Seminar in Historical Methods
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this introduction to the methods historians use to interpret the past, built for the university's history majors and minors. The seminar splits into two halves: archives and interpretation. Students visit one or two local archives, talk with working archivists, and build their own archive documenting life at MIT in 2003, working through what counts as an archive and what its limits are. The second half turns to interpreting those findings through a set of readings organized around history and national identity in different parts of the world since the late eighteenth century. Materials include the syllabus, readings list, and assignments as published by MIT; there is no certificate, and the course is free to study at your own pace through MIT OpenCourseWare.