The Essay: History and Definition

Attempts at Defining Slippery Literary Form

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"One damned thing after another" is how Aldous Huxley described the essay: "a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."

As definitions go, Huxley's is no more or less exact than Francis Bacon's "dispersed meditations," Samuel Johnson's "loose sally of the mind" or Edward Hoagland's "greased pig."

Since Montaigne adopted the term "essay" in the 16th century to describe his "attempts" at self-portrayal in prose , this slippery form has resisted any sort of precise, universal definition. But that won't an attempt to define the term in this brief article.

In the broadest sense, the term "essay" can refer to just about any short piece of nonfiction  -- an editorial, feature story, critical study, even an excerpt from a book. However, literary definitions of a genre are usually a bit fussier.

One way to start is to draw a distinction between articles , which are read primarily for the information they contain, and essays, in which the pleasure of reading takes precedence over the information in the text . Although handy, this loose division points chiefly to kinds of reading rather than to kinds of texts. So here are some other ways that the essay might be defined.

Standard definitions often stress the loose structure or apparent shapelessness of the essay. Johnson, for example, called the essay "an irregular, indigested piece, not a regular and orderly performance."

True, the writings of several well-known essayists ( William Hazlitt and Ralph Waldo Emerson , for instance, after the fashion of Montaigne) can be recognized by the casual nature of their explorations -- or "ramblings." But that's not to say that anything goes. Each of these essayists follows certain organizing principles of his own.

Oddly enough, critics haven't paid much attention to the principles of design actually employed by successful essayists. These principles are rarely formal patterns of organization , that is, the "modes of exposition" found in many composition textbooks. Instead, they might be described as patterns of thought -- progressions of a mind working out an idea.

Unfortunately, the customary divisions of the essay into opposing types --  formal and informal, impersonal and familiar  -- are also troublesome. Consider this suspiciously neat dividing line drawn by Michele Richman:

Post-Montaigne, the essay split into two distinct modalities: One remained informal, personal, intimate, relaxed, conversational and often humorous; the other, dogmatic, impersonal, systematic and expository .

The terms used here to qualify the term "essay" are convenient as a kind of critical shorthand, but they're imprecise at best and potentially contradictory. Informal can describe either the shape or the tone of the work -- or both. Personal refers to the stance of the essayist, conversational to the language of the piece, and expository to its content and aim. When the writings of particular essayists are studied carefully, Richman's "distinct modalities" grow increasingly vague.

But as fuzzy as these terms might be, the qualities of shape and personality, form and voice, are clearly integral to an understanding of the essay as an artful literary kind. 

Many of the terms used to characterize the essay -- personal, familiar, intimate, subjective, friendly, conversational -- represent efforts to identify the genre's most powerful organizing force: the rhetorical voice or projected character (or persona ) of the essayist.

In his study of Charles Lamb , Fred Randel observes that the "principal declared allegiance" of the essay is to "the experience of the essayistic voice." Similarly, British author Virginia Woolf has described this textual quality of personality or voice as "the essayist's most proper but most dangerous and delicate tool."

Similarly, at the beginning of "Walden, "  Henry David Thoreau reminds the reader that "it is ... always the first person that is speaking." Whether expressed directly or not, there's always an "I" in the essay -- a voice shaping the text and fashioning a role for the reader.

Fictional Qualities

The terms "voice" and "persona" are often used interchangeably to suggest the rhetorical nature of the essayist himself on the page. At times an author may consciously strike a pose or play a role. He can, as E.B. White confirms in his preface to "The Essays," "be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter." 

In "What I Think, What I Am," essayist Edward Hoagland points out that "the artful 'I' of an essay can be as chameleon as any narrator in fiction." Similar considerations of voice and persona lead Carl H. Klaus to conclude that the essay is "profoundly fictive":

It seems to convey the sense of human presence that is indisputably related to its author's deepest sense of self, but that is also a complex illusion of that self -- an enactment of it as if it were both in the process of thought and in the process of sharing the outcome of that thought with others.

But to acknowledge the fictional qualities of the essay isn't to deny its special status as nonfiction.

Reader's Role

A basic aspect of the relationship between a writer (or a writer's persona) and a reader (the implied audience ) is the presumption that what the essayist says is literally true. The difference between a short story, say, and an autobiographical essay  lies less in the narrative structure or the nature of the material than in the narrator's implied contract with the reader about the kind of truth being offered.

Under the terms of this contract, the essayist presents experience as it actually occurred -- as it occurred, that is, in the version by the essayist. The narrator of an essay, the editor George Dillon says, "attempts to convince the reader that its model of experience of the world is valid." 

In other words, the reader of an essay is called on to join in the making of meaning. And it's up to the reader to decide whether to play along. Viewed in this way, the drama of an essay might lie in the conflict between the conceptions of self and world that the reader brings to a text and the conceptions that the essayist tries to arouse.

At Last, a Definition—of Sorts

With these thoughts in mind, the essay might be defined as a short work of nonfiction, often artfully disordered and highly polished, in which an authorial voice invites an implied reader to accept as authentic a certain textual mode of experience.

Sure. But it's still a greased pig.

Sometimes the best way to learn exactly what an essay is -- is to read some great ones. You'll find more than 300 of them in this collection of  Classic British and American Essays and Speeches .

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  • The Difference Between an Article and an Essay
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  • Compose a Narrative Essay or Personal Statement
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The History of Essay: Origin and Evolvement

These days, an essay is one of the key assignments at college. This particular task allows tutors to evaluate the student’s knowledge effectively. But it was not always a key assessment tool in the education sphere. So, when did an essay become so important for study purposes? And who invented the essay? According to Aldous Huxley, this particular literary piece can be used to describe almost everything. Essays have become very popular since the first day this type of paper was introduced. What is more, the first time the essay appeared in the far 16th century, it was a part of a self-portrayal done by Michel de Montaigne. The term essay was adopted from French “essayer”, which was adopted from Latin “exagere”. The last one means “to sort through”. In the far 16th century, the essay was mostly a form of a literary piece. Afterward, it has gained wider use in literature and study. It lost all its formality and has become quite a popular writing form. Besides, it has turned into quite a complicated study assignment. That is why many modern students need help writing an essay these days.

the history of the essay

Difference Between Essay and Article

In contrast to an article that mostly has an informative purpose, an essay is more a literary paper. The “essay” concept can refer to practically any short piece of report or small composition. It can be a short story, some critical piece, etc. The essay differs from an article or other kinds of papers. Many prominent features distinguish essays from research papers, case studies, or reports. The essay paper has a standard structure in most cases. Sometimes, the layout can be a little bit creative. An article provides information on a certain topic. It has a mostly informative character and does not tend to deliver solutions or recommendations. Besides, it lacks a strict formatting style and outline. Still, it mostly refers to modern academic essays. In old times, essays had no defined format or structure. The origin of the essay does not affect its current usage. Now, it is an effective educational tool and one of the top college projects. Academic essays have an assigned structure and formatting style. You cannot ignore the provided requirements if you want to have a good grade. There are many strict rules to essays assigned at college. Students often check long tutorials to learn how to prepare a proper essay

Types of Essays and Its Characteristics

In the history of the essay, there were always different types of essays. First and foremost, essays were divided into formal and informal. Next, impersonal and familiar. Formal essays are mostly focused on the described topic. Informal essays are more personal and focused on the essayist.

Academic essays differ greatly with their wide variety of types and formats. You can count descriptive, argumentative, reflective, analytical, persuasive, narrative, expository essays’ types. The key types of academic essays include analytical, descriptive, persuasive, and critical.

Every of the mentioned types has its own essay format. They also differ by structure, length, main points to analyze, and purposes. In old times, writers were mostly concerned by the personal or impersonal tone of written composition. It takes more effort to learn all the types of academic essays these days. Besides, they all have a different focus and the final goal.

The most popular narrative essay is quite familiar to the one it was just a few centuries ago. In this paper, you tell the story and focus on a single idea. Such papers like argumentative or analytical essays are more like research papers. They require a thesis statement, strong arguments, and supporting evidence. You have to conduct research work. It is way more difficult than to tell a simple story. Still, even storytelling requires natural talents and a clever mind to be appreciated by readers.     

the history of the essay

Essay Evolvement and Modern Use

The essay history describes the way the traditional essay was turned into a decent educational tool. First, the essay was a typical literary form of expression. Authors were mostly concerned to share their point of view about some ideas or themselves in the composition. It gained more personal coloring than any other paper in years.

Since being parted from a self-portrayal, this particular piece was mostly essayist-focused originally. Afterward, once the essay writers have figured out it can describe particularly everything, an essay has gained wider use. Not every modern essay writer knows how the term “essay” was created. Still, modern writers face even bigger challenges with these particular kinds of written papers.

The key reasons include a set of strict rules and requirements for academic essays. They force writers to come up only with the most interesting and unique ideas. Also, they make writers prepare papers formatted due to an assigned formatting style only. Besides, many types of essays require strong analytical abilities.

An analytical essay is like a research paper. It also requires all the elements of a research piece. Thus, the ability to conduct proper research work and provide a complex analysis is mandatory for a modern author as well.

Final Thoughts

Preparing an essay can take a lot of time and great effort these days. With lots of complex requirements and difficult writing instructions, students often need outside writing essay help to succeed.

A modern essay differs greatly from the one it was in the far 16th century. In the first years, this particular writing form was introduced, it was a part of self-portrayal. In many following years, it turned into one of the most popular compositions and the top college assignment.

Nowadays, there is probably not a single student who has never dealt with an essay. Therefore, knowing how it was created and who introduced it to the world can be quite interesting and surely very informative for everyone. Knowing history helps to recognize yourself in the world better. Knowledge can always be quite a driving force for every person.

