HOW TO READ ANALYZE PRIMARY SOURCES

Primary sources are sources from a period or place or event that we are studying, composed by people directly involved with the period or place or event. (They are different from secondary sources, which are analyses of primary sources composed by experts such as professional historians, art historians, archaeologists, and so forth.)

Primary sources may be texts, but may also be images (such as political cartoons or artistic compositions), artifacts (such as architectural remains), or really any piece of evidence from a historical period, place, or event that we can subject to our analysis: musical compositions, inscriptions, coins, textiles, and the like.

The tools we bring to bear in analyzing a primary source will differ from the way we unpack secondary sources, such as scholarly essays or books. When we interpret scholarly essays, we have to enter into a specialist discourse: we have to try to understand the basic underpinnings of an academic discipline so we can make sense of the particular argument being offered by a scholar. That is, with scholarly essays we have to get a handle on the disciplinary context of the work.

When we analyze primary sources, however, we have to take a step back and enter into a very different kind of context: the historical context. Only when we have adequately come to terms with the historical contexts of our primary source can we begin to analyze it. A scholar, working in a specialized discipline, will then attempt to place her primary source into her disciplinary context, as a piece of evidence in a larger discussion with other scholars.

It is rare to encounter a primary source in a class-room without any context provided (unless the professor intends that as part of the exercise). A historical text, for instance, will usually be placed into context by an introduction written by an expert on the particular period, place, or event from which the text derives. Be sure to read these introductions carefully, as they will often give important clues to the significance of the text in its own time (or for a particular field of study).

Students should also ask their own questions of a primary source in order to begin to analyze it, including:

authorship: Who wrote it, and what can we tell about the author (either from an introduction, or the text itself) that might help us understand the primary source better? Basic biographic details such as race, gender, class will surely play a role in our understanding of a primary source: we will read a letter written by a white, male, southern slave-owner differently from a black enslaved woman from the same time and place. Be careful not to grant too much weight to biographical details, however: we must always be prepared to be surprised by a primary source. The white, male, southern slave-owner may leave us an attack on the institution of slavery, and the black enslaved woman may write a defense of slavery.

culture: We must also pay attention to the different cultural assumptions within which a primary source was composed. That is not to say we need to excuse instances of misogyny or racism in a primary source simply because "they didn't know better": but we should be able to contextualize certain ideas about culture so we can understand how a primary source fits into that cultural context. A text written in a colonial context will make certain assumptions about the relationship between empire and colony, about race, about religion that we would not expect to see in a non-colonial context. Likewise "religion" itself will play a very different role in antiquity, the middle ages, the Victorian era, and our own day, as ideas about religion and religions change over time and cultural context.

genre: What kind of primary source are we looking at? What is the difference between a letter, a personal journal, a newspaper article, and a petition to a king? What is the difference between history, satire, comedy, and drama? Between fiction and nonfiction? Between memoir and biography? How is our author conforming to rules of a genre, and how is she subverting them?

Once we have a handle on how to locate the text in its historical context, we can begin to analyze it. Our goal in the classroom is not really to develop an original historical thesis (that can wait until you are all professional historians), but instead we're operating along two paths of analysis:

similarity: Every look into the past operates from a present-day perspective. When we examine primary sources, we are implicitly and explicitly asking, "How are they like us? How are we like them?" Sometimes this comparison is genealogical: "How did we get from there to here?" Sometimes it is more general: "Do we think like them? In what ways?" Are the things that are important to this primary source also important to us? Do we view them in the same ways?

difference: Along the same lines we are also coming to grips with historical difference. These differences too may be genealogical: "How far have we come from the time of this primary source? How has our cultural context changed?" (One common definition of the discipline of history is "the study of change over time.") Our attention to difference may also be more general: "Do we think differently about some issues than they do? How so? What assumptions do we have that are different?"

By working along these two axes of similarity and difference, we hope to achieve a kind of critical sympathy: our goal in looking in the past is not to condemn the producers of primary sources nor to uncritically praise them. It is to understand them and, in some way, understand ourselves, as well.