The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Skip to main content

Comparative-Historical Methods (graduate seminar)

COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL METHODS
Sociology 814, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Spring 2026
Syllabus

Class Meetings: 208 West Franklin St., Room 1008, Tuesdays, 2:30-5:00 p.m., January 13-April 28, 2026 (except March 17).

Instructor: Charles Kurzman.

Telephone: +1 919-962-1007.

E-mail: kurzman@unc.edu.

Office hours: 208 West Franklin St., Room 4123, Thursdays, 2:00-3:00 p.m., and by appointment.

This course will address methodological issues that social scientists face in qualitative comparative-historical research, using an interdisciplinary set of readings. The course will begin with prescriptive debates, beginning with John Stuart Mill in the 19th century and continuing to the present. The course will then examine paragons of work in comparative-historical analysis, to be selected by participants in the course. In the final segment of the course, students will present and discuss methodological plans for their own research. Course assignments include written notes responding to each reading and a 2,000-word project proposal in lieu of a final research paper.

Mini-lecture notes: Practical Magic for Comparative-Historical Social Science.

Schedule:

Part 1. Recipes for Comparative-Historical Research

Week 1.

John Stuart Mill, “Of the Chemical, or Experimental, Method in the Social Science,” from A System of Logic (London, England: John W. Parker, 1843), Vol. 2, pp. 541-548. (Archive.org) Reading question: Which method does Mill prefer for research in social science: the direct method of difference, the indirect method of difference, the method of agreement, the method of concomitant variations, or the method of residues? (This is a trick question.) Cheat sheet.

Matthew Lange, Comparative-Historical Methods (Los Angeles, California: SAGE, 2013), Chapters 1 & 5. (UNC Library) Reading question: How does Lange salvage Millian methods?

American Sociological Review, “Suggested ASR Reviewer Guidelines for Comparative Historical Papers,” November 2015. (ASR) Reading question: Any qualms with this?

Supplementary reading: Charles Kurzman, “The Strange Career of Millian Methods,” Social Forces, Vol. 103, No. 3, March 2025, pp. 821-838. (DOI)

Supplementary material: Andrew Bennett, 19 lectures on case study methods, 2020, Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry, Syracuse University.

Mini-lectures:
What is comparative-historical social science?
Information retrieval.
Scheduling the unschedulable.

Week 2.

Charles Ragin, Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 13-43. Reading question: Which of Mill’s methods does Ragin pursue? Questions from outside the reading: What is the difference between Ragin’s “configurational analysis” (also known as “qualitative comparative analysis,” or QCA) and “correlational analysis”? How does Ragin resolve the objections that Mill had to this sort of approach?

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 198-206. (UNC Library) Reading question: Which of Mill’s methods does King/Keohane/Verba’s “matching” procedure match? Definitions: unit homogeneity (causal processes work the same in all cases, pp. 91-94); conditional independence (no endogenous or reverse effects, pp. 94-95).

Matthew Lange, Comparative-Historical Methods, Chapters 2 & 7. Reading question: Why is Lange less concerned than King/Keohane/Verba about sampling error and selection bias?

Supplementary reading: Theda Skocpol, “Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology,” in Skocpol, editor, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 356-391. (UNC Library)

Supplementary reading: Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff, “Introduction: Social Theory, Modernity and the Three Waves of Historical Sociology,” in Adams, Clemens, and Orloff, editors, Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 1-72. (UNC Library)

Mini-lectures on research design:
Comparison is inevitable. History is inevitable. Comparative-history is inevitable.
How many cases should I study?

Week 3.

Matthew Lange, Comparative-Historical Methods, Chapters 3, 4, 6, & 8. Reading question: What is “within-case” comparison and how does it differ from “between-case” comparison?

Please select one of the following three books. Reading questions: What is each book’s vision for comparative-historical social science? What take-away point(s) would you like to share from the additional chapter you select?

Damon Mayrl and Nicholas Hoover Wilson, “Comparison After Positivism,” in Wilson and Mayrl, editors, After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024), pp. 1-25, and one additional chapter of your choosing. (UNC Library)

Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith, “Rethinking Comparison: An Introduction,” in Simmons and Smith, editors, Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 1-28, and one additional chapter of your choosing. (UNC Library)

Kathleen Thelen and James Mahoney, “Comparative-Historical Analysis in Contemporary Political Science,” in Mahoney and Thelen, editors, Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 3-36, and one additional chapter of your choosing. (UNC Library)

Mini-lectures on research design:
The audience.
Can I select cases based on the things I already know or care the most about?
What are we trying to control (for)?

Week 4:

Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory, Data Analysis in Qualitative Research: Theorizing with Abductive Analysis (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2022), pp. 1-30. Reading question: As we go back and forth between theory and evidence, what is to keep us from cherry-picking evidence that fits the theory and tailoring a theory that over-fits the evidence?

John Gerring, “Qualitative Methods,” Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 20, pp. 15-36. (DOI) Reading question: Why is Gerring optimistic about the compatability of case-based research with quantitative approaches to causal inference?

