HIST 285: Historian's Workshop (Dahl)

Think of the peer review process as a scholarly conversation. Other ways historians converse about methods, theories and sources include:

• Historiographical essays
• Book reviews
• In footnotes
• Conference presentations
• Blogs and other informal work

View this short video from NCSU libraries that explains the peer review process.

There are two types of footnotes (or endnotes) in historical writing. Anthony Brundage in Going to the Sources calls them reference footnotes and content footnotes.¹

• Reference footnotes cite the bibliographic source of a quotation, fact or idea. The first footnote on this page is an example of a reference footnote.
• Content footnotes can be extended commentary, an exploration of a tangent of thought related to the subject in the main body of text, or a discussion of the historiography surrounding a topic. Here is one example of a content footnote displaying a 'conversation' about a source.

From: Lewis, Michael. Rioters and Citizens: Mass Protest in Imperial Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.