Je retiens : «History is not merely about content (facts), it is also a particular and systematic methodology, a distinctive way of reading, thinking, questioning and analysing. »

Last week, I delivered the introductory lecture for a second year undergraduate module, ‘Doing History’, and for various tedious reasons, I also recently spent some time reading, reflecting on and writing about why I consider history to be valuable. In the process, I conducted an entirely unscientific google trawl, trying to gauge what the general perception of the discipline was. I was struck by the fact that the popular or ‘commonsense’ perception of history encourages a rather limited assessment of its social and intellectual usefulness. What exactly do I mean?

via What is history for? Or: Doing history/ thinking historically | the many-headed monster.