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English 185e. The Essay: History and Practice

Instructor: James Wood Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site Matthew Arnold famously said that poetry is, at bottom, “a criticism of life.” But if any literary form is truly a criticism of life, it is the essay. And yet despite the fact that all students write essays, most students rarely study them; bookshops and libraries categorize such work only negatively, by what it is not: “non-fiction.” At the same time, the essay is at present one of the most productive and fertile of literary forms. It is practiced as memoir, reportage, diary, criticism, and sometimes all four at once. Novels are becoming more essayistic, while essays are borrowing conventions and prestige from fiction. This class will disinter the essay from its comparative academic neglect, and examine the vibrant contemporary borderland between the reported and the invented. We will study the history of the essay, from Montaigne to the present day. Rather than study that history purely chronologically, each class will group several essays from different decades and centuries around common themes: death, detail, sentiment, race, gender, photography, the flaneur, witness, and so on. In addition to writing about essays – writing critical essays about essays – students will also be encouraged to write their own creative essays: we will study the history of the form, and practice the form itself. Essayists likely to be studied: Montaigne, De Quincey, Woolf, Benjamin, Orwell, Primo Levi, Barthes, Baldwin, Sontag, Didion, Leslie Jamison, Hanif Abdurraqib, Helen Garner, Cathy Park Hong.  This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

  • Fall Term 2023
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University of Iowa Press

Essayists on the essay.

The first historically and internationally comprehensive collection of its kind, Essayists on the Essay is a pathbreaking work that is nothing less than a richly varied sourcebook for anyone interested in the theory, practice, and art of the essay. This unique work includes a selection of fifty distinctive pieces by American, Canadian, English, European, and South American essayists from Montaigne to the present—many of which have not previously been anthologized or translated—as well as a detailed bibliographical and thematic guide to hundreds of additional works about the essay.

From a buoyant introduction that provides a sweeping historical and analytic overview of essayists’ thinking about their genre—a collective poetics of the essay—to the detailed headnotes offering pointed information about both the essayists themselves and the anthologized selections, to the richly detailed bibliographic sections, Essayists on the Essay is essential to everyone who cares about the form.

This collection provides teachers, scholars, essayists, and readers with the materials they need to take a fresh look at this important but often overlooked form that has for too long been relegated to the role of service genre—used primarily to write about other more “literary” genres or to teach young people how to write. Here, in a single celebratory volume, are four centuries of commentary and theory reminding us of the essay’s storied history, its international appeal, and its relationship not just with poetry and fiction but also with radio, film, video, and new media. 

“Carl H. Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French have provided an informative guide to how the genre of the essay has been conceptualized and conventionalized in literary history. As this capacious collection demonstrates, no genre has more potential to chart the meandering possibilities of thought in action, especially when the essay thinks itself.”—Charles Bernstein, author, Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions
“Carl Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French are among the finest commentators of the genre today. Their presentation of the material is compelling and, in my opinion, will be extremely valuable to us all—we teachers, writers, critics, and educated readers who remain devoted to furthering the study of the essay.”—Robert Atwan, series editor, Best American Essays
“At long last, a book that collects critical ideas—from the minds of essay practitioners—about the oft-maligned yet exquisite literary adventure that is the essay. Not only does this anthology document the history of the essay, but it also provides guidance, via an extensive thematic guide, to the study of this form. Teachers, students, essayists, and essay enthusiasts will want this volume on their shelves.”—Kim Dana Kupperman, author, I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence
"…the essay has proven so durable and significant a genre, the time seems long overdue for a sustained consideration of its qualities—and who better to undertake the task than essayists themselves?"— Popmatters

Essayists include: Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, José Ortega y Gasset, Virginia Woolf, Theodor Adorno, Aldous Huxley, E. B. White, Elizabeth Hardwick, Scott Russell Sanders, Philip Lopate, Susan Sontag, Vivian Gornick, John D’Agata, Ander Monson, John Bresland

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the history of the essay

Students in every country, at all levels of education from the lower echelons of high school to post graduate and research schools are well practised in the writing of essays. These days, essays come in many different formats and structures; from a book review to a comparison essay to an argumentative essay to a dissertation and everything in between. In today’s education system, we often take for granted the fact that the essay is one of the main forms of assignments. We accept the challenge and complete them without ever thinking about the origins of the format. If you are interested in where the essay actually began and who was the first to bring the assignment format into existence, then read on for a brief history of the essay.

The word “essay” was first used by a Frenchman

It is generally accepted that the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne, born in 1533, was the first author to describe his works of writing as essays. Back then, essay was a term that he used to characterise the way that he would attempt to put his various thoughts into writing. From this description, it is easy to see how this attempt to arrange thoughts on a page could turn into the type of essay that we are familiar with today. Eager to share his new form of writing with the world, in 1580, Montaigne compiled his essays into a published collection entitled Essais.  He achieved great success with this, and for the rest of his life, he spent time revising and publishing previously written essays, as well as composing new ones.

Francis Bacon is considered the first English language essayist

In terms of the English language, Francis Bacon’s essays, published in the form of books in 1597, 1612 and 1625, were the first works of English to be officially described as essays. Interestingly, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the word ‘essayist’ was recorded by playwright Ben Jonson in 1609.

Asia wrote essays before Europeans

Of course, as with most of recorded history, the claim for the invention of the essay is much older in Asia than it is in Europe. Much like the novel, which was being cultivated in places like Japan much earlier than in England and Europe, essays existed and were known as zuihitsu, a word meaning fragmented ideas. A word somewhat incongruous to the aim of an essay which attempts to bring order to thoughts and ideas. Notable examples of this early form of essay include The Pillow Book court lady SeiShonagon from 1000 A.D. and 1330’s Tsurezuregusa by the famous Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko. Kenko spoke of his essay writings in a very similar way to Michel de Montaigne, classing them as nonsensical thoughts that were written during idle hours. One more interesting thing to note is that in a stark difference from the overwhelming patriarchy in writing in Europe, Japan was filled with female writers who enjoyed creating essays. However, this rich history of female Asian work has been somewhat erased by Chinese-influenced writing by male writers who were much more revered at the time.

From random to ordered

Though the origins of the essay are very much rooted in authors assembling ‘varied thoughts’ and ‘fragmented ideas’ on the page, over time the essay has become a much more official and rigid form of writing, constructed for students and academics to be able to argue, explain or explore a topic in a defined and recognised fashion. Here is a brief list of some of the most popular essay forms today:

  • Cause and Effect – an essay that is used to argue causal chains that connect a cause to a direct effect.
  • Compare and Contrast – an essay that is used to identify and evaluate the differences between two ideas, objects or concepts e.g. chalk and cheese, Hitler and Stalin, Pride and Prejudice and Emma
  • Descriptive –an essay that required writing that is characterised by all of the sensory details such as sight, smell, sound, touch. Generally intended to appeal to a reader’s emotional response.
  • Argumentative – an essay in which the author takes a stand on one side of an argument, and works to build a case around why exactly their view point is the most persuasive.
  • Reflective – an analytical essay in which the author describes a scene, either real or imagined in as rich detail as possible, with an eye on surmising a learning experience.

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the history of the essay

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  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press (February 22, 2024)
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How to Write a Good History Essay. A Sequence of Actions and Useful Tips

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Before you start writing your history essay, there is quite a lot of work that has to be done in order to gain success.

You may ask: what is history essay? What is the difference between it and other kinds of essays? Well, the main goal of a history essay is to measure your progress in learning history and test your range of skills (such as analysis, logic, planning, research, and writing), it is necessary to prepare yourself very well.

Your plan of action may look like this. First of all, you will have to explore the topic. If you are going to write about a certain historical event, think of its causes and premises, and analyze what its impact on history was. In case you are writing about a person, find out why and how he or she came to power and how they influenced society and historical situations.

The next step is to make research and collect all the available information about the person or event, and also find evidence.

Finally, you will have to compose a well-organized response.

During the research, make notes and excerpts of the most notable data, write out the important dates and personalities. And of course, write down all your thoughts and findings.

It all may seem complicated at first sight, but in fact, it is not so scary! To complete this task successfully and compose a good history essay, simply follow several easy steps provided below.

Detailed Writing Instruction for Students to Follow

If you want to successfully complete your essay, it would be better to organize the writing process. You will complete the assignment faster and more efficient if you divide the whole work into several sections or steps.

  • Introduction

Writing a good and strong introduction part is important because this is the first thing your reader will see. It gives the first impression of your essay and induces people to reading (or not reading) it.

To make the introduction catchy and interesting, express the contention and address the main question of the essay. Be confident and clear as this is the moment when you define the direction your whole essay will take. And remember that introduction is not the right place for rambling! The best of all is, to begin with, a brief context summary, then go to addressing the question and express the content. Finally, mark the direction your essay about history will take.

Its quality depends on how clear you divided the whole essay into sections in the previous part. As long as you have provided a readable and understandable scheme, your readers will know exactly what to expect.

The body of your essay must give a clear vision of what question you are considering. In this section, you can develop your idea and support it with the evidence you have found. Use certain facts and quotations for that. When being judicial and analytical, they will help you to easily support your point of view and argument.

As long as your essay has a limited size, don’t be too precise. It is allowed to summarize the most essential background information, for example, instead of giving a precise list of all the issues that matter.

It is also good to keep in mind that each paragraph of your essay’s body must tell about only one issue. Don’t make a mess out of your paper!

It is not only essential to start your essay well. How you will end it also matters. A properly-written conclusion is the one that restates the whole paper’s content and gives a logical completion of the issue or question discussed above. Your conclusion must leave to chance for further discussion or arguments on the case. It’s time, to sum up, give a verdict.

That is why it is strongly forbidden to provide any new evidence or information here, as well as start a new discussion, etc.

