NHD Napkins snippets of History Day

Picking a Great Topic

Finding a great topic can be hard for a lot of National History Day participants. This is especially when your team has numerous interests that stretch a variety of fields. Regardless, there are three key tenets you should stick to when choosing a great topic.

Pick a topic you love

Remember – National History Day is a 9-month long research project. With that being said, you have to make sure that you love your topic and can’t see yourself getting bored with within the first couple of weeks.

Of course, you should try to pick a topic that is related to your interests, as more passion almost always yields more genuine writing.

Consider this simple exercise - imaging having to describe two different people to your parents: one who has been your best friend since preschool, and the other a stranger you saw walking down the street. Who do you think you could describe better?

Pick a topic that is well-documented

I’ll admit to nearly making this mistake in the past – in fact, I can attest that I’ve almost committed this error more than once. However, unless you’re a history buff like some of my teammates used to be, chances are, your topics won’t be too obscure.

“Well-documented” can have a lot of connotations, but in the context of National History Day, make sure that your topic has plenty of print and video resources, some professors and (maybe even) historical figures that can be interviewed, and information that corroborates among multiple sources.

Note: During the national awards ceremony in 2019, one of my teachers told me something observed as we were leaving the stadium:

Am I the only one that noticed that a majority of the winners chose topics related to U.S. history?

Looking at the recent winners list will reveal the same trend, and truth be told, I should’ve been able to deduce from our own personal experiences: our projects that dealt with American history seemed to fare better than world history projects. This doesn’t mean that I discourage you from picking an international topic, but my hunch is that the judges seem to relate better to topics they may have more prior information on and are more familiar with. But of course, do as you please.

Pick a topic that has a good fit with the theme

As much as you can say that finding a topic you like is the most important tenet to stick by, I actually think that finding a topic that fits with the theme is what makes a topic truly great. After all, from year to year, the only thing that really changes with National History Day is the historical theme.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no way to fix a topic with a poor connection to the theme. No matter how masterful you may be with rhetoric, if you can’t communicate why the topic “breaks a barrier” or “takes a stand”, you might as well consider all of your efforts wasted.

One of the ways to check if a topic fits well with a theme is to try the old elevator pitch technique: set aside your friend or teacher, and tell him/her about your topic and its connection to the theme in 30 seconds. If they can’t repeat the main points of your argument back to you, then either (a.) your delivery is convoluted or (b.) your topic doesn’t connect to the theme.

Where can I find good topics?

Pretty much anything is fair game for National History Day, as long as the topic/event occurred at least 20 years ago (this number should be fact-checked, but this is the rule of thumb I like to keep when brainstorming topics). If you’re having trouble, try checking out these resources:

Written on November 18th, 2019 by Chris Pondoc
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