Unit name | Reading the Past |
---|---|
Unit code | AFAC10005 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. McLellan |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Arts Faculty Office |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit aims to introduce students to the issues and problems involved in gaining access to and interpreting the past, which is an activity fundamental to all of the arts and humanities. The unit will take a single historical event, theme, or phenomenon, related to the research interests of the unit leader, and ask how it has been understood. There are hundreds of possible topics: examples could include the French Revolution, slavery, the global upheavals of 1968, witchcraft, Ancient Rome, or early American settler society. The unit will be divided into two parts. The first part will consider evidence and objects (methodological issues and debates; conceptual frameworks and questions to be asked). Examples of objects/evidence include archaeological finds, newspapers, oral history, photographs, literary sources, archives etc. In the second part interpretations are examined (who is reading the past? what affects their reading? how do they seek to persuade us of their validity?); a range of scholarly and popular readings of the chosen theme will come under scrutiny (professional historians; museums; heritage and tourism industry; art, literature, film; radical and alternative histories, etc.). Weekly lectures will consider the wider methodological/conceptual framework, while the weekly seminars will focus on particular sources / case studies.
The unit aims:
By the end of the course students should have acquired the following:
Weekly lecture (for C/4 and I/5 together); weekly seminar on readings done in advance (years separately; capped at 15)
1. Critical reflection exercise 50% Each student will submit at the end of the module a notebook (1500 words) containing critical reflections either on two different sources pertaining to the same historical problem, or on two different historical problems relating to the same methodological issue. These should be case studies that reflect class discussion. Students will be encouraged to incorporate a case study using materials available in the community (e.g. City of Bristol Museum). Summary comment in the notebook should address the principles raised by the two cases.
2. Summative essay 50% An essay (2,000 words) on a topic related to the module, from a designated list.
John Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Ludmilla Jordanova, History In Practice (2nd edn, London: Hodder Arnold, 2006)
Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion, 2001)
Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century History (London: Routledge, 2008)