for a history class. If you have any ambition to do well, you should be at the point where you think you’ve … Continue reading
Revision
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who revise, and those who don’t. The former are writers, the latter are not. This implies that the way to become a writer, is to revise. A lot. And that’s … Continue reading
Rules
Sometimes my students get a little too hung-up on rules, when it comes to writing essays. Mind you, some rules are vital—if your writing is ungrammatical, readers will have trouble following what you are saying. Other rules (which are really … Continue reading
Objectivity
Many students come to college believing that academic writing is objective writing, or is supposed to be, and if it’s not, it’s “biased,” which is another way of saying “bad” or “useless.” There is no such thing as objective writing. … Continue reading
“Summarize”
If you’re a college student you may often be asked to “summarize” a text or film. The tricky thing about this is that people use the word “summarize” pretty loosely, and what is being asked of you might not be … Continue reading
Scrivener: A Love Story
When I was in the early to middle stages of revising my dissertation into a book, I discovered Scrivener. At the time, the Windows version had just been released in Beta. I tried it, and it was still too buggy … Continue reading