After you finish writing, give yourself some time and put the paper away for a while. When you turn back to it will be easier to take a fresh look at it and find any mistakes or things to improve. Of course, remember to proofread your writing and check it for any grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. All these tips will help you to learn how to write a history essay.

the history of the essay

Chris Marker, Demo 18 (Paris, 2006)

The secret history of the essay film

Charting the resurgence of ‘sort of documentaries’ to celebrate chris marker, king of the essay film.

“Essay films are arguably the most innovative and popular form of filmmaking since the 1990s,” wrote Timothy Corrigan in his notable 2011 book,  The Essay Film . True, perhaps, but mention of the genre to your average joe won’t spark the instant recognition of today’s romcoms, sci-fis and period dramas. The thing is, essay films have been around since the dawn of cinema: they emerged not long after the  Lumière brothers  recorded the first ever motion pictures of Lyonnaise factory workers in 1894, yet their definition is still ambiguous.

They are similar to documentary and non-fiction film in that they are often based in reality, using words, images and sounds to convey a message. But according to Chris Darke – co-curator of the Whitechapel Gallery’s current retrospective  of the great essay filmmaker Chris Marker – it is “the personal aspect and style of address” that makes the essay film distinct. It is this flexibility that has appealed to contemporary filmmakers, permitting a fresh, nuanced viewing experience.

Geoff Andrew, a senior programmer at the BFI who helped curate last year’s landmark essay film season, explained, “they are sort of documentaries, sort of non-fiction films.” The issue is that some filmmakers try to provide an objective point of view when it is just not possible. “There’s always somebody manipulating footage and manipulating reality to present some sort of message.” Andrew continued, “So, in a way, all documentaries are essay films.”

But the essay film is particularly resurgent these days, with filmmakers like Michael Moore , Werner Herzog , and Nick Broomfield  molding the genre in their own ways. Their popularity isn’t just due to incendiary topics like men getting eaten by bears as in Herzog’s Grizzly Man  and high school massacres as in Moore’s Bowling for Columbine ; essay films are capable of compelling beauty. Now, with the Whitechapel Gallery ’s retrospective of the late Frenchman, Chris Marker , arguably the greatest essay filmmaker there’s ever been, we take a look at the essay film’s secret history.

Ryan Travis Christian

1909  -  D. W. Griffith ’s   A Corner in Wheat

Considered by some to be the first essay film ever, A Corner in Wheat  is a little subversive thorn in the side of the man. Lasting only 14 minutes, it tells the tale of a ruthless crop gambler who amasses riches by monopolising the wheat market, exploits the agricultural poor, and is promptly killed under a pile of his own grain. Think twice, greedy capitalists.

1929  -   Dziga  Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera

“The film drama is the opium of the people,” proclaimed Soviet film pioneer  Dziga Vertov , “down with Bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios.” He was the most radical of his fellow Soviet filmmaker compatriots, and Man with a Movie Camera  was his masterpiece. In it, he tried to create an “international language of cinema” through a beguiling mix of jump cuts, split screens and superimpositions. Vertov’s idea was to uncover the artifice of filmmaking, with one scene of the film depicting a cameraman inside a giant beer.

1940  -  Hans Richter’s The Film Essay

The term “essay film” was originally coined by German artist Hans Richter, who wrote in his 1940 paper, The Film Essay : “The film essay enables the filmmaker to make the ‘invisible’ world of thoughts and ideas visible on the screen... The essay film produces complex thought – reflections that are not necessarily bound to reality, but can also be contradictory, irrational, and fantastic.” So while World War II was blazing away, a new cinema was born.

1982  - Chris  Marker’s Sans Soleil

You know that this brilliant, freewheeling travelogue is something special when it suggests that Pac-Man is “a perfect graphic metaphor for the human condition.” It takes in anti-colonial struggles, sumo wrestling, a volcanic eruption in Iceland, the antiquities of the Vatican, Marker’s love of cats and more. An unnamed female narrates a circuitous journey from Africa to Japan, in an engaging style never seen before. Some might say he laid down a marker.

1993  -  Derek Jarman’s Blue

Diagnosed with HIV and beginning to lose his eyesight, Jarman  decided to turn his illness into his art. Although the premise of nothing but a dim, blue background accompanied by voiceovers for 79 minutes might not seem enthralling, it really is. Jarman recalls memories of his past lovers, and his current life of endless pill-popping, with a poignant score by Brian Eno  and Simon Fisher Turner .

1998 - Jean -Luc  Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema

Comprised of hundreds of clips of films, music and poetry, this eight part series – that took over a decade to make – remained a secret seen only at a precious few film festivals thanks to the gargantuan amount of rights needed to be cleared. Histoire(s) du cinema is an epic of free association whose central theme is voyeurism, since Godard believes that cinema consists of a man looking at a woman. Harriet Andersson , topless and alluring on a beach in Ingmar Bergman ’s Monika , is one of many examples.

2004  -  Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11

The most successful documentary at the US box office ever, Fahrenheit 9/11  is a prime example of the essay film’s wild popularisation (it also won the Palme d’Or  at Cannes). Michael Moore ’s swipe at the Republican jugular was a classic example of the essay filmmaker’s prominence, outrightly mocking President George W. Bush and questioning the fairness of his election. Disney refused to distribute the film, and the rest is history.

2010  -  Errol Morris’ Tabloid

Tabloid is the outrageous story of a former Miss Wyoming, Joyce McKinney, who was alleged to have kidnapped an American mormon missionary living in England, handcuffed him to a bed in a Devonshire cottage and made him a sex slave. The woman claimed she was saving the man from a cult, but then fleed to Canada wearing a red wig, where she posed as part of a mime troupe. As ever, Errol Morris  deftly offers alternate explanations, which led to McKinney suing him after the release of the film.

2014  -  Hito Steyerl’s How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educationa l

After touring galleries of the world and a recent stint at the ICA, Hito Steyerl ’s How Not To Be Seen made waves as “an art for our times”. It is a disembowelling satire that mocks the idea that it we can become invisible and have genuine privacy, in this digital age. If we want to disappear, it suggests, we should become poor, or hide in plain sight, or get “disappeared” by the authorities.

Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat is on until 22 June at  Whitechapel Gallery

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the history of the essay

the history of the essay

How to write an introduction for a history essay

Gladiator equipment

Every essay needs to begin with an introductory paragraph. It needs to be the first paragraph the marker reads.

While your introduction paragraph might be the first of the paragraphs you write, this is not the only way to do it.

You can choose to write your introduction after you have written the rest of your essay.

This way, you will know what you have argued, and this might make writing the introduction easier.

Either approach is fine. If you do write your introduction first, ensure that you go back and refine it once you have completed your essay. 

What is an ‘introduction paragraph’?

An introductory paragraph is a single paragraph at the start of your essay that prepares your reader for the argument you are going to make in your body paragraphs .

It should provide all of the necessary historical information about your topic and clearly state your argument so that by the end of the paragraph, the marker knows how you are going to structure the rest of your essay.

In general, you should never use quotes from sources in your introduction.

Introduction paragraph structure

While your introduction paragraph does not have to be as long as your body paragraphs , it does have a specific purpose, which you must fulfil.

A well-written introduction paragraph has the following four-part structure (summarised by the acronym BHES).

B – Background sentences

H – Hypothesis

E – Elaboration sentences

S - Signpost sentence

Each of these elements are explained in further detail, with examples, below:

1. Background sentences

The first two or three sentences of your introduction should provide a general introduction to the historical topic which your essay is about. This is done so that when you state your hypothesis , your reader understands the specific point you are arguing about.

Background sentences explain the important historical period, dates, people, places, events and concepts that will be mentioned later in your essay. This information should be drawn from your background research . 

Example background sentences:

Middle Ages (Year 8 Level)

Castles were an important component of Medieval Britain from the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 until they were phased out in the 15 th and 16 th centuries. Initially introduced as wooden motte and bailey structures on geographical strongpoints, they were rapidly replaced by stone fortresses which incorporated sophisticated defensive designs to improve the defenders’ chances of surviving prolonged sieges.

WWI (Year 9 Level)

The First World War began in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The subsequent declarations of war from most of Europe drew other countries into the conflict, including Australia. The Australian Imperial Force joined the war as part of Britain’s armed forces and were dispatched to locations in the Middle East and Western Europe.

Civil Rights (Year 10 Level)

The 1967 Referendum sought to amend the Australian Constitution in order to change the legal standing of the indigenous people in Australia. The fact that 90% of Australians voted in favour of the proposed amendments has been attributed to a series of significant events and people who were dedicated to the referendum’s success.

Ancient Rome (Year 11/12 Level)  

In the late second century BC, the Roman novus homo Gaius Marius became one of the most influential men in the Roman Republic. Marius gained this authority through his victory in the Jugurthine War, with his defeat of Jugurtha in 106 BC, and his triumph over the invading Germanic tribes in 101 BC, when he crushed the Teutones at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BC) and the Cimbri at the Battle of Vercellae (101 BC). Marius also gained great fame through his election to the consulship seven times.

2. Hypothesis

Once you have provided historical context for your essay in your background sentences, you need to state your hypothesis .

A hypothesis is a single sentence that clearly states the argument that your essay will be proving in your body paragraphs .

A good hypothesis contains both the argument and the reasons in support of your argument. 

Example hypotheses:

Medieval castles were designed with features that nullified the superior numbers of besieging armies but were ultimately made obsolete by the development of gunpowder artillery.

Australian soldiers’ opinion of the First World War changed from naïve enthusiasm to pessimistic realism as a result of the harsh realities of modern industrial warfare.

The success of the 1967 Referendum was a direct result of the efforts of First Nations leaders such as Charles Perkins, Faith Bandler and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Gaius Marius was the most one of the most significant personalities in the 1 st century BC due to his effect on the political, military and social structures of the Roman state.

