Description This unit introduces students to specific styles of historical methodology, considering how each of these styles alter the kinds of questions historians ask, how they select their sources, and how they account for the differences between past and present. Students undertake an independent, guided Applied Project on a historical methodology relevant to their intended thesis project.
School Humanities & Comm Arts
Discipline History
Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp
Level Postgraduate Coursework Level 7 subject
Restrictions
Students must be enrolled in a postgraduate program.
On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:
Make an informed choice of methodological approach in your Masters thesis, having considered a range of possible options
Relate your eventual choice of Masters thesis methodology to existing scholarship of that style
Explain why your chosen Masters thesis methodology is the most appropriate approach for their chosen topic
Describe the range of methodological approaches that characterise much current historical research
Understand what is at stake in historians�f choices of particular methodologies
Detect and analyse the methodological approach of any piece of historical scholarship
Seminars in this subject will focus on the practical methods involved in different approaches to historical scholarship, considering how particular topics may be more suitable to one or another approach, and what changes in a historian?fs account of a topic depending upon the style of scholarship through which the past is approached.
- social and family history ? how can we locate sources that tell US about ordinary people?
- cultural history ? how can we judge The Importance of films, paintings, novels, plays, newspapers, propaganda pamphlets, posters and magazines of The past?
- conceptual history, Intellectual history and history of political thought ? how can we appreciate what mattered to Past minds when their concepts were different to ours?
- history of science, Technology and medicine ? how can we appreciate what Past scientific thinkers assumed about The world?
- gender history and history of sexuality ? how can we reconstruct The way Past people saw sexual desire and saw themselves as sexed beings?
- Big history and deep history ? what is The largest Possible temporal scale for historians to work with, and what are The advantages/disadvantages of Big vs. small
Assessment
The following table summarises the standard assessment tasks for this subject. Please note this is a guide only. Assessment tasks are regularly updated, where there is a difference your Learning Guide takes precedence.
