Graduate Seminar — Microhistory
Course Overview
This course will focus on the historical method of microhistory, a form of historical writing that takes a single event and uses it to open a window onto broader historical questions. Often centered on ordinary, oppressed, or colonized people who left few or no first-hand accounts of their lives, microhistories rely on unusual events — a murder, a heresy trial, a natural disaster, a scandal, etc. — to offer unique insights into a society that we can often see in no other way.