Module HIST59960: Approaches to Regional History

Department: History

HIST59960: Approaches to Regional History

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• HIST50130

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To enable students to study at an advanced level the methods and approaches of regional history, including problems of definition and conceptualisation, which will enable students to acquire specific learning outcomes of the programme as a whole, including:
• understanding at an advanced level of concepts and debates about regional history;
• application of such understanding at an advanced level to knowledge from selected primary and secondary sources of two aspects of the history of north-east England relevant to two of the five research strands of the AHRB Centre for North-East England History;
• demonstrating in two extended pieces of writing the ability to analyse a complex problem of regional history and sustain a coherent argument lucidly.

Content

• General approaches to regional history and to the definition of regions
• The spatial and chronological definition of regions, with regard to such issues as frontiers, heartlands, nodal points, and networks of influence.
• Peoples and migrations, including methods and concepts for the study of ethnicity, nationalism, migration and minorities.
• Power, politics and religion, including the role of political and ecclesiastical organisation in the shaping of regions, and in giving them a particular character.
• Culture, including the extent to which, and the mechanisms by which, regions acquire an historically rooted cultural distinctiveness in areas such as sport, music, dialect, family and gender relations, local literature and associational life.
• External relations: the extent to which a region's maritime, commercial and political relations with other regions and countries influence and even define its character.

Learning Outcomes

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Students should be able to build up a critical understanding of the approaches, methods and sources of regional history and should become aware of the boundaries of current knowledge relating to the subject. Students will: (a) undertake a programme of day-long workshops each focused on a defined aspect of the approaches, methods and sources of regional history; (b) follow a programme of intensive reading directed at a number of topics. Students should be able to participate in regular discussion of issues arising from the reading with their supervisors; (c) acquire detailed knowledge and critical understanding of two topics, agreed with their supervisor and relating to two of the workshops, on each of which they will then produce an extensive piece of writing.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Written oral comments on any other agreed written assignment (e.g. written versions of workshop presentations).

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University