Members of the UTA History Department have drafted this project with the intent of offering students a single text that explains the terms, ideas, and skills necessarty to succeed in the discipline of history.  Each major section offers insights into the critical thinking, reading, and analysis commonly used by historians, as well as some practical tips for researching and writing an essay on a historical topic.  Like the concepts they attempt to explain, sections are linked together, allowing readers to read this text in the order that makes sense to them and/or their instructors. Insights and corrections are welcome.

Creation Process

This project was the brainchild of Kimberly Breuer and Scott W. Palmer, and was developed under the guidance, encouragement, and funding of the UTA Libraries’ UTA Cares Grant and especially Michelle Reed.  Stephanie Cole and Brandon Blakeslee took over much the writing and formatting (respectively) at a crucial stage of the project, but several members of the UTA History Department have contributed, including Kimberly Breuer, Scott W. Palmer, Gerald Saxon, Charles Travis, Andrew Milson, James Sandy, David Baillargeon, Evelyn Montgomery,  Alex Hunnicutt, and Greg Kosc.

About the AuthorS

Stephanie Cole received her PhD in History from the University of Flordia in 1994 and has taught the introduction to historical methods, as well as courses in women’s history, the history of work, history of sexuality and marriage and related topics at UT Arlington since 1996.  Her most recent publication is the co-edited volume Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (University of Georgia Press, 2015).

Kimberly Breuer received her PhD in History from Vanderbilt University in 2004 and has been at UT Arlington since 2004. She regularly teaches the introduction to historical methods, as well as courses in the history of science and technology and Iberian history. Her research centers on the relationship between student (team-based) creation of OER content, experiential learning, and student engagement; student mapped learning pathways and self-regulated learning; interactive and game-based learning.

Scott W. Palmer received his PhD in History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1997. From his arrival at UT Arlington in 2016 until Fall 2022, he served as Chair of the Department of History. He regularly teaches courses on Russian/Soviet History, Flight Culture and the Human Experience, and History of Video Games, along with upper level offerings in the History of Technology and Science.” “He is author of Dictatorship of the Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2006), co-editor of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine in Russia’s Great War and Revolution (Slavica, 2022), and editor of the forthcoming collection Flight Culture and the Human Experience (Texas A&M University Press, 2023).

Brandon Blakeslee received his PhD in History from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2021 upon completion of his dissertation, “Foot-Ball! Turning Colombian Boys into Patriotic Men: How Sport and Education Developed with Early Twentieth-Century Colombian Nationalism.” He joined the tenure-track faculty of Midwestern State University in Fall 2022.