Julian Go and George Lawson, “Vision and Method in Global Historical Sociology,” Social Science History, Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 203-228. (DOI) Reading question: How does trans-border analysis differ from within-border analysis, in this approach?

Markus Kreuzer, The Grammar of Time: A Toolbox for Comparative Historical Analysis (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 1-35 and 142. Reading question: What does the “ontological map” on p. 142 mean?

Mini-lectures on analysis:
Disciplinary differences.
Fancy names for common-sense methods.

Week 5:

Reading question: How does each of these alternative approaches differ from the causal approaches proposed by the comparative-historical prescriptions we have read?

John Boswell, Jack Corbett, and R. A. W. Rhodes, The Art and Craft of Comparison (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 1-18. (UNC Library)

Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith, “Comparisons with an Ethnographic Sensibility,” in Simmons and Smith, editors, Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 231–249. (UNC Library)

George Steinmetz, “Comparative History and Its Critics: A Genealogy and a Possible Solution,” in Prasenjit Duara, Viren Murthy, and Andrew Sartori, editors, A Companion to Global Historical Thought (Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), pp. 412-436. (UNC Library)

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, “A View of the Whole,” in Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffmann Davis, The Art and Science of Portraiture (San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997), pp. 1-15.

Mini-lectures on analysis:
The fraud of induction.
Values, politics, and research methods.

Part 2. Great Examples of Comparative-Historical Research

Week 6: Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1979). (UNC Library) Reading question: How does this book match or diverge from the impressions of the book that you may have gotten from the prescriptive methods and field statements that we’ve read?

Supplementary reading: James Mahoney, “Nominal, Ordinal, and Narrative Appraisal in Macrocausal Analysis,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, No. 4, pp. 1154-1196, 1999. (UNC Library)

Mini-lectures on analysis:
What makes a classic?
Reflexive versus virtuosic methods.

Weeks 7-12: Readings in this section of the syllabus are selected by each year’s course participants. Selections from previous iterations of the course are listed on our Canvas site.

Week 7: Julian Go, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Week 8: Emily Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600-1757 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014).

Week 9: Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Week 10: David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).

Week 11: Tianna S. Paschel, Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016).

Week 12: Dana M. Moss, The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism Against Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Mini-lectures on practicalities:
Human-subject protection.
Getting funded.
Getting good anecdotes.
How do I know when I’ve gathered enough research material?
Do not transcribe.
Qualitative data analysis software.

Mini-lectures on writing:
If I am right, who is wrong?
Outlining.
What’s a good example: ideal-types versus representatives?
Anecdotes vs. descriptive evidence.

Part 3: Student Research Proposals

Weeks 13-15.

Presentation of research proposals-in-development by students in the course. Please upload a draft of your proposal to our Canvas site one week prior to your class discussion.

Course Requirements:

1) Attendance and Participation (25% of final grade)

    Attendance means on-time arrival (at the scheduled hour); participation means the contribution of insightful comments on the basis of the assigned readings. If you cannot make it to class, please let me know in advance. You are allowed to miss one class during the semester; after that, absences count 2 percentage points each from your final grade. You are responsible for material covered and due in classes that you miss.

2) Weekly Reading Notes (25% of final grade)

    Reading notes on the week’s readings are due before the beginning of each class. Late submissions will not be accepted without prior written authorization by the instructor. These notes, approximately 600 words per book or 150 words per article or chapter, should include: (a) the full bibliographic citation of the work, (b) the main points of the reading, including summaries of each chapter; (c) definitions of major concepts and methods and examples of their use in the text, (d) significant quotations and items that you find interesting; (e) your reactions/questions/critiques/linkages with other authors/etc. (these analytical notes should be set aside from the descriptive notes via brackets or some other technique). Always give page references throughout; these notes will serve as your customized index to the reading.

3) Research Proposal (50% of final grade)

    The research proposal, due before the last class session, is the course’s primary writing assignment. Late submissions will not be accepted without prior written authorization by the instructor. The proposal should be approximately 2,000 words in length and should propose an empirical comparative-historical test of some substantive hypothesis from your home discipline. The proposal should comprise: (i) Title: a short and descriptive title; (ii) Summary: a 100-word paragraph summarizing the entire proposal; (iii) Literature: a 400-word discussion of the literature on the hypothesis you propose to test; (iv) Case Selection: a 200-word justification of your case selection; (v) Method: a 1000-word discussion of methodology; (vi) Preliminary Findings: a 300-word discussion of how what evidence you have found so far and how various anticipated findings would reflect on your hypothesis; and (vii) References: a list of references cited in the paper, in any consistent format used by a journal in your field of study. The word counts are rough targets, not maximums or minimums.

Grading:

90 percent and above: High Pass
80-89.9 percent: Pass
70-79.9 percent: Low Pass
Below 70 percent or violation of the Code of Student Conduct: Fail

Attendance Policy

University Policy: As stated in the University’s Class Attendance Policy, no right or privilege exists that permits a student to be absent from any class meetings, except for these University Approved Absences:

  1. Authorized University activities: University Approved Absence Office (UAAO) website provides information and FAQs for students and FAQs for faculty related to University Approved Absences
  2. Disability/religious observance/pregnancy/short-term military service, as required by law and approved by the University Compliance Office , or in the case of short-term military service, the Dean of Students
  3. Significant health condition and/or personal/family emergency as approved by the Office of the Dean of Students, Gender Violence Service Coordinators, and/or the University Compliance Office.

