The Historian, the Informer, and the Spy: Sources and Problems

What is the relationship between the historian and her sources? What methodologies govern a historian's engagement with informers and spies? Can historians write about authoritarian pasts without developing some kind of relationship with the informers, spies and the secret police whose very existence defines the nature of these pasts? Using these questions as its rationale, this class examines the place of the archive (broadly defined) in the work of the historian.