On Thursday, several students and faculty gathered in the International Lounge in Usdan. David Hackett Fischer (HIST) and Paul Jankowski (HIST) came to give a discussion about the process of historical writing. This event was an installment of the “Writers @ Work” series and was co-sponsored by the English Department. Lisa Pannella, the academic administrator of the department, joined them in their discussion.

Fischer teaches courses on the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II. He and Pannella taught a literature course together a few years ago. Jankowski specializes in courses on European history. Pannella opened the discussion by talking about Jankowski’s new book, “Verdun,” which focuses on an account of the Battle of Verdun, the most iconic battle of World War I.

Fischer began the discussion by talking about his experience with writing and history. “History is the most eclectic of academic subjects,” he explained to the audience. “History is not only a discipline in its own right, but it’s also a mode that’s put to work in many other disciplines.” Fischer wrote a book titled “Washington’s Crossing” (2004) as part of “Pivotal Moments in American History,” a series of short books about important events in history. He also wrote “Albion’s Seed” (1989), which discusses groups of people who moved from regions of England to the United States.

Jankowski continued the discussion by talking about the range of subjects and sources that historians can utilize in their writing. “When we write the history, we are not doing what writers of fiction do,” he explained. “We are constrained by the evidence, and we are not allowed to make things up.”

He described some challenges historical writers face, saying that they must “be sure that there is a story to be told.” He then caught the audience’s attention with a humorous story from the time when he was an undergraduate student, when another student wrote a dissertation about the French Revolution in Rouen, a town in Normandy, France. The student ended up demonstrating that nothing actually happened in Rouen during the Revolution. “That’s the kind of danger that is there,” Jankowski explained.

Both professors spoke about how they come up with ideas. Jankowski went on to explain that his ideas for writing are not just simply intuitions but rather are inspired by his past works or current events. Fischer said that he got the idea for “Albion’s Seed” when he was growing up in Baltimore. He would often get together with his family, who came from all over Maryland, and he realized that the members of his family all spoke very different forms of American English. “Then I married a Yankee and moved up here, and where did that Yankee way of talking come from?” he explained. “And that got me started, and it led to those four folk ways, those four folk cultures,” referring to the several cultures referenced in “Albion’s Seed.”

A significant topic that the authors discussed was how they approach writing for different audiences. Fischer said that he tries to reach “serious readers, in the academy and outside,” and does not try to change his style when he is writing for an academic group. He also explained what he sees as a middle ground between “serious” and “non-serious” readers. “I think that if one tries to write serious books for both of these groups — academic and non — one loses people on either side,” he said. “But there are many more people in the middle. And they’re growing.”

Jankowski, on the other hand, has a very different approach — “I write the kind of book I would like to read,” he said. “Perhaps some of what I write is too erudite for the general public, and too general public for the erudite, so that it falls in between, with catastrophic effects on sales. So be it; that is actually the kind of book that I’m most comfortable with. And I really try not to think about the readership and the audience.”

They ended their presentation by giving some general tips for writing to the audience: “[Leave yourself] a lot of time before you write, a lot of time after you write so you can rewrite,” Jankowski said. “Do it slowly. That’s what I would say.” Fischer added that one should write for love. “Whatever you do, do it in a positive way. Write to affirm something.”