There are, quite probably, as many ways to 'do' history as there are
people. Over the years, professional historians have tried to make sure
their work is relevant to other historians, and to the public. Scientific
"objective" methods, mostly based on the German model proposed by von Ranke,
were in vogue for a long while. This method involved doing massive amounts
of archival work, but centered mostly on political, institutional history.
After World War II, the homogenity of the historical profession began to
break down. Women and non-whites entered into the academic study of history
in large numbers, and this altered the perspective. Suddenly, objectivity
seemed more like a middle class, white male point of view, instead of
something that was actually truthful. In fact, people began to question
whether it was possible to get to historical "truth" at all. Thus, a new
brand of 'doing' history had to be forged. Out of the ashes of objectivity
arose many different ways of looking at history, writing about history, and
teaching history. Having said that, it should be pointed out that only a few
of these methods are currently acceptable in the hallowed halls of
academia¹. They are as follows:

1. Marxist

   In which everything boils down to class
   struggle, represented by the base/superstructure model. Marx says all of
   history is nothing more than the struggle for survival first, and once
   subsistence happens, it's all a matter of fighting over who gets the
   surplus. Yes, there's lots of talk about the proletariat, and the transcende
   nce of true communism, but really, in the end, it's all three things. 1)
   Capitalism, or the political economy, is a bad thing, because 2) it makes us
   alienated from our selves, and 3) the only way out is communism. There is,
   however, a caveat: according to Marx's own definition, neither the USSR nor
   China have ever been close to real communism, which has no national
   identity. One of the most famous Marxist historians is E.P. Thompson, and a
   number of scholars in 20th century Latin American history tend to use
   Marxist analysis.

2. Comparative

   It's currently hip to compare
   unusual things, like the lives of black male slaves in 18th century colonial
   West Indies and modern Philipino women working in sweat shops. If it crosses
   racial lines, gender lines, and/or time, so much the better. This trend
   toward global comparative history opens up a lot of avenues, but the
   question most people ask is about how relevant it is. The subsection of this
   is do a linear comparison of the same area. Say, Mongolian China in the
   Middle Ages and during the Cultural Revolution. It's interesting, but really
   hard to teach. World History classes are popping up all over, but think
   about it...World History. How much can you really know about all the history
   all over the world? Which is why comparative historians tend to be
   theoretical, although there are some who actually make it all make sense.
   Ken Pomerantz, who works with Chinese history, is a great comparative
   historian.

3. Feminist

   Although this mode of inquiry is
   slowly losing ground because of it's essentialism (the assertion that all
   women at all times have been oppressed in the same ways), it's still hanging
   in there. It has reinvented itself as of late in a more ecumenical fashion,
   calling itself GENDERED, so as not to put those without female organs off.
   However there seems to be a major flaw: the assumption that the
   male/masculine is always driving to conquer, and that the female/feminine is
   always the conquered. The teleological conclusion of which is that if women
   ran the world, none of this would have ever happened. Which is essentialism
   at it's best. There's also an assumption that any woman historian is
   automatically a feminist historian (although the assumption is false),
   mostly because women tend to notice when women aren't included. Excellent
   examples of feminist historians include Ulrike Stasser and Laurel Thatcher
   Ulrich.

4. Teleological

   This method has fallen seriously
   out of favor in the academic world, but in school, this is the way most of
   us learned history. Teleological simply means "words/talking from the end,"
   and that's just what this method does. A prime example is American
   historians who find and present only facts that support the American side
   having won the Revolution, while often downplaying the role of the French.
   Another example is a British historian who claims that the British Empire
   was so big not because of firepower, but because of the sheer superiority of
   the British people. Most teleological historians tend to be dead, frankly,
   and Henry Charles Lea, and Edward Gibbon can safely be placed in this
   category. Part of the problem with teleological history is that there's a
   certain smugness to the author's writing, and "history is written by the
   winners" seems to be the underlying thought. It isn't pretty.
   
   

5. Annales

   This school of history is probably the
   most famous after the Marxists. In the late thirties, two French historians,
   Marcel Lefevre and Marc Bloch, were trying to get away from the von Rankean
   notion of truth as somehow only belonging to this very narrow slice of
   historical figures and events (usually kings and battles). They began to
   look at the society as a whole, thus ushering in social history, which is
   what most colleges teach today. Annales school historians are interested in
   what they call "the long duree" -- studying not specific moments in history,
   such as a battle, but the change over time in any given society. They look
   at such things as population, religious beliefs, and cultural norms. This
   can be taken to absurd lengths, such as a famous history of the
   Mediterranean that starts with the primordial sludge. However, most social
   historians working in this framework tend to focus on an area and write
   extensively about that. Other than Bloch himself, other famous Annales
   school historians include Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Braudel.
   
   

6. Ethnohistory

   Now, this method is great if you
   are studying, say, the history of native peoples. It includes not only
   history, but anthropology, ethnography, and archaeology within its tent. In
   some ways, Ethnohistory is the natural extension of Lefevre and Bloch's
   Annales school of history. Admittedly, ethnohistory requires that the
   history you are writing about can be explored through the physical sciences.
   Sometimes, parts of ethnohistory can be combined with more tradtional
   methods of historical approach to round out a particular group or location.
   James Axtell is an excellent example of the ethnohistorian.

7. Revisionist

   This is something of a derogatory
   term, and is often associated with those who try to actually deny historical
   events (usually white supremacy groups who deny that the Holocaust never
   happened.) but it encompasses much of the historical work being done today
   in a broad manner. Revisionist historians, if they are working in one of the
   above categories, tend to fall into the feminist, comparative, Annales or
   ethnohistory groups. Marxism is too ideological for them, and teleological
   history just infuriates them. For them, the maxim "those who do not know the
   past are condemned to repeat it" is absolutely true. Environmental
   historians, like Dan Flores, tend to work exclusively in this arena, as do
   some feminist scholars. The counter-response to revisionists is usually
   something along the lines of "you can't resurrect dead people." Revisionists
   tend to teach from a viewpoint of the oppressed, the colonized...underdog
   history, if you will. If teleological history celebrates the winners, then
   revisionists remind us of the losers (a simplified version of the issue, to
   be sure, but accurate). Revisionist historians also tend to challenge
   readers' assumptions...that the word "race" always means non-white (and even
   more specifically, black), or that "gender" always means women. In 2003,
   George W. Bush excoriated revisionist historians as incompetent and
   detrimental to the education process. They beg to differ

.

There are others, of course, based on race, religion, or other, more
esoteric factors, and not every historian falls into just one of the
categories, but these six are certainly in evidence in academic circles
today.