Hot Girl History Glossary

Studying history is more than memorizing dates, talking about war, recalling pop culture events, and unpacking old scandals of so-called great men. Studying history (and presenting it to others) takes agile multitasking, critical thinking, and analysis. Here’s a glossary of history and historiography terms to help you become a better historian. You may even find it helpful to decide what kind of historian you wish to be! 

The Historical Method

The Historical Method is the technique historians use to theorize causation (cause and effect) and paint a believable picture of the past. They combine primary and secondary sources with material evidence and logical reasoning to craft ideas that survive critique, scrutiny, & hopefully,  the passage of time.

Keep in mind that their logical reasoning is shaped by discipline, school of thought, positionality, and how much they study! Good historians constantly read and learn new information to draw better conclusions. Positionality, meanwhile, is how location, social identity, background, and cultural context shape your worldview, privileges, and understandings of others. As a historian, you must be cognizant of your own positionality and that of others.

The Five C’s

• Change over time (timelines, dates, eras)

• Context (elements of the past shaping actions and beliefs)

• Causality (why an event happened)

• Contingency (luck, unfortunate events, weather, etc)

• Complexity (multiple causes, disciplines, strains of thinking, ideas to paint a rich picture)

Bonus C: Competing History: The different, often contradictory interpretations of the past by various groups and historians. Impacted by hegemony.

A good historian also understands:

• Hegemony- The political, economic, military, and/or cultural power of one state or group over another within society. Knowing how power functions is important for your analysis.

  
  

• Homogeneous- Of the same kind

• Interdisciplinary- The approach of applying multiple disciplines to the study of one subject

  
  

• Historicism- Analyzing the past on its own terms —i.e., past beliefs, knowledge, values, etc. —rather than through modern ideas. This is important for understanding why past events unfolded, not an excuse for why things happened. It is key to not erase or sanitize the past, so you need to also infuse any analysis with a healthy dose of presentism. 

  
  

• Presentism- Analyzing the past with modern ideas, beliefs, knowledge, values, etc. This helps us understand how to not repeat past mistakes and to identify recurring patterns of oppression. 

  
  

• Historicity- The authenticity of a past person or event within history instead of being a myth, legend, or religious figure. For example, the study of Jesus Christ the Person in actual records opposed to the Biblical narrative.

  
  

• Calendar- A detailed list of curated archival documents (like court docs, deeds, income records, etc) that indexes names, dates, and key legal statements

  
  

• Diaspora- The voluntary or involuntary spread of a group of people throughout the world

  
  

• Dossier- A collection of documents intentionally assembled for the study of a specific topic

  
  

• Essentialism- The assumption that a group or culture has a shared character or essential belief. For instance, the belief that all Black Americans are athletically gifted, or that all Asians are smart. This type of reasoning was the foundation of sceintific racism and is pervasive in old texts you may come across. So keep in mind to look out for the...

  
  

• Historian’s Fallacy: Frameworks and ideologies built on logical and methodological errors made by historians. For example, because most historians of the post-antebellum were steeped and boiled in racist attitudes, and essentialized Black Americans as intellectually inferior, docile, and better off as slaves, predominant historical episteme was that the enslaved did not meaningfully resist slavery. It took decades of scholarship to correct this.  This is why we need to repeatedly study the past to assess for new ideas and catalogue faulty historical tidbits. For more, see Fake History

  
  

  • Additionally, Episteme is the common knowledge, framework, or understanding of an era undergirding popular thought. It's what people 'know for certain' during any given time period. For instance, the medicinal system of humorism was considered certain knowledge in Western society from the classical era to the 17th century

    
    

• National Memory: A collective historical memory shared by a country’s citizens that threads together common experiences. This is heavily associated with nationalism-- i.e. Pearl Harbor and September 11th in America, because national memories become foundational for propaganda and policy change. There is also CULTURAL memory, like Black Americans and chattel slavery

  
  

• Unwitting Testimony- When historians and primary source authors unintentionally reveal personal biases, bigotry, or beliefs in their writings that shape and reflect understandings of the past

  
  

• Lacuna- A gap or missing piece in a manuscript or text

  
  

• Agent Provocateur: A person or group that went undercover and compromised the enemy from within to provoke conflict.

