Glossary
History Professor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential history professor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key history professor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in history professor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Adjunct
- Part-time instructor.
- Archive
- Collection of records.
- Causation
- Why things happened.
- Chicago style
- Citation format.
- Context
- Surrounding circumstances.
- Historiography
- History of how history is written.
- Monograph
- Scholarly book.
- Oral history
- Recorded interviews.
- Peer review
- Expert review of research.
- Periodization
- Dividing history into periods.
- Primary source
- Document from the time.
- Secondary source
- Later analysis.
- Survey course
- Broad intro course.
- Syllabus
- Course plan and policies.
- Tenure
- Permanent faculty status.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free History Professor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see History Professor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.