Module HIST21Q1: The Beat Goes On: Drum Magazine, Urban Life and Print Culture in Apartheid South Africa

Department: History

HIST21Q1: The Beat Goes On: Drum Magazine, Urban Life and Print Culture in Apartheid South Africa

Prerequisites

• A pass mark in at least ONE level one module in History

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To contribute towards meeting the aims of Level II study in History;
• To provide students with in-depth experience finding, interpreting, contextualising, and building arguments with primary historical sources;
• To confer subject-specific knowledge of the history of South Africa in the mid-to-late 20th century
• To develop students’ writing and research skills

Content

• Drum magazine, originally published as The African Drum, was launched in South Africa in 1951 in the early years of the apartheid regime. Targeted at a black South African readership, Drum became so popular within and beyond South Africa, that it was distributed across the continent and national versions were launched in places like Kenya and Ghana. In South Africa Drum chronicled black urban life under apartheid; it also provided a professional home for black journalists, photographers, and authors. There is a growing literature in particular on the impact of Drum on South Africa’s literary culture in the mid-twentieth century. Even the content described by one commentator as 'the most ephemeral trash imaginable' has been re-examined by historians for what it can reveal about the social life of South African townships and the political significance of asserting black urbanity under apartheid. Durham has acquired access to the digital archive of Drum from 1955-1973, a period that covers a range of major political and cultural events in South African history, including the rise of anti-apartheid activism. We will explore the extraordinary mix of investigative journalism, photography, short stories and poems, beauty contests and cover girls, advertisements, letters, music reviews, and social commentary that can be found in the pages of Drum as a lens into understanding this tumultuous period of history.

Learning Outcomes

• Familiarity with common schemes for categorising sources
• Understanding of mid-twentieth-century South African history
• Understanding of print culture as a historical source

• Ability to critically interpret primary historical sources
• Facility with theories, themes, and methods relevant to the study of medieval archives and records
• Ability 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

• Seminars to allow students to present and critically reflect upon the acquired subject-specific knowledge, methodologies and theories, and to identify and debate a range of issues and differing opinions. The seminar is the forum in which students are given the opportunity to communicate ideas, jointly exploring themes and arguments. Seminars are structured to develop understanding and designed to maximise student participation related to prior independent preparation. Seminars give students the opportunity to develop oral communication skills, encourage critical and tolerant approaches to reasoned argument and historical discussion, build the students' ability to marshal historical evidence, and facilitate the development of the ability to summarise historical arguments, think in a rapidly changing environment and communicate in a persuasive and articulate manner, whilst recognising the value of working with others and, occasionally, towards shared goals
• Workshops are a forum for practising subject-specific key skills. They function as interactive lectures, organised around the assessments designed to advance and evaluate those skills, and are structured to improve the core competencies we expect second-year history students to develop. Workshops involve tutor-led activities in which students work together to discuss the mechanics of finding and evaluating primary sources, contextualuising primary evidence, building arguments, organising historical genres of writing, and evaluating the quality of historical argumentation.
• Assessment: Summative coursework will test students’ ability to communicate ideas in writing, present clear and cogent arguments succinctly and show appropriate critical skills as relevant to the particular module

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Workshops will include exercises that contribute to summative assessments, as well as guidance on implementing tutor feedback. The summative source commentary will have a formative element for the final assessment.

■ 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