• Euhemerism: The notion that mythological accounts of Gods, tragedies, and miracles were based on real events or people and evolved over time

  
  

• Anachronism: Putting a person, event, language, slang term, custom, trend, etc into the wrong time period

  
  

• Periodization: Sorting and naming blocks of time into chronological and/or thematic categories for historical study (i.e. ‘The Seventies’). However, keep in mind that historical forces influencing each period of study were always in motion before the period began.

  
  

• Statistics: The collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of numerical data

  
  

Historical Fields of Study

There is a growing number of fields of history (world, military, economic, ancient, etc.), but here's a list of 24.

• Administrative History- The study of state administrations, legal codes, civil servants, and bureaucracies

• Big History- The study of humanity from the Big Bang onward, analyzing the human connection to cosmology, nature, and science

• Comparative History- Examining multiple societies from the same time period, or societies with shared cultures

• Conjectural History- Using logical reasoning and philosophical assumptions to shape the narrative of early human history when little to no archives or artifacts exist

• Cultural History- The examination of cultural practices within a given society or group, including art, music, literature, film, theater, etc

• Deep History- The study of prehistoric humanity to create a primary narrative about early humans. It integrates anthropology, evolutionary biology, archaeology, genetics, and other scientific disciplines

  
  

• Digital History- Preservation, analysis, and use of digital media to shape and present historical narratives

  
  

• Ethnohistory- The study of indigenous people in a particular region that supplements the lack of written records with conjectural history, oral history, folklore, anthropology, and archaeology

  
  

• Folklore- The traditional culture, stories, beliefs, myths, customs, and art forms shared and passed down by groups of people

  
  

• Great Men History— Historical approach developed in the 19th century that promoted the idea of rare heroes shaping events and society above all else (as opposed to People’s history or ‘history from below’. Perhaps the most antiquated mode of thinking and field of history on this list-- no matter the culture or nationality applying it. On an evil level, think of the way Christopher Columbus was elevated as a hero despite his many terrible deeds. On a non-evil but still fucked up level, think of the way that Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy initially overshadowed other participants in the Civil Rights Movement (something that modern historians are rectifying today)

  
  

• Histoire des Mentalites- French for ‘History of Mentalities’, this is the study of the perspectives of historical people & how they viewed events and their own lives. Very closely tied to People’s History

• Historical Demography- The quantitative analysis of past human populations through size, fertility, migration, and mortality

  
  

• Historiography- The study of disciplines, theories, methods, and sources of historians and their scholarship

  
  

• Macro History- The study of long-term trends in world history that reveal larger patterns within a diverse set of cultures and societies

• Micro History- Study of an extremely specific community, trend, commodity, location, etc

• New History- An approach to history in which it is used to understand contemporary problems. Originated with historian James Harvey Robinson in the early 20th century

• Oral History- Historical info gathered from verbal communication, like speeches, conversations, and interviews. Collecting and analyzing oral histories takes tremendous patience and skill— particularly because you need to be good at getting people to open up or plumb them for details they may not see the historical magnitude of.

• People’s History- Discussing history from the point of view of ordinary people, the marginalized, and the oppressed-- usually in accessible language

• Prosopography- The study of collective lives/biographies of a group of individuals in the same occupation, place, or event-- for example, the memoirs of Vietnam War veterans

• Public History- Works by people with at least some historical training who engage the public in an accessible way outside of mainstream academia. This is what I do with Intelexual Media.

• Social history: Reaching its modern definition in the 1960s, the lived experiences of humans became an important area of study. Topics include women’s history, class hsitory, disability history, sex history, gender history, racism history, food history, etc. Sociologist Charles Tilly described the responsibility of the social historian as "documenting large structural changes…reconstructing the experiences of ordinary people in the course of those changes… and connecting the two.” 

