The reading we did this week about how to conceptualize, articulate, and communicate the purpose and significance of our research really hit home for me.
While I was preparing my application for the Brackenridge Fellowship, I ran my idea(s) past some of my friends and family members. Most of them have no experience with academic history and, therefore, kind of just nodded their heads as I rambled on about George Hewes’ account of the Boston Tea Party and Chief John Ross’s attempts at looking “more white” and the Flying Horse Riot of 1834 and a whole slew of other things they didn’t really care about. I got complacent; their ready, passive acceptance of every argument or point I made led me to stop questioning my own thinking. I thought I had a golden idea. A perfect idea.
About a week before the Fellowship officially began, I went out to dinner with my girlfriend and her parents for her birthday. The usual small talk ensued, and my girlfriend’s dad—a professor of history—asked me what I was doing over the Summer. I filled him in (quite confidently, I might add,) as to what the Brackenridge Fellowship is and what specifically I would be researching. He, like many before him, nodded along politely as I waxed poetic about my research topic. Then, after I was done, he told me my idea sucked.
This really threw me for a loop. I had spent weeks (months, even!) thinking about my topic and was so set in my thinking that I felt incredibly defeated upon hearing him pick my idea apart. His critique boiled down to this: what, exactly, was I researching? What was I discovering? What was I analyzing? I realized, upon being asked these questions, that my research proposal boiled down not to a serviceable research question but rather a cutesy observation that I had blown up, over-expanded, and stretched to make look like one.
Then, weeks later, when I read about purpose, problem, and significance statements and especially when it came time to write our own, I gained the tools I needed to understand why my assailant’s critiques hit so hard: they were making obvious the things my idea lacked—a clear articulation of purpose, problem, and significance. In a field such as history, where the purpose of research is not always abundantly clear (especially to those outside of the discipline), being able to articulate why your research matters are indescribably important. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to do so effectively:
First, having a quick, “elevator pitch” style summation of what exactly you’re researching is abundantly important. If you can’t articulate why your research matters in a few sentences, you probably need to sit down and think about it some more!
Second, in a field like history, the use of jargon is largely superfluous. Underfunded disciplines like history need to attract as many eyes as they can if they want to continue to attract attention and funding. Jargon puts people off!
Third, it is essential that one is sensitive to the values, wants, and directives of their audience when communicating their research. Historians might enjoy hearing about the humorous anecdotes you stumbled across while reading Ethan Allen Hitchcock’s 1842 diary of his travels through the Indian Territory, but most people won’t! This maxim is especially true when interacting with audiences outside of the field of history. For example, as someone considering a career as an educator, I’m going to be working with a wide variety of students with varying degrees of interest in history. No one likes history teachers who drone on and on about their highly proprietary, specific area of research! If we, as historians, want our discipline to thrive in the future, we need to be sensitive to things like this. After all, without new historians, there is no future for history.