Hello!
I am an undergraduate in History at University of York. I have had to take an unplanned gap year and I go back to York next January. After five months out of the loop, I am also convinced that I have fallen way behind on what is current in the Philosophy of History and my knowledge of the historian's craft is probably fifteen years out of date; my most up-to-date back-to-front reading is the great Richard J. Evans' In Defence of History which I lovingly pored over as a sixth former and a first-year undergrad. I've got through The Pursuit of History by John Tosh and Studying History by Jeremy Black. I read and re-read E.H. Carr's classic What Is History back in 2011 many times although it is obviously an "elderly work" as Evans put it and says nothing of modern essentials in History like the diversification of studies, inter-disciplinary collaborations and the role of digital technology in just about everything.
Regardless, these are all kid's stuff in the grand scheme of things - I have grandiose delusions of becoming an academic and feel scandalised that I do not know which texts I should get onto next to gain a proper understanding of History as an academic field. Does 'History' even exist any more in that regard? Can one comprehensive text cover all the divergences, or would I be better off focusing on historiographical texts pertaining to specific areas of study and interest? I'm personally interested in Jewish Studies, British/US political history and memory studies but I'm an open book and could end up going in completely the other direction. York is big on medieval stuff and I've been tempted by doing something on York's Jews and Clifford's Tower.
Philosophy of History and historiography are my main targets. Other relevant philosophy concerning things like 'What is Truth?' or the meaning of 'Truth' is important as I want all my future work to have a sound methodological and epistemological underpinning - I aim to develop a solid criterion for 'historical truth' not contingent on outmoded 'Facts, Facts, Facts' Gradgrindian history, the formerly fashionable piffle of obscurantist postmodernism (not to discount the relevant contributions of postmodernism) or extreme revisionism-for-its-own-sake. I've got AJ Ayer's 'Language, Truth and Logic', though like Carr's work it is a very mature vintage and Ayer himself recanted large parts of it. Your suggestions for material in this area are also prized.
With many thanks,
York graduate here!
Firstly, grab the Companion to Historiography, ed. M. Bentley, (London, 1997) which has a fantastic selection of essays from top academics in the field (it's about a 1000 pages long so have no fear that your interests will be covered). Then you might want to look at the Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms Methods Trends, ed. A. Classen, 3 vol., (Göttingen, 2010). History has become intoxicated with comparative studies so studying Weber's Economy and Society is a must.
Unfortunately, beyond the more obvious examples (Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Marc Bloch, Marx and Weber, Hannah Arendt, Quentin Skinner) you'll need to select a field and work through (relatively) new books to see which ideas are having the greatest impact on contemporary historiography. Finally, go and discuss your ideas with the fantastic faculty available to you at York, and if you're really interested in pursuing Jewish Studies (even under the aegis of 'Medieval' or 'Early Modern' Studies) then Queen Mary's in London would be a fantastic place for an MA degree.
If you're entertaining delusions of academia as a career then you must attend the academic conferences and seminars available to you at York, not that you have to speak (it's probably best if you don't) but simply to gain an understanding of what academic life is like and how research is prepared for presentation (especially if you're interested in historiography).