ABSTRACT
Political history and intellectual history are two influential fields within the discipline of history. Political history, among the oldest organized scholarly fields, examines specific groups “in terms of how power is sought, exercised, challenged, abused or denied.” Intellectual history, also an old field, is dedicated to the “understanding of those ideas, thoughts, arguments, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes and preoccupations that together made up the intellectual or reflective life of previous societies.” This chapter provides an overview of how political and intellectual histories developed. It discusses the methods used by practitioners, from the research questions that guide their work, to the kinds of primary sources they use, to the different ways they share the results of their research. The chapter lists examples of undergraduate research projects that fall within these fields.
