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Workshop with James Gilbert: Writing for Historians

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Workshop with James Gilbert: Writing for Historians

History Tuesday, April 8, 2014 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

The Miller Center of the History Department is pleased to sponsor a writing workshop for Graduate Students on April 8 from 12:00 non to 1:30 p.m. in Room TBD. 

To reserve lunch, please rsvp to millercenter@umd.edu .

The workshop will explore techniques that students can use in their papers, dissertations, grant proposals, and letters of application.  We rarely pay sufficient attention to these forms of writing even though they are central to our profession.  Clearly constructed and logical arguments and a clean, energetic prose style ought to be the goals of every practicing historian.  Of course these skills cannot be learned in one session. Participants will begin the process of learning—or more accurately—teaching themselves to write better.

In preparation for the session, each student is requested to bring a page or two of published historical writing that he or she considers to be exemplary.  We will discuss why these selections work (or perhaps do not work) as examples of strong exposition.  The second phase of the workshop will be individual conferences with Professor Gilbert to discuss a writing sample that each student wishes to improve.

The moderator of this discussion will be James Gilbert, Professor of American History Emeritus. He is the author, among other works, of Men in the Middle  (University of Chicago Press, 2005 ), Perfect Cities:  Chicago's Utopias of 1893 (University of Chicago Press, 1993), and Whose Fair?:  Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition (University of Chicago Press, 2009) . He has recently turned his attention to fiction writing. 

Add to Calendar 04/08/14 12:00 PM 04/08/14 1:30 PM America/New_York Workshop with James Gilbert: Writing for Historians

The Miller Center of the History Department is pleased to sponsor a writing workshop for Graduate Students on April 8 from 12:00 non to 1:30 p.m. in Room TBD. 

To reserve lunch, please rsvp to millercenter@umd.edu .

The workshop will explore techniques that students can use in their papers, dissertations, grant proposals, and letters of application.  We rarely pay sufficient attention to these forms of writing even though they are central to our profession.  Clearly constructed and logical arguments and a clean, energetic prose style ought to be the goals of every practicing historian.  Of course these skills cannot be learned in one session. Participants will begin the process of learning—or more accurately—teaching themselves to write better.

In preparation for the session, each student is requested to bring a page or two of published historical writing that he or she considers to be exemplary.  We will discuss why these selections work (or perhaps do not work) as examples of strong exposition.  The second phase of the workshop will be individual conferences with Professor Gilbert to discuss a writing sample that each student wishes to improve.

The moderator of this discussion will be James Gilbert, Professor of American History Emeritus. He is the author, among other works, of Men in the Middle  (University of Chicago Press, 2005 ), Perfect Cities:  Chicago's Utopias of 1893 (University of Chicago Press, 1993), and Whose Fair?:  Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition (University of Chicago Press, 2009) . He has recently turned his attention to fiction writing.