3. Elaboration sentences

Once you have stated your argument in your hypothesis , you need to provide particular information about how you’re going to prove your argument.

Your elaboration sentences should be one or two sentences that provide specific details about how you’re going to cover the argument in your three body paragraphs.

You might also briefly summarise two or three of your main points.

Finally, explain any important key words, phrases or concepts that you’ve used in your hypothesis, you’ll need to do this in your elaboration sentences.

Example elaboration sentences:

By the height of the Middle Ages, feudal lords were investing significant sums of money by incorporating concentric walls and guard towers to maximise their defensive potential. These developments were so successful that many medieval armies avoided sieges in the late period.

Following Britain's official declaration of war on Germany, young Australian men voluntarily enlisted into the army, which was further encouraged by government propaganda about the moral justifications for the conflict. However, following the initial engagements on the Gallipoli peninsula, enthusiasm declined.

The political activity of key indigenous figures and the formation of activism organisations focused on indigenous resulted in a wider spread of messages to the general Australian public. The generation of powerful images and speeches has been frequently cited by modern historians as crucial to the referendum results.

While Marius is best known for his military reforms, it is the subsequent impacts of this reform on the way other Romans approached the attainment of magistracies and how public expectations of military leaders changed that had the longest impacts on the late republican period.

4. Signpost sentence

The final sentence of your introduction should prepare the reader for the topic of your first body paragraph. The main purpose of this sentence is to provide cohesion between your introductory paragraph and you first body paragraph .

Therefore, a signpost sentence indicates where you will begin proving the argument that you set out in your hypothesis and usually states the importance of the first point that you’re about to make. 

Example signpost sentences:

The early development of castles is best understood when examining their military purpose.

The naïve attitudes of those who volunteered in 1914 can be clearly seen in the personal letters and diaries that they themselves wrote.

The significance of these people is evident when examining the lack of political representation the indigenous people experience in the early half of the 20 th century.

The origin of Marius’ later achievements was his military reform in 107 BC, which occurred when he was first elected as consul.

Putting it all together

Once you have written all four parts of the BHES structure, you should have a completed introduction paragraph. In the examples above, we have shown each part separately. Below you will see the completed paragraphs so that you can appreciate what an introduction should look like.

Example introduction paragraphs: 

Castles were an important component of Medieval Britain from the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 until they were phased out in the 15th and 16th centuries. Initially introduced as wooden motte and bailey structures on geographical strongpoints, they were rapidly replaced by stone fortresses which incorporated sophisticated defensive designs to improve the defenders’ chances of surviving prolonged sieges. Medieval castles were designed with features that nullified the superior numbers of besieging armies, but were ultimately made obsolete by the development of gunpowder artillery. By the height of the Middle Ages, feudal lords were investing significant sums of money by incorporating concentric walls and guard towers to maximise their defensive potential. These developments were so successful that many medieval armies avoided sieges in the late period. The early development of castles is best understood when examining their military purpose.

The First World War began in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The subsequent declarations of war from most of Europe drew other countries into the conflict, including Australia. The Australian Imperial Force joined the war as part of Britain’s armed forces and were dispatched to locations in the Middle East and Western Europe. Australian soldiers’ opinion of the First World War changed from naïve enthusiasm to pessimistic realism as a result of the harsh realities of modern industrial warfare. Following Britain's official declaration of war on Germany, young Australian men voluntarily enlisted into the army, which was further encouraged by government propaganda about the moral justifications for the conflict. However, following the initial engagements on the Gallipoli peninsula, enthusiasm declined. The naïve attitudes of those who volunteered in 1914 can be clearly seen in the personal letters and diaries that they themselves wrote.

The 1967 Referendum sought to amend the Australian Constitution in order to change the legal standing of the indigenous people in Australia. The fact that 90% of Australians voted in favour of the proposed amendments has been attributed to a series of significant events and people who were dedicated to the referendum’s success. The success of the 1967 Referendum was a direct result of the efforts of First Nations leaders such as Charles Perkins, Faith Bandler and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The political activity of key indigenous figures and the formation of activism organisations focused on indigenous resulted in a wider spread of messages to the general Australian public. The generation of powerful images and speeches has been frequently cited by modern historians as crucial to the referendum results. The significance of these people is evident when examining the lack of political representation the indigenous people experience in the early half of the 20th century.

In the late second century BC, the Roman novus homo Gaius Marius became one of the most influential men in the Roman Republic. Marius gained this authority through his victory in the Jugurthine War, with his defeat of Jugurtha in 106 BC, and his triumph over the invading Germanic tribes in 101 BC, when he crushed the Teutones at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BC) and the Cimbri at the Battle of Vercellae (101 BC). Marius also gained great fame through his election to the consulship seven times. Gaius Marius was the most one of the most significant personalities in the 1st century BC due to his effect on the political, military and social structures of the Roman state. While Marius is best known for his military reforms, it is the subsequent impacts of this reform on the way other Romans approached the attainment of magistracies and how public expectations of military leaders changed that had the longest impacts on the late republican period. The origin of Marius’ later achievements was his military reform in 107 BC, which occurred when he was first elected as consul.

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Cover image of Essays in the History of Ideas

Essays in the History of Ideas

Arthur o. lovejoy.

Originally published in 1948. In the first essay of this collection, Lovejoy reflects on the nature, methods, and difficulties of the historiography of ideas. He maps out recurring phenomena in the history of ideas, which the essays illustrate. One phenomenon is the presence and influence of the same presuppositions or other operative "ideas" in very diverse provinces of thought and in different periods. Another is the role of semantic transitions and confusions, of shifts and of ambiguities in the meanings of terms, in the history of thought and taste. A third phenomenon is the internal...

Originally published in 1948. In the first essay of this collection, Lovejoy reflects on the nature, methods, and difficulties of the historiography of ideas. He maps out recurring phenomena in the history of ideas, which the essays illustrate. One phenomenon is the presence and influence of the same presuppositions or other operative "ideas" in very diverse provinces of thought and in different periods. Another is the role of semantic transitions and confusions, of shifts and of ambiguities in the meanings of terms, in the history of thought and taste. A third phenomenon is the internal tensions or waverings in the mind of almost every individual writer—sometimes discernible even in a single writing or on a single page—arising from conflicting ideas or incongruous propensities of feeling or taste to which the writer is susceptible. These essays do not contribute to metaphysical and epistemological questions; they are primarily historical.

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edited by Rita Felski and Stephen Muecke

Book Details

Prefatory Note Foreword Author's Preface Chapter 1. The Historiography of Ideas Chapter 2. The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality Chapter 3. Monboddo and Rouseeau Chapter 4. "Pride"

Prefatory Note Foreword Author's Preface Chapter 1. The Historiography of Ideas Chapter 2. The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality Chapter 3. Monboddo and Rouseeau Chapter 4. "Pride" in Eighteenth-Century Thought Chapter 5. "Nature" as Aesthetic Norm Chapter 6. The Parallel of Deism and Classicism Chapter 7. The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism Chapter 8. The First Gothic Revival and the Return to Nature Chapter 9. Herder and the Enlightenment Philosophy of History Chapter 10. The Meaning of "Romantic" in Early German Romanticism Chapter 11. Schiller and the Genesis of German Romanticism Chapter 12. On the Discrimination of Romanticisms Chapter 13. Coleridge and Kant's Two Worlds Chapter 14. Milton and the Paradox of the fortunate Fall Chapter 15. The Communism of St Ambrose Chapter 16. "Nature" as Norm in Tertullian Bibliography Index

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Why Study History? (1998)

In 2020, Peter N. Stearns revisited his “Why Study History? (1998)” essay with “ Why Study History? Revisited ” in Perspectives on History.

By Peter N. Stearns

People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?

Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the purpose is.

Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline. History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be

The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society.

History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.

History Provides Identity

History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.

Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.

History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.

What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?

What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.

The Ability to Assess Evidence . The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life.

The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations . Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.

Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change . Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world." Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.

Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind, and we will function as better citizens in the process.

History Is Useful in the World of Work

History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify: students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information, and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment. There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields. Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives.

Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.

Careers for History Majors

Through clear graphs and informal prose, readers will find hard data, practical advice, and answers to common questions about the study of history and the value it affords to individuals, their workplaces, and their communities in Careers for History Majors . You can purchase this pamphlet online at Oxford University Press. For questions about the pamphlet, please contact Karen Lou ( [email protected] ). For bulk orders contact OUP directly . 

Cover of Careers for History Majors Pamphlet

What You'll Learn with a History Degree

What do history students learn? With the help of the AHA, faculty from around the United States have collaborated to create a list of skills students develop in their history coursework. This list, called the "History Discipline Core," is meant to help students understand the skills they are acquiring so that they can explain the value of their education to parents, friends, and employers, as well as take pride in their decision to study history. 

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A Brief History of the Political Essay

From swift to woolf, david bromwich considers an evolving genre.

The political essay has never been a clearly defined genre. David Hume may have legitimated it in 1758 when he classified under a collective rubric his own Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. “Political,” however, should have come last in order, since Hume took a speculative and detached view of politics, and seems to have been incapable of feeling passion for a political cause. We commonly associate political thought with full-scale treatises by philosophers of a different sort, whose understanding of politics was central to their account of human nature. Hobbes’s Leviathan , Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws , Rousseau’s Social Contract , Mill’s Representative Government , and, closer to our time, Rawls’s Theory of Justice , all satisfy that expectation. What, then, is a political essay? By the late 18th century, the periodical writings of Steele, Swift, Goldsmith, and Johnson had broadened the scope of the English essay for serious purposes. The field of politics, as much as culture, appeared to their successors well suited to arguments on society and government.

