Postgraduate Course: Writing History: Theory and Practice (PGHC11336)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course explores the theory and practice of writing up and disseminating historical research at the professional level. The course will introduce students to the historical profession and prepare them - in practical as well as intellectual ways - to work on their own dissertation projects. By the end of the semester, students should have a good idea of what professional historians do, and should be prepared to start doing it themselves. |
| Course description |
Designed for first-year PhD students, the course encourages reflection on the critical issues involved in writing history: the epistemology of our discipline, past and present; the historical development of new perspectives on the past; the selection and interpretation of sources, both qualitative and quantitative; the use of theory and methods from other disciplines; the mechanics of constructing an historical argument; the art of literary presentation; and the practicalities of getting published. It also explores alternative methods of dissemination, including conference presentations and engagement with social media.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a detailed and critical command of the body of knowledge the key aspects of professional historical writing
- Demonstrate an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship concerning historiography and new approaches to historical research
- Demonstrate an ability to understand and apply specialised research or professional skills, techniques and practices considered in the course
- Demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
- Demonstrate in group discussions originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers; and a considerable degree of autonomy
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Reading List
Oliver Daddow, 'The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism', Rethinking History, 8:3 (2004), 437-57
Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London: Granta, 2000), esp. introduction and ch.1.
Eric Foner, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003), preface and ch.1
Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)
Eric Hobsbawm, On History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1997)
Richard Howells and Robert Matson, Using Visual Evidence (London: Open University Press, 2009)
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
Kelley, Donald R., Frontiers of History: Historical Inquiry in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)
Iggers, Georg, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1997)
Jordanova, Ludmilla, History in Practice, 2nd edn (London: Hodder Arnold, 2008)
Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: Objectivity and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | PhD writing history theory practice |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Diana Paton
Tel: (0131 6)50 4578
Email: Diana.Paton@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: Lindsay.Scott@ed.ac.uk |
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