这门课的主要目的让学生熟悉过去在二十世纪里，在历史学家们著作中采用的一些研究与论述方法。依我个人（与某些人）之见，书单中大部份的书籍是以社会、经济与文化历史中的近代古典或潜在古典为主。我们将研究这些历史学家如何建构他们的研究对象、如何将原始的史料整理成他们的研究基本素材、他们怎么样在议题中建构研究的叙事方式以及论述的分析方法、以及这些不同的研究与论述方法的优缺点。
The purpose of this course is to acquaint you with a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the twentieth century. Most of the books on the list constitute, in my view (and others), modern classics, or potential classics, in social, economic and cultural history. We will examine how historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytic discussion of their topic, and what are the advantages and drawbacks of their various approaches.