A public act of praise, dissent, or original description may take on permanent value when it implicates concerns beyond the present moment. Where the issue is momentous, the commitment stirred by passion, and the writing strong enough, an essay may sink deep roots in the language of politics. An essay is an attempt , as the word implies—a trial of sense and persuasion, which any citizen may hazard in a society where people are free to speak their minds. A more restrictive idea of political argument—one that would confer special legitimacy on an elite caste of managers, consultants, and symbolic analysts—presumes an environment in which state papers justify decisions arrived at from a region above politics. By contrast, the absence of formal constraints or a settled audience for the essay means that the daily experience of the writer counts as evidence. A season of crisis tempts people to think politically; in the process, they sometimes discover reasons to back their convictions.

The experience of civic freedom and its discontents may lead the essayist to think beyond politics. In 1940, Virginia Woolf recalled the sound of German bombers circling overhead the night before; the insect-like irritant, with its promise of aggression, frightened her into thought: “It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet which may at any moment sting you to death.” The ugly noise, for Woolf, signaled the prerogative of the fighting half of the species: Englishwomen “must lie weaponless tonight.” Yet Englishmen would be called upon to destroy the menace; and she was not sorry for their help. The mood of the writer is poised between gratitude and a bewildered frustration. Woolf ’s essay, “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” declines to exhibit the patriotic sentiment by which most reporters in her position would have felt drawn. At the same time, its personal emphasis keeps the author honest through the awareness of her own dependency.

Begin with an incident— I could have been killed last night —and you may end with speculations on human nature. Start with a national policy that you deplore, and it may take you back to the question, “Who are my neighbors?” In 1846, Henry David Thoreau was arrested for having refused to pay a poll tax; he made a lesson of his resistance two years later, when he saw the greed and dishonesty of the Mexican War: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” But to Thoreau’s surprise, the window of the prison had opened onto the life of the town he lived in, with its everyday errands and duties, its compromises and arrangements, and for him that glimpse was a revelation:

They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn,—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I had never seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.

Slavery, at that time, was nicknamed “the peculiar institution,” and by calling the prison itself a peculiar institution, and maybe having in mind the adjacent inn as well, Thoreau prods his reader to think about the constraints that are a tacit condition of social life.

The risk of political writing may lure the citizen to write—a fact Hazlitt seems to acknowledge in his essay “On the Regal Character,” where his second sentence wonders if the essay will expose him to prosecution: “In writing a criticism, we hope we shall not be accused of intending a libel.” (His friend Leigh Hunt had recently served two years in prison for “seditious libel” of the Prince Regent—having characterized him as a dandy notorious for his ostentation and obesity.) The writer’s consciousness of provocative intent may indeed be inseparable from the wish to persuade; though the tone of commitment will vary with the zeal and composition of the audience, whether that means a political party, a movement, a vanguard of the enlightened, or “the people” at large.

Edmund Burke, for example, writes to the sheriffs of Bristol (and through them to the city’s electors) in order to warn against the suspension of habeas corpus by the British war ministry in 1777. The sudden introduction of the repressive act, he tells the electors, has imperiled their liberty even if they are for the moment individually exempt. In response to the charge that the Americans fighting for independence are an unrepresentative minority, he warns: “ General rebellions and revolts of an whole people never were encouraged , now or at any time. They are always provoked. ” So too, Mahatma Gandhi addresses his movement of resistance against British rule, as well as others who can be attracted to the cause, when he explains why nonviolent protest requires courage of a higher degree than the warrior’s: “Non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.” In both cases, the writer treats the immediate injustice as an occasion for broader strictures on the nature of justice. There are certain duties that governors owe to the governed, and duties hardly less compulsory that the people owe to themselves.

Apparently diverse topics connect the essays in Writing Politics ; but, taken loosely to illustrate a historical continuity, they show the changing face of oppression and violence, and the invention of new paths for improving justice. Arbitrary power is the enemy throughout—power that, by the nature of its asserted scope and authority, makes itself the judge of its own cause. King George III, whose reign spanned sixty years beginning in 1760, from the first was thought to have overextended monarchical power and prerogative, and by doing so to have reversed an understanding of parliamentary sovereignty that was tacitly recognized by his predecessors. Writing against the king, “Junius” (the pen name of Philip Francis) traced the monarch’s errors to a poor education; and he gave an edge of deliberate effrontery to the attack on arbitrary power by addressing the king as you. “It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress, which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth, until you heard it in the complaints of your people.”

A similar frankness, without the ad hominem spur, can be felt in Burke’s attack on the monarchical distrust of liberty at home as well as abroad: “If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so; and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.” Writing in the same key from America, Thomas Paine, in his seventh number of The Crisis , gave a new description to the British attempt to preserve the unity of the empire by force of arms. He called it a war of conquest; and by addressing his warning directly “to the people of England,” he reminded the king’s subjects that war is always a social evil, for it sponsors a violence that does not terminate in itself. War enlarges every opportunity of vainglory—a malady familiar to monarchies.

The coming of democracy marks a turning point in modern discussions of sovereignty and the necessary protections of liberty. Confronted by the American annexation of parts of Mexico, in 1846–48, Thoreau saw to his disgust that a war of conquest could also be a popular war, the will of the people directed to the oppression of persons. It follows that the state apparatus built by democracy is at best an equivocal ally of individual rights. Yet as Emerson would recognize in his lecture “The Fugitive Slave Law,” and Frederick Douglass would confirm in “The Mission of the War,” the massed power of the state is likewise the only vehicle powerful enough to destroy a system of oppression as inveterate as American slavery had become by the 1850s.

Acceptance of political evil—a moral inertia that can corrupt the ablest of lawmakers—goes easily with the comforts of a society at peace where many are satisfied. “Here was the question,” writes Emerson: “Are you for man and for the good of man; or are you for the hurt and harm of man? It was question whether man shall be treated as leather? whether the Negroes shall be as the Indians were in Spanish America, a piece of money?” Emerson wondered at the apostasy of Daniel Webster, How came he there? The answer was that Webster had deluded himself by projecting a possible right from serial compromise with wrong.

Two ways lie open to correct the popular will without a relapse into docile assent and the rule of oligarchy. You may widen the terms of discourse and action by enlarging the community of participants. Alternatively, you may strengthen the opportunities of dissent through acts of exemplary protest—protest in speech, in action, or both. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. remain the commanding instances in this regard. Both led movements that demanded of every adherent that the protest serve as an express image of the society it means to bring about. Nonviolent resistance accordingly involves a public disclosure of the work of conscience—a demonstrated willingness to make oneself an exemplary warrior without war. Because they were practical reformers, Gandhi and King, within the societies they sought to reform, were engaged in what Michael Oakeshott calls “the pursuit of intimations.” They did not start from a model of the good society generated from outside. They built on existing practices of toleration, friendship, neighborly care, and respect for the dignity of strangers.

Nonviolent resistance, as a tactic of persuasion, aims to arouse an audience of the uncommitted by its show of discipline and civic responsibility. Well, but why not simply resist? Why show respect for the laws of a government you mean to change radically? Nonviolence, for Gandhi and King, was never merely a tactic, and there were moral as well as rhetorical reasons for their ethic of communal self-respect and self-command. Gandhi looked on the British empire as a commonwealth that had proved its ability to reform. King spoke with the authority of a native American, claiming the rights due to all Americans, and he evoked the ideals his countrymen often said they wished to live by. The stories the nation loved to tell of itself took pride in emancipation much more than pride in conquest and domination. “So,” wrote King from the Birmingham City Jail, “I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.”

A subtler enemy of liberty than outright prejudice and violent oppression is the psychological push toward conformity. This internalized docility inhabits and may be said to dictate the costume of manners in a democracy. Because the rule of mass opinion serves as a practical substitute for the absolute authority that is no longer available, it exerts an enormous and hidden pressure. This dangerous “omnipotence of the majority,” as Tocqueville called it, knows no power greater than itself; it resembles an absolute monarch in possessing neither the equipment nor the motive to render a judgment against itself. Toleration thus becomes a political value that requires as vigilant a defense as liberty. Minorities are marked not only by race, religion, and habits of association, but also by opinion.

“It is easy to see,” writes Walter Bagehot in “The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration,” “that very many believers would persecute sceptics” if they were given the means, “and that very many sceptics would persecute believers.” Bagehot has in mind religious belief, in particular, but the same intolerance operates when it is a question of penalizing a word, a gesture, a wrongly sympathetic or unsympathetic show of feeling by which a fellow citizen might claim to be offended. The more divided the society, the more it will crave implicit assurances of unity; the more unified it is, the more it wants an even greater show of unity—an unmistakable signal of membership and belonging that can be read as proof of collective solidarity. The “guilty fear of criticism,” Mary McCarthy remarked of the domestic fear of Communism in the 1950s, “the sense of being surrounded by an unappreciative world,” brought to American life a regimen of tests, codes, and loyalty oaths that were calculated to confirm rather than subdue the anxiety.

