Vignette or straight to historiography

General advice: prioritise the specific tutor guidance, but still likely to be helpful (from a modernist perspective:
Introduction section the most important bit in some ways
Your chance to define what your dissertation is and is not: Will define what you are being marked on.
What are my research questions?
What are my parameters?
What is my Dissertation not?
Start:
Vignette or straight to historiography
Need a hook of some kind
‘Straight to historiography’ approach can be explaining where the field is
Other way-my dissertation is about x, but relates to this historiographical theme theme-how has this theme affected my project?
Vignette start
Start with an anecdote or quote etc which relates closely to your topic’s themes
Can then expand from this bit to explain your themes etc
Can provide a narrative start to the diss, and also demonstrates understanding
No more than 100 words to this start bit
Historiography:
What is the scholarship? How has it evolved?
Should be a ‘literature review’
Identify the ~10 works foundational to the field
What perspectives do they write from? What themes/methodologies do they have?
Group your paragraphs thematically-similar historians together, and pick out exemplars from them to prove this correlation
Definitely something to discuss with Rendle before end of term-where am I at?
Independence of thought? How do I fit in here? I’m clearly pretty independent so likely to have more trouble assembling literature than demonstrating this
If there is too much literature, you can use chapter introductions as well
Then, outline what my research questions are and how answering them will change the field
How to deal with my translation problems?
Methodology:
What sources have I used?
How have I interpreted them?
Need to explain why you’ve done your dissertation in the way you have-spend a couple of paragraphs on how I rea and interpreted my primary sources
Look at my sources as both object and subject-how have they been used by other hitoirians? How am I using it?
What will my chapters say? (summaries)
Anything on primary sources?
Can discuss in the research methodology section