How to read like a historian

SOURCE 1.  
From Susan Wise Bauer's The Well Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had.  New York:  W.W. Norton, 2003. 

HOW TO READ HISTORY

First Level of Inquiry: Grammar-Stage Reading
 __ Look at the title, cover & table of contents
__ Does the writer state his/her purpose for writing?
__ What are the major events of the history?
__ Who is this story about?
__ Who or what causes this challenge?
__ What happened to the historical "hero/ine"?
__ Do the characters go forward, or backward--and why?
__ When does the story take place?
__ Where does the story take place?

Second Level of Inquiry: Logic-Stage reading
__ Look for the historian's major assertions
__ What questions is the historian asking?
__ What sources does the historian use to answer them?
__ Does the evidence support the connection between questions and asnwers?
__ Can you identify the history's genre?
__ Does the historian list his or her qualifications?

Third Level of Inquiry: Rhetoric-Stage Reading
__ What is the purpose of history?
__ Does this story have forward motion?
__ What does it mean to be human?
__ Why do things go wrong?
__ What place does free will have?
__ What relationship does this history have to social problems?
__ What is the end of history?
__ How is this history the same as--or different then--the stories of other historians who have come before?
__ Is there another possible explanation?

SOURCE 2. READING LIKE A HISTORIAN

What does it mean to read like a historian? 
In history class, you will be doing a lot of readin, thinking, and problem-solving. When you read, ask yourself, “What does it mean to read like a historian?” Historians study many sources to understand and learn history. They rely heavily on primary sources to provide information about the people and civilizations that have risen and fallen in the past. 


Primary Sources 
Primary sources are documents, written accounts by a firsthand witness, or objects from the past. Primary Sources include letters, documents, diaries, photographs, art, stamps, or even clothing. As you analyze primary sources ask questions like the ones below. 
 

Political Cartoons 
As you study political cartoons, use the following helpful tips and questions: 

  1. List the parts of the political cartoon and the importance of each part.
  2. Describe the focus or significance of the political cartoon.
  3. Do the captions and call-out boxes clarify the political cartoon’s purpose?
  4. Does the cartoon help me understand the information that I am studying in my textbook better?


Written Sources 
As you analyze primary sources, ask questions like the ones below: 

  1. Who created the source and why?
  2. Did the writer have firsthand knowledge of the events, or report what others saw or heard?
  3. Was the writer a neutral party, or did the author have opinions or interests that might have influenced what was recorded?
  4. Did the writer wish to inform or persuade others?
  5. Was the information recorded during the event, immediately after the event, or after some lapse of time?


Images
One way to study an image (painting, photograph, etc.) is to write down everything you think is important about it. Then divide the image into four sections and describe the important elements from each section. As you study images, ask questions like the ones below. 

  1. What is the subject of the image?
  2. What does the image reveal about its subject?
  3. What is the setting for the image?
  4. What other details can I observe?
  5. When and where in the past was the image created?
  6. How can I describe the image creator's point of view?

Historical Map 
As you study historical maps, ask the questions below. 
  1. What time period does the map show?
  2. What details has the mapmaker chosen to include (or exclude) on this map?
  3. Why was the map drawn?
  4. How can I determine if the map is accurate?
  5. How are maps used to analyze the past, present, and future?

SOURCE 3.  http://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/

 How to Read a Primary Source

Good reading is about asking questions of your sources. Keep the following in mind when reading primary sources. Even if you believe you can't arrive at the answers, imagining possible answers will aid your comprehension. Reading primary sources requires that you use your historical imagination. This process is all about your willingness and ability to ask questions of the material, imagine possible answers, and explain your reasoning.

I. Evaluating primary source texts: I've developed an acronym that may help guide your evaluation of primary source texts: PAPER.

Purpose

Argument

Presuppositions

Epistemology

Relate: Now choose another of the readings, and compare the two, answering these questions:

II. Here are some additional concepts that will help you evaluate primary source texts:

    1. Texts and documents, authors and creators: You'll see these phrases a lot. I use the first two and the last two as synonyms. Texts are historical documents, authors their creators, and vice versa. "Texts" and "authors" are often used when discussing literature, while "documents" and "creators" are more familiar to historians.
       
    2. Evaluating the veracity (truthfulness) of texts: For the rest of this discussion, consider the example of a soldier who committed atrocities against non-combatants during wartime. Later in his life, he writes a memoir that neglects to mention his role in these atrocities, and may in fact blame them on someone else. Knowing the soldier's possible motive, we would be right to question the veracity of his account.
       
