For my research project in WRD 395, the class that new tutors take during their first quarter at The UCWbL, I chose to examine the relationship between The UCWbL core practice of adopting and adapting specific strategies for each particular writer and their particular writing context and the field of Historical writing. In my research, I found that Historians can benefit from understanding their audience and purpose when crafting a piece of historical writing.
My first source, “History and Audience” by Gregory Barton supports this idea by pointing to the low citation rates of historical writing compared to other fields. In essence, Barton argues that historians are often writing without proper consideration of audience and purpose because their goals are often rooted in achieving tenure or meeting university requirements. Oftentimes historians forget to ask “for whom are we writing history?” If they were to properly consider audience, their work would be better received by the public and academic community.
Sabina Mihelj’s article, “Audience History as a History of Ideas” takes this idea of audience history and asserts that to effectively understand one’s audience, they need to examine the audience’s preconceived notions about a historical subject. She uses historical examples to show that people have interacted with historical writing in different ways over time. Thus, historical writers need to build an “audience history” tailored to their specific purpose. In a similar sense, writers who come to the UCWbL benefit from understanding what their audience is expecting from an assignment. For example, a graduate level professor will have different expectations than a WRD 104 professor.
“Objectivity and critique: The creation of historical perspectives in senior secondary writing” by Erika Matruglio discusses how history is perceived by secondary students and how it affects their historical writing. Matruglio concludes that when students understand historical writing as a narrative genre, they are less successful at making a sound argument around historical evidence, which is the actual goal of historical writing. In The UCWbL, tutors and writers need to work together to establish a more holistic understanding of what genre they’re writing in and what the goal of that genre is.
“Europeans Writing American History: The Comparative Trope” is an article that examines how historical writing on the same subject can vary greatly depending on the purpose and audience of the writers. They discuss how Europeans write about American history with the goal of comparing the development of the two regions, while Americans write about their own history with a heightened sense of their own national importance. Relating this to work at The UCWbL, tutors should recognize that even within the same assignment, individual writers still have their own goals and priorities for a piece of writing.
Successful writing depends on recognizing audience and purpose and adopting specific strategies in response. Historical writing is certainly not an exception. Writing tutors should be able to work with writers to establish the best strategies for their specific piece of writing if they want to meet their goal of providing the most help they possibly can to every writer. Every writer and every piece of writing is unique and should be treated as such.