This seminar introduces advanced graduate students to the art and craft of history (historical research methods and writing) by way of select methodological and theoretical works, tour-de-force monographs, literary reflections, and actual archival materials in printed, manuscript, and digital forms. Put another way, it is a course about learning to read critically the (mostly written) products of the past before we write about them. Students will write 3 short comparative essays and an archival paper of c.20-25pp.