    3. The credible vs. the reliable text:
      1. Reliability refers to our ability to trust the consistency of the author's account of the truth. A reliable text displays a pattern of verifiable truth-telling that tends to render the unverifiable parts of the text true. For instance, the soldier above may prove to be utterly reliable in detailing the campaigns he participated in during the war, as evidence by corroborating records. The only gap in his reliability may be the omission of details about the atrocities he committed.
      2. Credibility refers to our ability to trust the author's account of the truth on the basis of her or his tone and reliability. An author who is inconsistently truthful -- such as the soldier in the example above -- loses credibility. There are many other ways authors undermine their credibility. Most frequently, they convey in their tone that they are not neutral (see below). For example, the soldier above may intersperse throughout his reliable account of campaign details vehement and racist attacks against his old enemy. Such attacks signal readers that he may have an interest in not portraying the past accurately, and hence may undermine his credibility, regardless of his reliability.
      3. An author who seems quite credible may be utterly unreliable. The author who takes a measured, reasoned tone and anticipates counter-arguments may seem to be very credible, when in fact he presents us with complete balderdash. Similarly, a reliable author may not always seem credible. It should also be clear that individual texts themselves may have portions that are more reliable and credible than others.
         
    4. The objective vs. the neutral text: We often wonder if the author of a text has an "ax to grind" which might render her or his words unreliable.
      1. Neutrality refers to the stake an author has in a text. In the example of the soldier who committed wartime atrocities, the author seems to have had a considerable stake in his memoir, which was the expunge his own guilt. In an utterly neutral document, the creator is not aware that she or he has any special stake in the construction and content of the document. Very few texts are ever completely neutral. People generally do not go to the trouble to record their thoughts unless they have a purpose or design which renders them invested in the process of creating the text. Some historical texts, such as birth records, may appear to be more neutral than others, because their creators seem to have had less of a stake in creating them. (For instance, the county clerk who signed several thousand birth certificates likely had less of a stake in creating an individual birth certificate than did a celebrity recording her life in a diary for future publication as a memoir.)
      2. Objectivity refers to an author's ability to convey the truth free of underlying values, cultural presuppositions, and biases. Many scholars argue that no text is or ever can be completely objective, for all texts are the products of the culture in which their authors lived. Many authors pretend to objectivity when they might better seek for neutrality. The author who claims to be free of bias and presupposition should be treated with suspicion: no one is free of their values. The credible author acknowledges and expresses those values so that they may accounted for in the text where they appear.
         
    5. Epistemology: a fancy word for a straight-forward concept. "Epistemology" is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of knowledge. How do you know what you know? What is the truth, and how is it determined? For historians who read primary sources, the question becomes: what can I know of the past based on this text, how sure can I be about it, and how do I know these things?
      1. This can be an extremely difficult question. Ultimately, we cannot know anything with complete assurance, because even our senses may fail us. Yet we can conclude, with reasonable accuracy, that some things are more likely to be true than others (for instance, it is more likely that the sun will rise tomorrow than that a human will learn to fly without wings or other support). Your task as a historian is to make and justify decisions about the relative veracity of historical texts, and portions of them. To do this, you need a solid command of the principles of sound reasoning.
        2.

How to Read a Secondary Source

Reading secondary historical sources is a skill which may be acquired and must be practiced. Reading academic material well is an active process that can be far removed from the kind of pleasure reading most of us are used to. Sure, history may sometimes be dry, but you'll find success reading even the most difficult material if you can master these skills. The key here is taking the time and energy to engage the material -- to think through it and to connect it to other material you have covered.

I: How to read a book
  1. Read the title. Define every word in the title; look up any unknown words. Think about what the title promises for the book. Look at the table of contents. This is your "menu" for the book. What can you tell about its contents and structure from the TOC?
  2. Read a book from the outside in. Read the foreword and introduction (if an article, read the first paragraph or two). Read the conclusion or epilogue if there is one (if an article, read the last one or two paragraphs). After all this, ask yourself what the author's thesis might be. How has the argument been structured?
  3. Read chapters from the outside in. Quickly read the first and last paragraph of each chapter. After doing this and taking the step outlined above, you should have a good idea of the book's major themes and arguments.
  4. You are now finally ready to read in earnest. Don't read a history book as if you were reading a novel for light pleasure reading. Read through the chapters actively, taking cues as to which paragraphs are most important from their topic sentences. (Good topic sentences tell you what the paragraph is about.) Not every sentence and paragraph is as important as every other. It is up to you to judge, based on what you know so far about the book's themes and arguments. If you can, highlight passages that seem to be especially relevant.
  5. Take notes: Many students attempt to take comprehensive notes on the content of a book or article. I advice against this. I suggest that you record your thoughts about the reading rather than simply the details and contents of the reader. What surprised you? What seemed particularly insightful? What seems suspect? What reinforces or counters points made in other readings? This kind of note taking will keep your reading active, and actually will help you remember the contents of the piece better than otherwise.
     