Proscribed and persecuted groups naturally seek a fortified community of their own, which should be proof against insult; and by 1870 or so, the sure method of creating such a community was to found a new nation. George Eliot took this remedy to be prudent and inevitable, in her sympathetic early account of the Zionist quest for a Jewish state, yet her unsparing portrait of English anti-Semitism seems to recognize the nation-remedy as a carrier of the same exclusion it hopes to abolish. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a widened sense of community is the apparently intuitive—but in fact regularly inculcated—intellectual habit by which we divide people into racial, religious, and ethnic identities. The idea of an international confederation for peace was tried twice, without success, in the 20th century, with the League of Nations and the United Nations; but some such goal, first formulated in the political writings of Kant, has found memorable popular expression again and again.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s essay “Of the Ruling of Men” affords a prospect of international liberty that seems to the author simply the next necessary advance of common sense in the cause of humanity. Du Bois noticed in 1920 how late the expansion of rights had arrived at the rights of women. Always, the last hiding places of arbitrary power are the trusted arenas of privilege a society has come to accept as customary, and to which it has accorded the spurious honor of supposing it part of the natural order: men over women; the strong nations over the weak; corporate heads over employees. The pattern had come under scrutiny already in Harriet Taylor Mill’s “Enfranchisement of Women,” and its application to the hierarchies of ownership and labor would be affirmed in William Morris’s lecture “Useful Work Versus Useless Toil.” The commercial and manufacturing class, wrote Morris, “ force the genuine workers to provide for them”; no better (only more recondite in their procedures) are “the parasites” whose function is to defend the cause of property, “sometimes, as in the case of lawyers, undisguisedly so.” The socialists Morris and Du Bois regard the ultimate aim of a democratic world as the replacement of useless by useful work. With that change must also come the invention of a shared experience of leisure that is neither wasteful nor thoughtless.

A necessary bulwark of personal freedom is property, and in the commercial democracies for the past three centuries a usual means of agreement for the defense of property has been the contract. In challenging the sacredness of contract, in certain cases of conflict with a common good, T. H. Green moved the idea of “freedom of contract” from the domain of nature to that of social arrangements that are settled by convention and therefore subject to revision. The freedom of contract must be susceptible of modification when it fails to meet a standard of public well-being. The right of a factory owner, for example, to employ child labor if the child agrees, should not be protected. “No contract,” Green argues, “is valid in which human persons, willingly or unwillingly, are dealt with as commodities”; for when we speak of freedom, “we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying.” And again:

When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to make the most and best of themselves.

Legislation in the public interest may still be consistent with the principles of free society when it parts from a leading maxim of contractual individualism.

The very idea of a social contract has usually been taken to imply an obligation to die for the state. Though Hobbes and Locke offered reservations on this point, the classical theorists agree that the state yields the prospect of “commodious living” without which human life would be unsocial and greatly impoverished; and there are times when the state can survive only through the sacrifice of citizens. May there also be a duty of self-sacrifice against a state whose whole direction and momentum has bent it toward injustice? Hannah Arendt, in “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” asked that question regarding the conduct of state officials as well as ordinary people under the encroaching tyranny of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Citizens then, Arendt observes, had live options of political conduct besides passive obedience and open revolt. Conscientious opposition could show itself in public indications of nonsupport . This is a fact that the pervasiveness of conformism and careerism in mass societies makes harder to see than it should be.

Jonathan Swift, a writer as temperamentally diverse from Arendt as possible, shows in “A Modest Proposal” how the human creature goes about rationalizing any act or any policy, however atrocious. Our propensity to make-normal, to approve whatever renders life more orderly, can lead by the lightest of expedient steps to a plan for marketing the babies of the Irish poor as flesh suitable for eating. It is, after all—so Swift’s fictional narrator argues—a plausible design to alleviate poverty and distress among a large sector of the population, and to eliminate the filth and crowding that disgusts persons of a more elevated sort. The justification is purely utilitarian, and the proposer cites the most disinterested of motives: he has no financial or personal stake in the design. Civility has often been praised as a necessity of political argument, but Swift’s proposal is at once civil and, in itself, atrocious.

An absorbing concern of Arendt’s, as of several of the other essay writers gathered here, was the difficulty of thinking. We measure, we compute, we calculate, we weigh advantages and disadvantages—that much is only sensible, only logical—but we give reasons that are often blind to our motives, we rationalize and we normalize in order to justify ourselves. It is supremely difficult to use the equipment we learn from parents and teachers, which instructs us how to deal fairly with persons, and apply it to the relationship between persons and society, and between the manners of society and the laws of a nation. The 21st century has saddled persons of all nations with a catastrophic possibility, the destruction of a planetary environment for organized human life; and in facing the predicament directly, and formulating answers to the question it poses, the political thinkers of the past may help us chiefly by intimations. The idea of a good or tolerable society now encompasses relations between people at the widest imaginable distance apart. It must also cover a new relation of stewardship between humankind and nature.

Having made the present selection with the abovementioned topics in view—the republican defense against arbitrary power; the progress of liberty; the coming of mass-suffrage democracy and its peculiar dangers; justifications for political dissent and disobedience; war, as chosen for the purpose of domination or as necessary to destroy a greater evil; the responsibilities of the citizen; the political meaning of work and the conditions of work—an anthology of writings all in English seemed warranted by the subject matter. For in the past three centuries, these issues have been discussed most searchingly by political critics and theorists in Britain and the United States.

The span covers the Glorious Revolution and its achievement of parliamentary sovereignty; the American Revolution, and the civil war that has rightly been called the second American revolution; the expansion of the franchise under the two great reform bills in England and the 15th amendment to the US constitution; the two world wars and the Holocaust; and the mass movements of nonviolent resistance that brought national independence to India and broadened the terms of citizenship of black Americans. The sequence gives adequate evidence of thinkers engaged in a single conversation. Many of these authors were reading the essayists who came before them; and in many cases (Burke and Paine, Lincoln and Douglass, Churchill and Orwell), they were reading each other.

Writing Politics contains no example of the half-political, half-commercial genre of “leadership” writing. Certain other principles that guided the editor will be obvious at a glance, but may as well be stated. Only complete essays are included, no extracts. This has meant excluding great writers—Hobbes, Locke, Wollstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill, among others—whose definitive political writing came in the shape of full-length books. There are likewise no chapters of books; no party manifestos or statements of creed; nothing that was first published posthumously. All of these essays were written at the time noted, were meant for an audience of the time, and were published with an eye to their immediate effect. This is so even in cases (as with Morris and Du Bois) where the author had in view the reformation of a whole way of thinking. Some lectures have been included—the printed lecture was an indispensable medium for political ideas in the 19th century—but there are no party speeches delivered by an official to advance a cause of the moment.

Two exceptions to the principles may prove the rule. Abraham Lincoln’s letter to James C. Conkling was a public letter, written to defend the Emancipation Proclamation, in which, a few months earlier, President Lincoln had declared the freedom of all slaves in the rebelling states; he now extended the order to cover black soldiers who fought for the Union: “If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.” Lincoln was risking his presidency when he published this extraordinary appeal and admonition, and his view was shared by Frederick Douglass in “The Mission of the War”: “No war but an Abolition war, no peace but an Abolition peace.” The other exception is “The Roots of Honour,” John Ruskin’s attack on the mercenary morality of 19th-century capitalism . He called the chapter “Essay I” in Unto This Last , and his nomenclature seemed a fair excuse for reprinting an ineradicable prophecy.

__________________________________

writing politics

From Writing Politics , edited by David Bromwich. Copyright © 2020 by David Bromwich; courtesy of NYRB Classics.

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David Bromwich

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The Price of Being ‘First’

I made modeling history. then the internet made me wish i hadn’t..

the history of the essay

On the afternoon of December 3, I was on my hands and knees at the Sunset Tower Hotel, praying. It was the day before the Fashion Awards, an annual event put on by the British Fashion Council that honors designers, models, and others — I was up for Model of the Year. Yet all day, I had been making silent pleas not to win.

Please, God, don’t let me win this award, I prayed. I simply do not have the capacity.

When I was 22, studying psychology and literature at the New School, makeup artist Pat McGrath saw me on Instagram and someone from her team sent me an email that would change my life. I started modeling, and in the nine years since, I’ve achieved things I’m deeply proud of: appearing on the covers of American and British Vogue (a few times!), walking runways worldwide, buying a home, even releasing a book. Yet, amid these milestones, I have been afraid of feeling found out. Constantly self-editing, trying to find my balance between tender self-acceptance and unbridled self-hatred. Each victory for representation comes with a new flood of vitriol and a new wave of doubt: Maybe they’re right; maybe I don’t deserve to be here at all.

Spring Fashion Issue

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I anticipated the backlash that the award would unleash: “Oh, this fat girl doesn’t deserve to win,” or “Inclusivity is ruining fashion.” But that night, winning was not on my radar; I genuinely believed it wasn’t going to happen. I’d been telling anyone who asked that my friend Anok Yai would rightly win — she had such a strong year, and I’m overwhelmingly proud of and inspired by her and the other nominees. Being a model comes with a rare type of loneliness: You sacrifice education, funerals, birthdays, friendships. Every day at work, you sit in strange hotels with new faces. Longevity in this game is rare, especially if you don’t fit the conventional mold of whiteness or thinness. All the while, many of us are helping our families back home. My fellow nominees all represent what it means to persevere in an industry that doesn’t center you. None of us white; none of us the children of famous parents. All of us working our asses off.

I didn’t even bother to prepare a speech. So when Damson Idris, the presenter, called out, “Model of the Year goes to … Paloma Elsesser!” I thought, Start thinking of what you’re going to say, bitch. I wove through the hall, lights flashing as peers and strangers stood on their feet and cheered. Damson handed me an intricate amber orb, my award, and I tucked it under my arm. Amid my sputtered words and sheer disbelief, I said, “I feel very honored and very shocked, but I’m also predominantly honored because I’m the first curve model to win this award.” I felt shy and overwhelmed, but I meant it.

Walking through the Royal Albert Hall felt like looking through the reel of my own career highlights. Everyone around me echoed the significance of my win, not just for myself but for representation in the industry. My phone was blowing up with texts from my team and loved ones. In those cherished moments, I felt excitement, affirmation, and joy.

