Module HIST45330: Themes, Readings and Sources

Department: History

HIST45330: Themes, Readings and Sources

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• This module provides MA students with training in historical skills, methodologies, and theories. As the core module for MA History and MA Social and Economic History students, it addresses knowledge and practices particularly relevant to the discipline, supplementing optional modules and preparation for the dissertation. It is designed to guide all students, regardless of their specialism, towards an independent approach to their learning and research. It combines attention to specific primary sources across periods with broad thematic and historiographical concerns.

Content

• The module not only exposes students to major paradigms of historical enquiry, but also encourages students to position their own interests and work next to them. Some seminar weeks are organized around significant aspects that shape and structure the pursuit of History (including the power dynamics that legitimate or obscure certain topics of enquiry and the consequences of archival development and access). Other seminar weeks explore the commitments of particular kinds of approaches or topical subfields, which may include the history of science, postcolonial history, and historical analysis of material culture. Throughout the module, students will be invited to reflect on both existing scholarly literature and their own scholarly practice, including how they can develop research questions and how arguments can be evidenced through a variety of sources. In order to develop communication skills, the module provides guidance on presentation techniques and culminates in a MA conference.

Learning Outcomes

• Familiarity with common schemes for categorising sources
• Understanding of the historiography relevant to different historical periods and fields of study
• Understanding of core aspects of the discipline of History

• Ability to critically interpret primary historical sources
• Facility with theories, themes, and methods of studied fields of historical inquiry
• Understanding of how to use primary sources to make a targeted intervention in a scholarly discourse

• Independent research skills, using a wide range of search tools and historical sources
• Advanced ability to synthesise complex material from a wide range of sources
• Ability to formulate complex arguments in articulate and well-structured English, observing the conventions of academic writing, conforming to high academic standards
• Effective oral and written communication
• Facility drawing together disparate forms of historical evidence
• Ability to demonstrate professional conduct through observation of professional and academic standards, including correct editorial referencing of sources
• Personal organisational skills, including time management

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

• Assessment is primarily by means of a 4,000-word essay that requires the acquisition and application of advanced knowledge and understanding of a topic area related to the module. Essays require a sustained and coherent argument, and must be presented in a clearly written and structured form with appropriate apparatus.
• A smaller portion of assessment is by means of a presentation on the student's own research at the MA conference.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

A formative source presentation in one of the weekly seminars.

■ 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