II. "STAMP" it: A technique for reading a book which complements the steps above is to answer a series of questions about your reading.

Structure: How has the author structured her work? How would you briefly outline it? Why might she have employed this structure? What historical argument does the structure employ? After identifying the thesis, ask yourself in what ways the structure of the work enhances or detracts from the thesis. How does the author set about to make her or his case? What about the structure of the work makes it convincing?

 Thesis: A thesis is the controlling argument of a work of history. Toqueville argued, for instance, that American society in the first half of the nineteenth century believed itself to be radically oriented towards liberty and freedom while in fact its innate conservatism hid under a homogeneous culture and ideology. Often, the most difficult task when reading a secondary is to identify the author's thesis. In a well-written essay, the thesis is usually clearly stated near the beginning of the piece. In a long article or book, the thesis is usually diffuse. There may in fact be more than one. As you read, constantly ask yourself, "how could I sum up what this author is saying in one or two sentences?" This is a difficult task; even if you never feel you have succeeded, simply constantly trying to answer this question will advance your understanding of the work.

 Argument: A thesis is not just a statement of opinion, or a belief, or a thought. It is an argument. Because it is an argument, it is subject to evaluation and analysis. Is it a good argument? How is the big argument (the thesis) structured into little arguments? Are these little arguments constructed well? Is the reasoning valid? Does the evidence support the conclusions? Has the author used invalid or incorrect logic? Is she relying on incorrect premises? What broad, unexamined assumptions seem to underlay the author's argument? Are these correct?
Note here that none of these questions ask if you like the argument or its conclusion. This part of the evaluation process asks you not for your opinion, but to evaluate the logic of the argument. There are two kinds of logic you must consider: Internal logic is the way authors make their cases, given the initial assumptions, concerns, and definitions set forth in the essay or book. In other words, assuming that their concern is a sound one, does the argument make sense? Holistic logic regards the piece as a whole. Are the initial assumptions correct? Is the author asking the proper questions? Has the author framed the problem correctly?

 Motives: Why might the author have written this work? This is a difficult question, and often requires outside information, such as information on how other historians were writing about the topic. Don't let the absence of that information keep you from using your historical imagination. Even if you don't have the information you wish you had, you can still ask yourself, "Why would the author argue this?" Many times, arguments in older works of history seem ludicrous or silly to us today. When we learn more about the context in which those arguments were made, however, they start to make more sense. Things like political events and movements, an author's ideological bents or biases, or an author's relationship to existing political and cultural institutions often have an impact on the way history is written. On the other hand, the struggle to achieve complete objectivity also effects the ways people have written history. It is only appropriate, then, that such considerations should inform your reading.

 Primaries: Students of history often do not read footnotes. Granted, footnotes are not exactly entertaining, but they are the nuts and bolts of history writing. Glance occasionally at footnotes, especially when you come across a particularly interesting or controversial passage. What primary sources has the historian used to support her argument? Has she used them well? What pitfalls may befall the historians who uses these sources? How does her use of these kinds of sources influence the kinds of arguments she can make? What other sources might she have employed?

III. Three important questions to ask of secondary sources

What does the author say? That is, what is the author's central claim or thesis, and the argument which backs it up? The thesis of a history paper usually explains how or why something happened. This means that the author will have to (1) tell what happened (the who, where, when, what of the subject); (2) explain how or why it happened.

Why does the author say it? Historians are almost always engaged in larger, sometimes obscure dialogues with other professionals. Is the author arguing with a rival interpretation? What would that be? What accepted wisdom is the author trying to challenge or complicate? What deeper agenda might be represented by this effort? (An effort to overthrow capitalism? To justify Euro-Americans' decimation of Native American populations? To buttress claims that the government should pursue particular policies?)

