What Kind of Historian Are You?

An abstract representation of a historian at work, surrounded by books, historical documents, and artifacts, with a backdrop of different historical periods blending together.

Discover Your Historical Expertise

What kind of historian are you? This engaging quiz challenges you to think about your interests and perspectives on history while uncovering your unique approach to the subject. Answer a series of thought-provoking questions that delve into your preferences and beliefs about historical sources, events, and methodologies.

Uncover your histroical inclination.
Explore various historical themes and methodologies.
Ideal for anyone passionate about history!

10 Questions2 MinutesCreated by CuriousHistorian42

1. Which of these primary sources would you most like to work with?

The Federal Census of everyone living in your home town in 1900

James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention

A collection of old sea shanties

2. You're interested in researching the history of mental illness. Which of these projects sounds like the most interesting approach to the topic?

A study of how Reagan-era policies, including the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, contributed to the deinstitutionalization of mentally-ill patients

A study of how state mental institutions in mid-twentieth-century Arizona treated their patients and how those patients complied with or resisted that treatment

A study about how exposés like Geraldo Rivera's famous investigation of the WIllowbrook State School shaped public understandings of mental illness and public opinion toward mental institutions

3. Which of these quotes resonates with you the most?

"No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.” -Ruth Benedict

�Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." -Karl Marx

"History is past politics; and politics present history." -E.A. Freeman

4. You're interested in researching Black activism and resistance to white supremacy in the United States. Which book appeals to you most?

Martha Jones's Birthright Citizens, which analyzes how Black Baltimoreans in the ninteenth century organized politically and used the courts to promote a more inclusive version of citizenship

Robin D.G. Kelley's Race Rebels, which makes the case that historians should pay attention to everday acts of resistance by Black Americans, not just the organized Civil Rights movement

Ingrid Monson's Freedom Sounds, which examines how the Civil Rights and Black power movements shaped jazz music (and vice versa)

7. You have to read a book on the U.S. Civil War. Pick one.

James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, which provides an overview of the war and focuses on how federal policy and the events of the battlefield influenced each other

Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, which examines how the Civil War changed American understandings of death

Stephanie McCurry's Women's War, a book on how American women experienced the Civil War era

8. You have to write a paper on prostitution in the Progressive Era. Which of the following research questions is most appealing to you?

How did the state and police regulate or punish prostitution?

How did people who sold sex navigate their professions? What were their working conditions like?

How did Americans think about sex and its relationship to the economy?

10. If you had to pick a double major, which of the following disciplines would interest you most?

Sociology

Anthropology

Political Science

What Kind of Historian Are You?

Discover Your Historical Expertise

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