HIST 301: The Historian's Craft (Schechter, Fall 2023)

• This is an effort to provide a sense of how one might go, step by step, through the research process
• Those of you who have met with me one-on-one will probably recognize the steps I take
• The goal is to find both primary & secondary materials.

Some caveats: 

• There is no "right" way to go through the research process; every scholar will find their own routine, and each topic/field will have their own methodologies to consider.
• This is just an overview how *I* go about finding materials. 
• Still, even if other scholars take these steps in a differing order, much of this will be the same regardless.

Start with the document. Some initial aspects from the document I find striking:

• Recent (~1973) reports of UFOs in Palacios Texas

• Report of UFOs in Manistee Michigan

• Ocean Springs Mississippi proposed an ordinance over "the operation of UFO's within" city limits and city attorney Oscar Jordan proposed an alien ordinance.

  • "it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to discriminate against such alien being as may be transported in UFOs..."

• Story is put forward by Wesley Tebeau, president of the west Michigan tourist association

Thoughts for later:

• I have specific individuals and exact quotes I can use as searches later.

• I have specific locations where UFO sights are reported.

• The involvement of the local Tourism board & the comic tone of the article ("why people capable of shooting around anywhere they want in the universe would pick Manistee to visit") suggests levity. 

To start questions we might ask?

• What on Earth (or I guess off Earth too) are "UFO Rights" and was this an actual widespread movement?

• What is the context of this document?

• How does this relate to American depictions of UFOs and extraterrestrial life during early 1970s?

  • More importantly, what else can we learn about changing attitude toward UFOs and extraterrestrial life during this period? Has it changed from the 1950s and 1960s? If so, why?

• UFOs and extraterrestrials as tourism?

We will have more questions later, these are just starting points

Before I even get started, I want to think about the types of primary materials I might use:

• films, movies, tv

• Newspaper and magazine coverage

• Interviews

• Government documents

• books about UFOs written during this time period

• images

Being confidence we'll find primary sources in a real deep dive, I'm comfortable looking at Secondary Materials first.

I personally like going to secondary sources after a quick skim of materials. It:

• let's me see what other scholars already argued

• see what types of primary sources have already been used

• gives me a sense of where my own contributions might fall

Some topics:
 

Depictions of, and attitudes toward, UFOs in American culture

UFOs in american popular culture

UFOs in american tourism and marketing

rights for extraterrestial beings.

ARTICLES 
For each, building keyword searches

• (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

  • NOTEl: I will use this only in America: History & Life as a baseline on how professional historians treat the topic of extraterrestrials generally.

• Depictions of, and attitudes toward, UFOs in American culture

  • (Depiction* OR attitude*) AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (american* OR "united states")

• UFOs in american popular culture

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND ("popular culture" OR media OR film OR television OR literature) 

• UFOs in american tourism and marketing

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (touris* OR marketing)

• rights for extraterrestial beings.

  • (Rights OR "legal protections") AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

Early searches limited to History

• (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

  • NOTEl: I will use this only in America: History & Life as a baseline on how professional historians treat the topic of extraterrestrials generally.

    • AHL

• Depictions of, and attitudes toward, UFOs in American culture

  • (Depiction* OR attitude*) AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (american* OR "united states")

    • AHL 

• UFOs in american popular culture

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND ("popular culture" OR media OR film OR television OR literature) 

    • AHL

• UFOs in american tourism and marketing

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (touris* OR marketing)

    • AHL

• rights for extraterrestial beings.

  • (Rights OR "legal protections") AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

    • AHL 

Expand to other databases.

• the searches above will mostly still work in other databases, but we'll need to add history AND ("united states" OR america*) now that we're not in a database limited to just US History.  We may also need to narrow our results to ABSTRACT too and we'll definitely need to limit to articles.

• I suggest PRIMO & EBSCOhost (it searches all ~100 databases)

Revised:

• (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

  • NOTEl: I will use this only in America: History & Life as a baseline on how professional historians treat the topic of extraterrestrials generally.

    • AHL

    • EBSCO -- limit to peer review, academic articles, add History as a subject

• Depictions of, and attitudes toward, UFOs in American culture

  • (Depiction* OR attitude*) AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (american* OR "united states")

    • AHL 

    • EBSCO -- ibid.'

• UFOs in american popular culture

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND ("popular culture" OR media OR film OR television OR literature) 

    • AHL

    • EBSCO -- add History as Subject, change search above to abstract search

• UFOs in american tourism and marketing

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (touris* OR marketing)

    • AHL

    • EBSCO -- added (american* OR "united states") to narrow results

• rights for extraterrestial beings.

  • (Rights OR "legal protections") AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

    • AHL 

    • EBSCO -- unaltered search brings up a lot of weird results. 

      • adding History as subject ruins the results 

      • An abstract search brings up ~500 articles, but I see "nonhuman rights" as a term in one article

        • advanced search using special Boolean

          • (Rights OR "legal protections") N20 (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms")  results in EBSCO

          • (Rights OR "legal protections") NEAR/20 (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") in ProQuest limited to abstracts
            
            
            
            Summary: we have some articles for almost everything except the extraterrestrial rights.

Books I'll use some of the same searches as before, but broader.

• UFOs in American history

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND "United States" AND history

    • Our Catalog

    • Can also search in WorldCat, limited to non-fiction, non-juvenile 

• Depictions of, and attitudes toward, UFOs in American culture

  • (Depiction* OR attitude*) AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (america* OR "united states")

    • Our Catalog

    • Can also search in WorldCat, limited to non-fiction, non-juvenile 

• UFOs in american popular culture

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND ("popular culture" OR media OR film OR television OR literature) AND (america* OR "united states")

    • Our Catalog

    • Can also search in WorldCat, limited to non-fiction, non-juvenile .

• UFOs in american tourism and marketing

  • (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") AND (touris* OR marketing)

    • Our Catalog

    • Can also search in WorldCat, limited to non-fiction, non-juvenile

• rights for extraterrestrial beings.

  • (Rights OR "legal protections") AND (UFO* OR "unidentified flying objects" OR extraterrestrial* OR "Flying saucers" OR "Alien life" OR "alien lifeforms") 

    • Our Catalog **

    • Can also search in WorldCat, limited to non-fiction, non-juvenile

At this point we might also want to grab a few books about science fiction in the 1970s or 20^th century for context:

• "science fiction" AND (1970s OR seventies) in Our catalog

In sum, a quite a lot of larger books for context, less for specifically our Alien Rights aspect.