The reality hit me the next morning on my way to the airport. The hate had sprawled across thousands of comments on TikTok, Instagram, and X, tearing apart my body, my face, my walk. People were having full-blown conversations in the comments sections of my own posts. Comments like “She’s a diversity pick” and “Real models work so hard to have the bodies that they have. You get to just sit around eating cheeseburgers” flooded my phone, and the onslaught of negativity didn’t come just from faceless trolls. In a TikTok that was liked 219,000 times, Kanye West fueled the fire, alleging I was part of a vast conspiracy to “push obesity to us.” This narrative has long followed me and many in the public eye whose bodies aren’t thin. Yet over the last few years, fatphobia has become acceptable again. Representation in media has become less alluring to folks, and its purpose is being reduced to “woke ideology.”

the history of the essay

The following morning, I began sending my agent Mina waves of texts about how horrible I felt. I sobbed to her as I crept through Heathrow Airport unashamed at my unkempt emotions. Every doubt I had ever felt bubbled and spat like oil on a pan; my self-esteem was eviscerated. It felt as though my intrusive thoughts had become the subject of discourse for every rando on the internet (zero posts, zero followers, with handles like “fashionluvr2002”). Are these people not aware that I too think I’m ugly, fat, short, and a bad model sometimes?

I used to view myself as a flawed individual — this mentally ill, chubby brown girl with a messy house and an ongoing struggle to open my mail. Modeling changed my narrative and gave me a sense of purpose in challenging norms around our bodies that I too had been indoctrinated into. My body became a vessel for connection. A vessel for thought.

I’ve learned to be okay with pissing people off, even if it means losing opportunities. Since speaking out to say “Free Palestine,” I’ve lost two magazine covers and been met with hateful comments from strangers, like “I hope Hamas rapes you.” Yet there’s a difference between standing up for human rights and enduring relentless criticism for merely existing in my own body and not being the best in heels.

the history of the essay

I shut off my public social-media accounts for the past two months. It’s painful to admit, but I found myself believing that I didn’t deserve to have almost a decade of hard work acknowledged. I felt like all that effort hadn’t mattered, like nothing mattered anymore. I’m left wondering what the point is of trying to shape a world where acceptance and critical thinking are possible, only to be plunged into the depths of self-loathing. What is the point if you end up in the same place, entangled in a misery we know all too well? Still, I can’t help but feel that if I hide away, fatphobia will win and so many potential gains will fade further into the distance.

I’m protective of the fashion industry, but it’s become evident that many of the same people who talk about making these huge strides in representation are also painfully resistant to change. And what about my role in their narrative? The industry may carve out space for a select few names like mine, but it firmly shuts the door on countless others. The pride in being part of a list of “firsts” is fading; being the first curve model for a campaign loses its significance when the brand fails to open its doors to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.

Yes, I face criticism and doubt, but I keep going because it matters. I continue because it matters enough to me and because the people it impacts matter enough to me. Having a career I’m proud of means something. I’ve realized my success is significant in my small corner of the world, and that could be enough. There may be moments when I wish I could move through this industry with ease. But sometimes the work is painful and the accolades are met with fear. Perhaps I deserve recognition not just for the wins but for the effort, the struggle, and the hope that it might just matter to someone else. Is it all that bad if we start to believe we’re deserving of something?

the history of the essay

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What is Ash Wednesday and why do Christians give things up for Lent?

This year, ash wednesday will be observed on feb. 14, 2024, by staff • published february 14, 2024 • updated on february 14, 2024 at 7:16 am.

On Wednesday, many Christians will show up to work with ashes smudged on their foreheads. Many more will head to church on their lunch break or after work to receive a cross of ashes on their face.

This year, Ash Wednesday — a solemn day of fasting and reflection to mark the start of Christianity's most penitent season — falls on Valentine's Day , the fixed annual celebration of love and friendship, marked by couples, flowers and candy — and critics who deride its commercialization.

But what exactly is the purpose of the centuries-old Christian tradition?

What is Ash Wednesday?

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In the Christian tradition, Ash Wednesday marks the start of the holy season of Lent, a time for reflection and repentance in preparation for the celebration of Easter.

Christians from many denominations recognize the holy season for 40 days leading up to Easter. For centuries, Christians have received a sign of the cross with ashes on their forehead at the beginning of that season as a reminder of mortal failings and an invitation to receive God’s forgiveness. The tradition has its origins in the Old Testament where sinners performed acts of public penance.

The use of ashes is to remind parishioners of their mortality. During Ash Wednesday service, the phrase, "Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” from the Book of Genesis is traditionally employed.

Rev. Gregory Wilson, pastor at St. Mary’s Help of Christians Catholic church in Aiken, South Carolina, offers believers two things to consider when observing Ash Wednesday: prayer and sacrifice.

“Prayer,” Wilson said, “purifies intentions and relates everything back to God. Fasting detaches people from comfort and themselves, in turn, making them ‘hungry for God’ and his righteousness and holiness."

Wilson urges Christians to make time for prayer, nothing that "people always have time for what they want to do."

“We make time for these things because they are a priority and they are necessary in life and guess what? So is prayer. Prayer is like the air for the lungs of the Christian. So do not try to find time – make it.”

the history of the essay

Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday: Is it a dilemma to go on a date with a cross sign on your forehead?

the history of the essay

Valentine's Day 2024: Gift ideas for lovers, family & friends

When is ash wednesday 2024.

Ash Wednesday is not a fixed date. Its timing is tied to Easter Sunday, and for most Christians, Easter will fall on March 31 this year.

Easter also moves annually, swinging between March 22 and April 25 based on a calendar calculation involving the moon.

This year, Ash Wednesday will fall on Feb. 14 2024.

Where do the ashes come from?

Typically, the ashes are from the palms used on Palm Sunday, which falls a week before Easter, according to the  Evangelical Lutheran Church in America .

Ashes can be purchased, but some churches make their own by burning the palms from prior years. For example, several parishes and schools in the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese plan to hold palm burning ceremonies this year.

Can Catholics celebrate Valentine's Day on Ash Wednesday?

In addition to the candy heart and chocolate-fueled secular celebrations, Feb. 14 is also the Feast of St. Valentine. But Ash Wednesday with its fasting and abstinence requirements is far more significant and should be prioritized, said Catholic Bishop Richard Henning of Providence, Rhode Island, in the diocese’s official newspaper.

“Ash Wednesday is the much higher value and deserves the full measure of our devotion,” he said. “I ask with all respect that we maintain the unique importance of Ash Wednesday. If you would like to wine and dine your Valentine, please do so on the Tuesday before. February 13 is Mardi Gras, ‘Fat Tuesday,’ a perfect day to feast and celebrate!”

What is Lent?

Lent is the annual period of Christian observance that precedes Easter. The dates of Lent are defined by the date of Easter, which is a moveable feast, meaning that it falls on a different date each year. Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, and its observance lasts for 40 days, excluding Sundays. Lent ends this year on Thursday, April 6.

Catholics started the tradition of Lent around the year 325, during the Council of Nicea, but it has spread through other Christian denominations, including Western Orthodox churches, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Anglicans, among others.

During lent, Christians give up things like habits or food and drink items. The tradition’s origins go back to Jesus’ 40 days of temptation in the desert.

Lent comes from the Middle English word “lente,” which means springtime, and signals the coming of spring.

What is Fat Tuesday?

On the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, people tend to eat rich foods in large quantities in advance of the fasting, which is a key component of Lent. Hence, the name “Fat Tuesday.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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the history of the essay

The Black History That Moves Us: A Resource List for Educators

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Beyond February: Teaching Black History Any Day, Every Day, and All Year Long, K–3 (book)

This guide by Dawnavyn James (who also contributed to this resource list) supports elementary educators in their Black history instruction. Because Black history is often taught during February, this book dives into ways that Black history can be taught throughout the school year.

The book includes examples from the classroom and additional resources for educators to use in their classrooms. There are templates for educators, frequently asked questions about elementary Black history instruction, and strategies for reading Black-history-centered picture books.

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Beyond February gives examples of what Black history can look like in social studies, literacy, math, and science instruction and weaves in personal stories of the author’s experience teaching Black history in elementary classrooms.

Black Lives Matter at School, edited by Denisha Jones & Jesse Hagopian (book)

This text chronicles National Black Lives Matter at School , a movement that began in Seattle in 2016, through interviews, essays, poems, lessons, and depictions of campaigns.

The book includes writings from leading voices in anti-racist education like Bettina Love and Wayne Au but also highlights the work of teachers, community and union activists, and, most importantly, the students who have built this national movement through a variety of activities, events, and its annual week of action in February. (This year, the week of action will occur Feb. 5-9.)

Part activist guide, part autobiographical account, it reveals the struggles and challenges to institutional racism in schools by focusing on the movement’s four key demands: 1) ending zero-tolerance discipline practices, 2) mandating Black history and ethnic-studies classes, 3) hiring more Black teachers, and 4) funding counselors, not police officers, for schools.

“ Coded Bias ” (documentary)

This Netflix documentary was created by MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini to expose the racial bias, sexism, and flaws of artificial intelligence, facial-recognition technology, and software algorithms. This documentary encourages educators to more closely analyze the role of technology, specifically generative artificial intelligence, and to advocate ethical and inclusive technology.

Included are stories of algorithmic discrimination related to policing, surveillance, hiring practices, technology, and housing. Each story gives viewers an in-depth exploration of how data and algorithms can reinforce existing inequalities and harm marginalized communities.

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne (book)

This book examines the intersection of surveillance and race. Browne delves into the history of surveillance technologies and practices, highlighting how Black bodies have been surveilled, controlled, and commodified throughout history, from the era of slavery to modern surveillance technologies.

Dark Matters informs us of the history, strategy, planning, and technologies behind the creation of the slave ship. When it comes to teaching slavery in the United States, we can no longer shy away from the brutal truth of transporting, branding, owning, selling, and tracking Black bodies across land and sea.