Where is the author's argument weak or vulnerable? Good historians try to make a case that their conclusion or interpretation is correct. But cases are rarely airtight - especially novel, challenging, or sweeping ones. At what points is the author vulnerable? Where is the evidence thin? What other interpretations of the author's evidence is possible? At what points is the author's logic suspect? If the author's case is weak, what is the significance of this for the argument as a whole?
 

"Predatory" Reading

Reading scholarly material requires a new set of skills. You simply cannot read scholarly material as if it were pleasure reading and expect to comprehend it satisfactorily. Yet neither do you have the time to read every sentence over and over again. Instead, you must become what one author calls a "predatory" reader. That is, you must learn to quickly determine the important parts of the scholarly material you read. The most important thing to understand about a piece of scholarly writing is its argument. Arguments have three components: the problem, the solution, and the evidence. Understanding the structure of an essay is key to understanding these things. Here are some hints on how to determine structure when reading scholarly material:
  1. Think pragmatically. Each part of a well-crafted argument serves a purpose for the larger argument. When reading, try to determine why the author has spent time writing each paragraph. What does it "do" for the author's argument?
     
  2. Identify "signposts." Signposts are the basic structural cues in a piece of writing. Is the reading divided into chapters or sections? Are there subheads within the reading? Subheads under subheads? Are the titles clearly descriptive of the contents, or do they need to be figured out (as in titles formulated from quotations)? Are there words or concepts in the titles (of the piece, and of subheads) that need to be figured out (such as novel words, or metaphors)?
     
  3. Topic sentences. Topic sentences (usually the first sentences of each paragraph) are miniature arguments. Important topic sentences function as subpoints in the larger argument. They also tell you what the paragraph that follows will be about. When reading, try to identify how topic sentences support the larger argument. You can also use them to decide if a paragraph seems important enough to read closely.
     
  4. Evidence. Pieces of evidence -- in the form of primary and secondary sources -- are the building blocks of historical arguments. When you see evidence being used, try to identity the part of the argument it is being used to support.
     
  5. Identify internal structures. Within paragraphs, authors create structures to help reader understand their points. Identify pairings or groups of points and how they are telegraphed. Where are they in the hierarchy of the argument? Hierarchy of major points is very important, and the most difficult to determine. Is the point a major or a minor one? How can you tell?
     
  6. Examine transitions. Sometimes transitions are throwaways, offered merely to get from one point to another. At other times, they can be vital pieces of argument, explaining the relationship between points, or suggesting the hierarchy of points in the argument.
     
  7. Identify key distinctions. Scholars often make important conceptual distinctions in their work.
     
  8. Identify explicit references to rival scholarly positions. Moments when a scholar refers directly to the work of another scholar are important in understanding the central questions at stake.
     
  9. Stay attuned to strategic concessions. Often authors seem to be backtracking, or giving ground, only to try to strengthen their cases. Examine such instances in your readings closely. Often, these signal moments where authors are in direct conversation with other scholars. Such moments may also help steer you toward the thesis.
     
  10. Remember that incoherence is also a possibility. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine how a section of a piece is structured or what it's purpose in the argument is. Remember that authors do not always do their jobs, and there may be incoherent or unstructured portions of essays. But be careful to distinguish between writing that is complex and writing that is simply incoherent.
     

Finally, remember that you cannot read each piece of scholarship closely from start to finish and hope to understand its structure. You must examine it (or sections of it) several times. It is much better to work over an article several times quickly -- each time seeking to discern argument and structure -- than it is to read it once very closely.

Some Keys to Good Reading

Three important questions to ask of secondary sources:
 

Broad approaches to essay reading:

That is, what is the structure of the argument? What are the major points, and what minor points are subordinated under each major point?

What is the author's argument?

There are two general steps to reading scholarship:

Stage 1: Observation. What is the author's argument and how is it structured? This is the first read through the piece. Your objective is merely to understand what the author is trying to do.

Stage 2: Evaluation. Where is the argument particularly strong or weak? What about it is weak? This is the second read and subsequence analysis of the piece. Your objective is to evaluate the author's success in making her or his case.

Argument Concepts

What is the author's argument?

What arguments does the author make that may be challenged?

If you wanted to challenge this author, how would you go about it?
 

