Unit information: Approaches to History in 2016/17

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

Description including Unit Aims

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.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, students will be expected to:

• have developed a detailed understanding of key historiographical developments and some of the major types of history which academics undertake
• be able to evaluate critically different approaches that historians have used
• be able to develop and justify their own independent opinions and arguments relating to established historiographical traditions
• be able to express these opinions at length in written work which deploys high level skills in selecting, applying, interpreting and organising information

Teaching Information

Weekly seminars

Assessment Information

5000 word essay

Reading and References

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)