Originally published on February 27, 2024 (Intellectual Humility Series)
Introduction
Today’s guest in our continuing series is Leah Shopkow, Professor of History at Indiana University in Bloomington. A historian of medieval France, she began her career by studying the history written by medieval chroniclers, resulting in her book History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. She has also edited William of Andres’ Chronicle of Andres.
Her interest in medieval historiography evolved into a deep engagement with the pedagogy of history. As the founding co-director and principal investigator of the History Learning Project at Indiana, she has published numerous articles on teaching historical thinking. Most recently, she has combined both strands of her scholarship in The Saint and the Count: A Case Study for Reading Like a Historian (Toronto, 2021), which she and I first discussed in a previous episode of this podcast.
For Further Investigation
Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking Series
Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (CUA Press, 1998)
—, The Saint and the Count: A Case Study for Reading Like a Historian (Toronto, 2021)
William of Andres, The Chronicle of Andres, ed. and trans. by Leah Shopkow (CUA Press, 2018)
“The Saint, the Count, and Sourcing”, with Leah Shopkow explaining the historian’s skill of sourcing; and our full series on Historical Thinking for more on the “moves” or dispositions of the discipline.
💬 Listen & Discuss
What can students gain from “reading like a historian,” and how does that connect to intellectual humility? And should we think of intellectual humility as a skill historians practice, or as a habit they cultivate? Drop a thought in the comments, and pass this episode to someone who insists the Middle Ages were nothing but “dark.”