Code of Conduct

All students are expected to adhere to University policy and follow the guidelines of the UNC Student Code of Conduct. Additional information can be found at https://studentconduct.unc.edu/.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy

Carolina students are expected to follow these AI guidelines:

  1. AI should help you think, not think for you. You may be able to use these tools to brainstorm ideas and research topics, but you must decide what ideas and topics are appropriate and accurate.
  2. Engage responsibly with AI. You must evaluate AI-generated outputs for potential biases, limitations, inaccuracies, false output, and ethical implications. Do not put personal or confidential data into these tools.
  3. The use of AI must be open and documented. You must declare, explain, and cite any use of AI in the creation of your work. Understand that you are ultimately 100% responsible for your final product.
  4. AI cannot be used for reading notes in this course.
  5. If you are unsure about AI guidelines for this course, check with the instructor. Guidance offered in this syllabus will be referenced should an issue be referred to Student Conduct for alleged academic misconduct.

Syllabus Changes

The instructor reserves the right to make changes to the syllabus including project due dates and test dates. These changes will be announced as early as possible.

Acceptable Use Policy

By attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, you agree to abide by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill policies related to the acceptable use of IT systems and services. The Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) sets the expectation that you will use the University’s technology resources responsibly, consistent with the University’s mission. In the context of a class, it’s quite likely you will participate in online activities that could include personal information about you or your peers, and the AUP addresses your obligations to protect the privacy of class participants. In addition, the AUP addresses matters of others’ intellectual property, including copyright. These are only a couple of typical examples, so you should consult the full Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy, which covers topics related to using digital resources, such as privacy, confidentiality and intellectual property.

Additionally, consult the Safe Computing at UNC website for information about data security policies, updates, and tips on keeping your identity, information, and devices safe.

Data Security and Privacy

UNC-Chapel Hill is committed to fulfilling its responsibilities of transparency as a state-sponsored institution of higher learning, protecting certain types of information, and using information Carolina collects only for appropriate purposes. Consult the UNC-Chapel Hill Privacy Statement for additional information.

Grade Appeal Process

If you have any concerns with grading and/or feel you have been awarded an incorrect grade, please discuss it with me as soon as possible. If we cannot resolve the issue, you may talk to the Sociology Department’s director of graduate studies or chair.

University Compliance Office – Accommodations

University Compliance Office (UCO) Accommodations Team (Accommodations – UNC Compliance) receives requests for accommodations for disability, pregnancy and related conditions, and sincerely held religious beliefs and practices through the University’s Policy on Accommodations. UCO Accommodations team determines eligibility and reasonable accommodations consistent with state and federal laws.

Counseling and Psychological Services

UNC-Chapel Hill is strongly committed to addressing the mental health needs of a diverse student body. The Heels Care Network website is a place to access the many mental health resources at Carolina. CAPS is the primary mental health provider for students, offering timely access to consultation and connection to clinically appropriate services. Go to the CAPS website or visit their facilities on the third floor of the Campus Health building for an initial evaluation to learn more. Students can also call CAPS 24/7 at 919-966-3658 for immediate assistance.

Title IX Resources

Any student who is impacted by discrimination, harassment, interpersonal (relationship) violence, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, or stalking is encouraged to seek resources on campus or in the community. Reports can be made online to the UCO or by contacting the University’s Title IX Coordinator, Elizabeth Hall, or the Report and Response Managers in the University Compliance Office (UCO) (formerly the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office).  Please note that I am designated as a Responsible Employee, which means I must report to the UCO any information I receive about the forms of misconduct listed in this paragraph.  If you’d like to speak with a confidential resource, those include Counseling and Psychological Services, the University’s Ombuds Office, and the Gender Violence Services Coordinators. Additional resources are available at safe.unc.edu.

Policy on Non-Discrimination

As set out in the University’s Policy Statement on Non-Discrimination, the University is committed to providing an environment where all members of our community can learn, work, and thrive. Consistent with these principles and applicable laws, it is therefore the University’s policy not to discriminate on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or veteran status as consistent with the University’s Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment and Related Misconduct. No person, on the basis of protected status, shall be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to unlawful discrimination, harassment, or retaliation under any University program or activity, including with respect to employment terms and conditions. The University will consider only relevant factors such as individual abilities and qualifications in admissions, hiring, disciplinary action, and all other decisions and will apply consistent standards of conduct and performance.

If you are experiencing harassment or discrimination, you can seek assistance and file a report through the Report and Response Coordinators (email reportandresponse@unc.edu or see additional contact info at safe.unc.edu) or the University Compliance Office. Please note that I am designated as a Responsible Employee, which means that I must report to the UCO any information I receive about harassment or discrimination.  If you’d like to speak with a confidential resource, those include Counseling and Psychological Services and the University’s Ombuds Office.

Last updated February 11, 2026.