ACTIVITY: Sourcing – Introduction

Who? Where? Why? These are crucial questions a historian must ask of every text they read. This important skill is called sourcing.

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Sourcing—the act of understanding who wrote a document, where they wrote it, and why they wrote it, for the purposes of analysis or interpretation—is integral to the work of a historian. Without properly understanding an author’s purpose and perspective, it’s difficult to properly interpret a document. In this first activity on sourcing, you’ll learn how an author has framed that event, and how that then impacts your interpretation of it.

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