A lot of people love history. Some people are fascinated from a young age, while others discover it in retirement. A degree isn’t required to be an historian or to enjoy history, though some people do have them. There are a few different ways to approach historical research and writing. There isn’t a right or a wrong way to do history; knowing which you are taking can help inform and streamline your processes, though. So today, I am chatting about academic history vs pop history! We are going to look at the hallmarks of each, topics, and how to approach them.
I personally tend to have an academic approach to history. I have two undergraduate and a Master’s degree in history, and academic history is where I feel comfortable. However, some of my favourite historical works and historians work in pop history. And you will notice, this blog very much slants to pop history over academic history. (I have a more casual tone, but I tend to include suggested readings, and cite any direct quotations). I don’t believe that one is better than the other, and both have a very important place in the study of history.
Academic History
Academic History Tone:
Academic history will typically have a formal tone. This doesn’t mean that it is boring, but it is not casual. There is little use of the first and second person (I and you), and very few contractions. And unless you are discussing the history of it, colloquial slang should be left out. It isn’t always the easiest tone/ writing style to read, as it does assume that the reader is familiar with historical writing.
Academic History Topics
Academic history works tend to fall into a few categories. There are broad spanning surveys, that are either covering a broad topic that hasn’t been looked at or providing an updated text. (If you have taken a history class at the secondary or post-secondary level, you have probably at least flipped through one of these.) There are also hyper specific studies, looking at a specific person, event, or subgroup. In many cases, these are reworked PhD dissertations that they have published afterwards, or are the result of their very specific research. They are written for a specific audience, and do usually require prior knowledge.
Academic History Research
All solid historical writing has research behind it, but there are some differences. Academic history largely requires primary source research. It can take any number of forms- newspapers, correspondence, artwork, clothing, houses, archaeology, archival materials- but it is required in some form. Academic history also requires citation of all primary and secondary sources. (The Chicago citation style is most common in Western academic history.)
There is one exception to needing primary sources, and that would be historiography. Historiography is the study of historical writings; meaning that you are discussing the historical works that have covered a particular topic. In this case, secondary sources are your primary sources! (As a side note: I love historiography. I don’t know why, but I don’t find it a difficult task to do, and I really enjoy it.)
Pop History
Pop History Tone:
Pop history can take any number of tones, but rarely formal. It could be written as though the author is speaking (what I tend to do here), or in a specific vernacular. If it is on a blog or social media, you will often see the first and second person used. If it is a book, you may or may not see the first and second person. And contractions? That would be up to the author and the publisher. It is typically very easy to understand at face value, and will assume little to no background in history.
Pop History Topics
Much like tone, topics in pop history can run the full gamut. They are usually written with the purpose of being widely appealing to people with any level of knowledge. You will often find that they line up with everyday topics/items of consumption, and current “hot topics”. You will find “a history of salt” or “a history of beer”, because those are things that a lot of people are more than familiar with. On the flipside, you can currently find a lot of true crime pop history books being published, following the explosion of true crime podcasts in recent years.
Pop History Research
I would like to say most historians who publish pop history writing have done the research needed. (If it has been picked up by a formal publisher, I would really like to say so.) I operate on the basis that they have done it, unless otherwise proven. There are some pop histories that are more of a summary of the secondary sources out there, and they typically will list all books that were used. However, due to citation anomalies, it can be hard to tell for some pop history books.
Citations are hit and miss in pop history. Some will have regular footnotes or end notes, and a full bibliography, while others only list a few books/sources that were used. It can make it difficult to substantiate claims often- it can be an informative and interesting book or article and still difficult to use in academic works. (I would say thought that it is still a very useful historic source, though, as it very well might be someone’s introduction to history!)
No matter what approach you take to history, remember- it is your passion that matters! We are all interested in different topics, and process and analyse things in different ways. Your approach will interest someone, somewhere, and as an historian, that is all that we can ask for.
Looking for more tips and tricks for getting started on your own historical research? Visit my historical research post here!
Academic history vs pop history: do you prefer to work in one approach or the other?
Cheers,
The Historian
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