Talk:Historian

Super Historians

What makes a historian "super." I can think of several who are very important in the field of the crusades alone. Joshua Prawer and Johnathon Riley-Smith seem obvious. Robert Chazen has made great contributions in the field of Jewish history. W.G. Godfrey, Ian Mckay, David Frank and Bumsted, all seem "super" in the field of Canadian History. I would argue this: "The consistent development of new fields and sub-fields has led to the demise of the so called "Super" historians like Gibbon and Ranke, and given rise to a new more specialized group of academics." Or something like that.MedievalScholar 18:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

That entire "super historian" bit is pretty silly. "There has always been a class of..." Maybe it's just me, but all that section did was make me laugh a whole lot. It should probably be deleted, unless the author of the book that was cited actually had a good point to make - and in that case the section should be rewritten. Aibara 00:55, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this article is SOOO POV it isn't funny.

Whiggish analysis? Sounds like it was written by a liberal. To much discussion on the question of "what is history" then "what is a historian". Benkenobi18 (talk) 19:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

How about "super plumbers" or "super bankers"? What it really means is "ones I've heard of" and it betrays ignorance. --OhNoPeedyPeebles (talk) 23:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Twentieth-century developments

This sections reads like a celebration of the shift from history as a literary pursuit to history as an instrument of cultural-marxist propaganda. True, this is the main twentieth-century development in history, but it bears describing not celebrating. —joeFriday— ^{talk}  16:02, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I think I did a pretty decent job cleaning that up and at least restoring some semblance of a professional tone to it. Let me know what you think. --Grahamdubya (talk) 00:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

A historian or An Historian?

Both usages are ok. Here's some proof from across the 20th century--titles of books by very famous historians noted for their fine style (not merely a passage in the text): 1) How good an historian shall I be?': R.G. Collingwood, the historical imagination and education by Marnie Hughes-Warrington (Academic Press 2004); 2) An historian in the twentieth century: chapters in intellectual autobiography by Max Beloff, (Yale University Press, 1992); 3) To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian by Stephen E. Ambrose (2003); 4) The recreations of an historian by George Macaulay Trevelyan (1919); 5) Milton as an historian by Charles Harding Firth, (1908). Rjensen (talk) 05:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

If both usages are ok, then we should use the version that is most common. This google trends link ( http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=an+historian%2Ca+historian&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 ) show that the usage of "an historian" fell below the usage of "a historian" in literature sometime in the 1890s. In fact, the trends indicate that the usage of "a historian" vs. "an historian" is roughly three times as much in current literature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.11.29.16 (talk) 00:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia relies on the RS, and the RS are clear enough. What uninformed people do on their private websites is NOT considered by Wikipedia to be acceptable for RS. Furthermore, when two usages are acceptable editors defer to the first editor. It's rude indeed for an newbie anonymous person with no editing experience whatever to barge in and impose his personal preferences. Rjensen (talk) 00:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Very well then. This article was created in October 2001. The first usage of the word 'historian' in conjunction with an article occurred on August 31, 2004 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historian&oldid=5559705 ). In this version, the article used is "a", as in "a historian." Furthermore, the google trends link uses data collected from published literature (unless you think that 'uninformed people' had published websites in the 1800s?). I believe that qualifies under RS for this matter. As you can see, no personal preference was imposed by anyone during the editing of this page. As Wikipedia is a wiki that can be anonymously edited by anyone, I do not feel the need for an account to show off my 'seniority.' I believe that the edits made to an article must be made using hard factual evidence, as in this case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.11.29.16 (talk) 01:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Manchester University: Original research into the undergraduate programme

I think a mention should be made of T.F. Tout and C.H. Firth, the Manchester university system and resistance at Oxbridge to accept that undergraduates should do research with primary sources: As T.F. Tout's Wikipedia entry says:

Tout also introduced original research into the undergraduate programme, culminating in the production of a Final Year thesis based on primary sources. This horrified Oxbridge, where college tutors had little research capacity of their own and saw the undergraduate as an embryonic future gentleman, liberal connoisseur, widely-read, and mainstay of country and empire in politics, commerce, army, land or church, not an apprentice to dusty, centuries-old archives, wherein no more than 1 in 100 could find even an innocuous career. As to which, they had a fair case, given the various likelihoods and opportunities for their charges. Tout's ally Firth fought a bitter war to persuade Oxford to follow Manchester and introduce scientific study of sources into the History programme, but failed. So, too, at Cambridge. Other universities, however, followed Tout, and Oxbridge - very slowly - had to face up to the fact, with fundamental changes to the selection of college fellows across all disciplines.

As I know nothing about it, and the section in is not sourced T.F. Tout, I think it would be interesting to have a section in this article about this change with reliable sources. --PBS (talk) 08:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)