• Transhistoricity- A concept or entity that is recurring throughout human history rather than being limited to one period or place: like misogyny, classism, and racism

• Radical History- The social and academic protest of mainstream historical narratives by seriously engaging the history of radical beliefs and pairing it with action (praxis) to improve society. Closely tied to postmodernism and postcolonialism.

  
  

• Universal History- Works that present history and mankind as an interlocked and complete unit

Theories

In the mid-to-late 20th century, historians were increasingly tasked with examining history with a sociological lens, instead of relying on Great Men, military, and administrative history.

• Continuity- An important aspect of traditionalist and conservative historians is pondering essential aspects of human life that are the basis of tradition and the status quo and argued to be naturally recurring in history (I.e., there will always be the haves and the have-nots)

  
  

• Critical Theory- The study of systems of power that must be paired with praxis (action) to liberate the marginalized and improve the world. Born from Marxism and applicable to a wide variety of subjects, from race to gender.

• Eurocentrism- The examination of history from an explicitly European/Western worldview. It aggressively excludes non-European societies or reduces them to historical NPCs and sanitizes European atrocities.

  
  

• Historical Materialism- Branch of Marxist theory in which history is not shaped by specific human desires or actions, but by the objective facts of material existence-- mainly our biological needs

  
  

• Institutional Racism- A collective and systemic failure by governments and entities to extend democracy, equal rights, and/or equal service to a group of people because of their race or ethnicity

  
  

• Longue Durée- French for 'Long Duration', this is an Annales School of thought that prioritizes long-term historical events that slowly evolve; creating broader social patterns and trends (like climate, ecology, economic cycles). The Annales School was developed by French historians and shifted French historiography away from wars, great men, and military treaties.

  
  

• Postcolonialism/Decolonialism- The unflinching study of Western colonialism and imperialism’s impact on politics, culture, and society. I.E, the study of Jamaica after it gained independence from the British in 1962

  
  

• Postmodernism- Originating in the mid-20th century, a framework that rejects modernism, universal truth, and grand hero-based narratives that flourished in the 17th-19th centuries. Postmodern scholars question and critique established narratives and champion diversity.

Fake History

With Competing Histories, the pervasive power of nostalgia (especially on today's clip-crazy internet), generative AI, and the adage that history is written by the victors, it's important to be knowledgeable about pseudohistory.

Pseudohistory is fake or distorted narratives about the past.

• Historical negationism doesn’t include important counter narratives or facts, like writing about slavery from the point of view of enslavers but ignoring the narratives of the enslaved

• Historical revisionism alters the contemporary reception or interpretation of past events to provide a favorable outcome for the writer, like positively retconning George Bush and the ‘War on Terror’ when comparing him to Donald Trump

  • Also See: The Lost Cause Theory

• Historical denialism refutes events that have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to have occurred (like people who deny that enslaved people were brought from Africa or that the Holocaust happened)

• Logical fallacies are fake yet highly persuasive arguments used to support pseudohistory  

Counterfactual History- A branch of analytical study that examines the “What Ifs” of human history. Different from pseudohistory because it adheres to tight methodology and doesn't present alternatives as real

Fakelore- Invented, manufactured, and fake folklore presented as traditional belief, like the tale of Slender Man or the mythologization of Paul Bunyan by ad executives

Hagiography- A biased, uncritical, and reverential account of a subject’s life; a style of biography that originated with the life stories of venerated saints and religious figures. It’s like a Stan writing a sanitized biography of their favorite celebrity to avoid their fave being attacked.

Subaltern- The groups of people within Postcolonial and Critical Theory studies whose stories are lost to colonial hegemony, denying them agency and power. The fake history lies not in the Subalterns, but academics and nations who ignore them in official narratives.

If you enjoyed this History Glossary, check out more Intelexual Media guides!

Get the condensed and illuminated manuscript version of this glossary in PDF form for free on my patreon! Bonus Term: Illuminated Manuscript is text supplemented with decoration :)