“ High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America ” (docuseries)

This Netflix docuseries centers not just on the richness of African American cuisine but also on the richness of Black history. Food journalist Stephen Satterfield and culinary historian Jessica B. Harris trace the origins of different dishes and highlight the history of Black people, their culture, and a variety of cooking techniques and recipes.

“High on the Hog” can be used by educators and families alike to educate children and themselves about the people and places that cultivate the culture and meals that nourish the souls of Black people.

Through the two seasons of this docuseries, viewers get to hear stories of resistance and agency, meet historical and modern chefs, and learn innovative recipes.

Histematics (video)

Histematics, a concept created by former Philadelphia public school teacher Akil Parker, is a combination of history and mathematics. Parker offers a unique approach when encouraging pre- and in-service teachers to combine subjects, specifically history and mathematics. Through the concept of Histematics, he has been able to attract and engage the attention of many as his theory of mathematics education continues to evolve.

Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery (online archive)

After the Civil War, finding family members was a priority for formerly enslaved people. Launched in 2017 as a collaboration between Villanova University’s graduate history program and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Last Seen is an extensive collection of primary-source ads from across the country placed by family members searching to reconnect with loved ones. The ads reveal the perseverance, hope, and problem-solving of the Black community during and after Reconstruction.

The ads can be searched by location, specific term, and name, and a variety of filters can be used to narrow down results. An interactive global map indicates the locations where ads were placed or appeared. Last Seen also includes several lesson plans for elementary through high school on how to use the primary sources to learn about the domestic slave trade, the lives of the enslaved, resistance, and family separation.

Teaching White Supremacy by Donald Yacovone (book)

This 2022 book chronicles the deliberate creation of a white supremacist narrative that has been pervasive in our country’s educational system, especially in K-12 textbooks and curriculum . Yacovone explores how ideologies of white supremacy have deep roots in education starting with the nation’s inception and continuing to the present day and have become a major part of our collective national identity.

For teachers, this resource provides an argument to teach diverse perspectives and to critique what (and most importantly who) is considered an American. In these divisive times, this book provides important historical context to current attacks on teachers, books, and school boards teaching about race, racism, and white supremacy in the classroom.

Suggested Instagram Pages:

  • @iamblacklit : a Black, woman-owned bookstore featuring all-Black authors
  • @HBCUprepschool : a Black-owned shop with books and other instructional and learning materials created for children by founder Claudia Walker
  • @justice4blackgirls : a Black, women-owned platform to amplify voices of Black girls and women

Explore the Collection

Read more from historians and educators celebrating the history and progression of Black history education. In this special Opinion collection, explore the history of the discipline and find resources for teachers today.

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COMMENTS

  1. The Essay: History and Definition

    The Essay: History and Definition Attempts at Defining Slippery Literary Form Essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). (Apic/Getty Images) By Richard Nordquist Updated on June 14, 2018 "One damned thing after another" is how Aldous Huxley described the essay: "a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."

  2. The History of Essay: Origin and Evolvement

    The term essay was adopted from French "essayer", which was adopted from Latin "exagere". The last one means "to sort through". In the far 16th century, the essay was mostly a form of a literary piece. Afterward, it has gained wider use in literature and study. It lost all its formality and has become quite a popular writing form.

  3. PDF A New History of the Essay 4vd

    Volume One 4 The Lost Origins of the Essay Volume Two g The Making of the American Essay Volume Three d The Next American Essay Foreword James Wood xxxi To the Reader 1 A Concordance of Modes, Forms, and Themes 7 Index of Essays 33 Index of Essayists 37 Acknowledgments 41 A Note about the Title 43

  4. English 185e. The Essay: History and Practice

    We will study the history of the essay, from Montaigne to the present day. Rather than study that history purely chronologically, each class will group several essays from different decades and centuries around common themes: death, detail, sentiment, race, gender, photography, the flaneur, witness, and so on. In addition to writing about ...

  5. Essayists on the Essay

    The first historically and internationally comprehensive collection of its kind, Essayists on the Essay is a pathbreaking work that is nothing less than a richly varied sourcebook for anyone interested in the theory, practice, and art of the essay. This unique work includes a selection of fifty distinctive pieces by American, Canadian, English, European, and South American essayists from ...

  6. Cambridge history american essay

    From Puritan writings to essays by Indigenous authors, from Transcendentalist and Pragmatist texts to Harlem Renaissance essays, from New Criticism to New Journalism: The story of the American essay is told here, beginning in the early eighteenth century and ending with the vibrant, heterogeneous scene of contemporary essayistic writing.

  7. Essay

    The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing. Subsequently, essay has been defined in a variety of ways.

  8. A History Of The Invention Of The Essay

    It is generally accepted that the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne, born in 1533, was the first author to describe his works of writing as essays. Back then, essay was a term that he used to characterise the way that he would attempt to put his various thoughts into writing.

  9. Essay

    essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view. Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the pleasantness of old age or on the art of "divination ...

  10. Roundtable: The History of the Essay

    This broadcast broadcast issue conversation s conversation conducted roundtable by Milton discussion J. Rosenberg conducted on is the by WGN a transcription Milton J. Rosenberg of the highlights on the WGN of a radio program Extension 720 on June 30, 1999. Three guests participated with him in a discussion on the history of the personal essay.

  11. The Cambridge History of the British Essay

    From ancient influences on the essay as a form of rhetoric to the Irish essay as performance, from British imperial propaganda to African postcolonial resistance, from political pamphlets to the rise of literary professionalism, from gastronomy to ecocriticism, The Cambridge History of the British Essay offers the first authoritative single-volume history of the form's development within the ...

  12. English Essay: Origin, Development and Growth

    It was in 1571 that the 'essay' was invented by the French philosopher, Montaigne. He called his short, philosophical writings which were the products of moments by the French word assai, which means 'attempt'. Since then the word 'essay' has been applied to compositions of the kind that Montaigne attempted. Origin of Essay

  13. The Cambridge History of the American Essay

    The Cambridge History of the American Essay offers the fullest account to date of this diverse and complex history. From Puritan writings to essays by Indigenous authors, from Transcendentalist and Pragmatist texts to Harlem Renaissance essays, from New Criticism to New Journalism: The story of the American essay is told here, beginning in the ...

  14. PDF A Brief Guide to Writing the History Paper

    The Challenges of Writing About (a.k.a., Making) History At first glance, writing about history can seem like an overwhelming task. History's subject matter is immense, encompassing all of human affairs in the recorded past — up until the moment, that is, that you started reading this guide.

  15. Writing a history essay

    History essays test a range of skills including historical understanding, interpretation and analysis, planning, research and writing. To write an effective essay, students should examine the question, understand its focus and requirements, acquire information and evidence through research, then construct a clear and well-organised response.

  16. The Five-Paragraph Essay: Its Evolution and Roots in Theme-Writing

    Abstract. This essay traces the origins of the five-paragraph essay to a form of theme-writing that has deep roots in English education and classical rhetoric, long before the current-traditional period that has been commonly assumed to be the origin. The five-paragraph essay's history and evolution can inform our understanding of its role in writing instruction and why it has persisted for so ...

  17. History Essay: A Complete Writing Guide for Students

    Well, the main goal of a history essay is to measure your progress in learning history and test your range of skills (such as analysis, logic, planning, research, and writing), it is necessary to prepare yourself very well. Your plan of action may look like this. First of all, you will have to explore the topic.

  18. The secret history of the essay film

    1940 - Hans Richter's The Film Essay. The term "essay film" was originally coined by German artist Hans Richter, who wrote in his 1940 paper, The Film Essay: "The film essay enables the filmmaker to make the 'invisible' world of thoughts and ideas visible on the screen...The essay film produces complex thought - reflections that are not necessarily bound to reality, but can also ...

  19. How to write an introduction for a history essay

    1. Background sentences. The first two or three sentences of your introduction should provide a general introduction to the historical topic which your essay is about. This is done so that when you state your , your reader understands the specific point you are arguing about. Background sentences explain the important historical period, dates ...

  20. Essays in the History of Ideas

    He maps out recurring phenomena in the history of ideas, which the essays illustrate. One phenomenon is the presence and influence of the same presuppositions or other operative "ideas" in very diverse provinces of thought and in different periods. Another is the role of semantic transitions and confusions, of shifts and of ambiguities in the ...

  21. Why Study History? (1998)

    Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship. A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in ...

  22. A Brief History of the Political Essay ‹ Literary Hub

    The political essay has never been a clearly defined genre. David Hume may have legitimated it in 1758 when he classified under a collective rubric his own Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary."Political," however, should have come last in order, since Hume took a speculative and detached view of politics, and seems to have been incapable of feeling passion for a political cause.

  23. Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History

    The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788.The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in various New York state newspapers of the time. The Federalist Papers were written and published to urge New Yorkers to ratify the proposed ...

  24. What is history?

    History describes our attempts to research, study and explain the past. This is a subtle difference but an important one. What happened in the past is fixed in time and cannot be changed. In contrast, history changes regularly. The past is concrete and unchangeable but history is an ongoing conversation about the past and its meaning.

  25. Paloma Elsesser on Winning Model of the Year

    I made modeling history. Then the internet made me wish I hadn't. By Paloma Elsesser, an American model and body advocate. Photo: Zora Sicher. Photo: Zora Sicher. On the afternoon of December 3, I was on my hands and knees at the Sunset Tower Hotel, praying. It was the day before the Fashion Awards, an annual event put on by the British ...

  26. What is Ash Wednesday?

    What is Lent? Lent is the annual period of Christian observance that precedes Easter. The dates of Lent are defined by the date of Easter, which is a moveable feast, meaning that it falls on a ...

  27. The Black History That Moves Us: A Resource List for Educators

    Beyond February: Teaching Black History Any Day, Every Day, and All Year Long, K-3 (book). This guide by Dawnavyn James (who also contributed to this resource list) supports elementary educators ...