Unit name | Approaches to History |
---|---|
Unit code | HISTM2009 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | M/7 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Professor. McLellan |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
What is history and how should we study it? Do historians reconstruct or invent the past? What is the relationship between history and the 'facts'? Why do historians ask some questions and not others, and how does that affect their choice of sources? How do different ideas about narrative style (the need, for instance, for a history with a beginning, a middle and an end) affect our approaches to, and understandings of, the past? This unit invites students to explore these and related questions by introducing them to a series of contemporary debates about reading, researching and writing history. Through lecture and seminar discussions we will examine a series of themes such as: history and narrative, postmodernism and history, cultural history, and gender, feminism and history.
By the end of this unit, students will be expected to:
Weekly seminars
5000 word essay
Anna Green and Kathleen Troup (Eds), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory (Manchester, 1999)
Michael Bentley (Ed.), Companion to Historiography (London, 1997)
Adam Budd (Ed.), The Modern Historiography Reader (London, 2008)
George G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography (London, 1985)
Denys Hay, Annalist and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eight to the Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1977)
R. C. Richardson, The Study of History: A Bibliographical Guide (Manchester, 1988)