This our fourth episode in our year-long series about the skills of historical thinking, and it’s about that terrifying moment which leads to actually writing about history: the question, and the thesis. When we ask historical questions, we’re first asking a bigger question: What questions make historical sense of these documents? Then, in the thesis, we try to answer it, hopefully with a claim that’s worth making.

What good questions are, and what claims are worth making, are some of the things we talk about with Bill Caferro. William Caferro is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he is also Director and Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies; and Director of the Economics and History Program in the Department of History. He was last on the podcast in Episode 103 talking about his book Petrarch’s War: Florence and the Black Death in Context. Most recently he has published Teaching History.