Two important concepts:
 

  1. The "valid" argument: an argument structured such that, given that the premises are correct, the conclusion must be correct. In the following argument, the premises are not correct, but the argument is still valid, for its logic is correct:
    2.

p1: Martha Ballard was a midwife
p2: All midwives had professional educations
c: Therefore Martha Ballard had a professional education
 

  1. The "sound" argument: a valid argument with true premises. The preceding argument is valid but not sound, for not all of its premises are true (p2 is false).
  2. This argument is invalid, and hence unsound (despite that its premises are correct):
    3.

p1: Martha Ballard was a midwife
p2: Martha Ballard caught over fifty babies
c: All midwives caught over fifty babies
 

p1: Martha Ballard was a midwife
p2: All midwives catch babies
c: Martha Ballard caught babies

A very important thing to remember: Very often, we confuse good or possible arguments with the arguments a scholar actually made. In evaluating a scholarly argument, you are making claims about what an author has stated. You do not have the freedom to put arguments in authors' mouths; you must be able to back up every claim you make (about an author's argument) through reference to the text. There is a distinction between what an author might have argued and what the author did argue. If it's not in the text, the author did not argue it -- even if it would have made a good argument. It is vital to imagine possible arguments, but remember -- that enterprise is not the same as determining what the author actually argued.

Analyzing Arguments

This guide is intended to:

Consider this thesis question, which is the one Frank Tannenbaum asked in From Slave to Citizen:

How did differing patterns of slavery in the Americas lead to differing patterns of post-emancipation race relations in the Americas; specifically, how did these differing historical patterns of slavery make post-emancipation Latin America a better place for people of African descent than the post-emancipation United States?

What are the premises underlying it?

Now consider this thesis:

As evident in patterns of emancipation, slavery (and hence post-emancipation race relations) in the United States was harsher than in Latin America because -- due to a legacy of Catholicism and Roman law -- Latin American slavery recognized to a greater degree the moral value of the slave.

What is the "road map" for this paper? That is, what is the chain of reasoning this paper must pursue if it is to demonstrate the veracity of its thesis?

  1. There were differing patterns of slavery in the Americas
  2. These determined differing patterns of post-emancipation race relations
  3. Latin America is a better place for people of African descent than the United States
     

Note that thus far the paper is structured around the premises underlying the thesis question. The veracity of these need to be established before any further claims can be made.

  1. Slavery in the United States was "harsher" than slavery in Latin America.
  2. Differences in harshness were due to differences in the degrees to which the institution of slavery recognized the "moral value" or humanity of the slave.
  3. Differences in the degrees to which slavery recognized the "moral value" or humanity of the slave resulted from differing religious and legal institutions; Latin America was less harsh due to a legacy of Roman law and Catholicism.
     

Note that these are all new claims, which can only be made once the "thesis premises" have been established. Note that much of the paper must deal with simply establishing that the thesis question may be asked.

How to evaluate this argument:

How to Ask Good Questions

1. Good questions require thought and research. It is easy to pose a question like "should the atomic bomb have been dropped on Japan?" Such a question is simply an opinion question: it requires no research or special understanding into the problem. One way to begin framing better questions is to steadily add facts into the stew. These complicate your argument, basing it on solid historical premises (which of course you would need to prove in an essay). Think in terms of "givens." For example:
 

2. Explore premises and make them explicit. The questions above are not quite explicit enough. For example, so what if many in the United States were racist towards the Japanese? What does that have to do with the legitimacy of dropping the atomic bombing? Of course, most of us can guess what this author intends: that racism might have pre-disposed the U.S. to drop the bomb on the Japanese without sufficient military or political provocation. But it is very important to not let such assumptions go unstated. It is the task of the author to make every part of the argument explicit. In the case of the questions above, each of the unstated premises may be expressed as a more detailed part of the larger question:
 

3. Keep going. Even these questions can be further broken down:
 

As you can begin to see, once you start thinking about it, one simple question can lead to a huge chain of questions. Remember, it is always better to keep asking questions you think you cannot answer than to stop asking questions because you think you cannot answer them. But this can only happen when you know enough about your subject to know how to push your questioning, and this depends on reading and understanding the assigned material. How can you know that racial stereotypes of the Japanese may have played a key role in the decision to drop the bomb if you have no knowledge of the period?
Finally, you may also note that there are some very large questions underlying this entire debate. What were legitimate reasons to drop the bomb and what were not? When is it legitimate to use a weapon of mass destruction, and especially against a civilian population? What moral and ideological factors keep it from happening more frequently? What political and strategic factors permit it under certain circumstances? Such questions may or may not be the immediate subject of your investigations, but you should always be on the lookout for them, and always keep them in mind. Such questions tend to be the ones that make all others worth asking.

What Makes a Question Good?

To prepare any facet of the academic process, be it class discussion, leading class, or composing a paper, you need to be able to formulate for yourself some good critical questions. "Critical," in this sense, of course, does not mean "mean-spirited" but "analytical."

Since there are many types of questions which produce a variety of answers, it would be helpful to go over the difference between a "critical" question and a "simple" question:

1. A simple question...
 

· can be answered with a "yes" or "no" (this is not helpful when trying to elicit further questions, discussion, or analysis).
· contain the answers within themselves.
· can only be answered by a fact, or a series of facts

2. There are also questions which are concerned with morals or values, in the nature of "how do you feel about this text?" While these types of questions often produce interesting discussion (and students therefore tend to like them very much) they have nothing to do with a critical analysis of the text itself, which very often was not written with students in mind as the ideal audience.

3. A critical question...
 

· leads to more questions
· provokes discussion.
· concerns itself with audience and authorial intent
· derives from a critical or careful reading of the text, using the hermeutic of suspicion
· addresses or ties in wider issues or hermeneutical strategies
· moves you out of your own frame of reference ("what does this mean in our context?" to your author's ("what was the author trying to convey when he/she wrote this? how would the audience have responded?")

Here are some sample questions. What makes them useful or not so useful?
 

From Observation to Hypothesis

 

 As I've said before in class, there is no more important task for the scholar than asking questions. Asking questions - good, scholarly questions, is both a technique which can be learned, and an art which must be intuited. Let's see how the process begins. Consider the following primary source:

Affidavit of a Georgia freedwoman, 1866. My husband and I lived in Florida about four months. During that time he beat and abused me. I reported it to the officer in charge of the Freedman's Bureau. He had him arrested, and he got out of the guard house and left the place, remaining away until a new officer took charge. He then came back and beat me again. I had him arrested. He knocked the officer down and ran away and came here to Savannah. Since that time he has abused me and refuses to pay for the rent of my room and has not furnished me with any money, food, or clothing. I told him that I would go to the Freedmen's Bureau. He replied, "Damn the Freedmen's Bureau--I'll cuss you before them." On Saturday night, he came to my room and took all his things. He told me he would rather keep a woman than be married because she could not carry him to law and I could. I then told him that if he wanted to leave me to get a divorce and he could go. He said, "If I can get a divorce without paying for it, I'll get it for you. If I can't I won't give it to you, you can go without it." I said, "If you want to leave me, leave me like a man!" He has no just complaint against me.

Observation derived from primary source: This document depicts a freedmen's physical abuse of his wife.

Thought: This seems like an instance of gender oppression. But we've been thinking about things in terms of race. Plus, this is strange: we've just seen enslaved African Americans become free; now we see evidence of gender conflict. (Why is this "strange"?) I guess it's strange because I expected the expansion of freedom for all blacks to have been shared equally among black men and women. Perhaps this was not so.

Hypothesis: Are these two things -- emancipation and gender conflict -- related? If so, how? Did emancipation cause gender conflict? If so, how? Did freedom intensify conflicts that existed before? Why would freedom have intensified conflict -- what about it would do that? (Note that this process is about mulling over possibilities. When I ask, "if so, how?" I then respond with several options. This process of considering alternative possible answers is crucial!)

The big question: <How did emancipation affect gender conflict between African-American men and women? (But wait - that is too general a question! -- you've already moved past that in your thinking. This is more a statement of theme: the relationship between the general emancipation of enslaved African Americans and gender conflict between black men and women.)

Here is what else you've thought about:
There may have been a rise in gender conflict after emancipation
It may have been more than coincidental -- there may be a causal relationship

Here is what I've not clarified:
What do I mean when I say gender oppression? Who oppressed who, exactly? (Of course, I mean that men oppressed women. This is obvious, but I've yet to say it yet.)
What do I mean when I say oppression? Is there just one kind of oppression? If not, how many kinds are there? What kind am I looking at here? (Many of these I can't answer yet, yet I do know that what I mean here by "oppression" is that the husband beat and abandoned his wife.)

So I could reformulate my question to make it more specific: What about emancipation caused an increase in the physical abuse and abandonment of African-American women by African-American men?

Questions to ask when asking questions:
  • What words, phrases, or concepts in my questions have yet to be explored?
  • What assumptions have I made (or are implicit) in the questions I've asked?
  • What are the parts or components of my question?
  • How would I go about testing my hypotheses?
  • What would a possible answer or solution look like?