Postgraduate Course: New College Collections: Archival History and Theology (PG) (DIVI11086)
Course Outline
| School | School of Divinity |
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 | The course will showcase some of the unique treasures of University of Edinburgh New College Library Heritage Collection archives, and offer students the opportunity to use one or more of them for a research project. The course will be taught in the David Welsh Room in New College, with input from the New College Library heritage collections librarians. |
| Course description |
Academic Description
New College heritage collections offer a window into the material book, archive and manuscript culture of Catholic and Reformed Christian history from the late medieval period to the 19th century. By looking at key parts of the New College collection, including Books of Hours, early editions of key Patristic texts, illustrated sixteenth-century editions and 18th and 19th-century archival collections, students will have the opportunity to understand these material aspects of Scottish religious history.
Course outline:
Week 1: Introduction to New College Heritage Collections (Librarians)
Week 2: Books of Hours (Sara Parvis)
Week 3: Patristic editions in the New College heritage collection (Sara Parvis)
Week 4: Printing and the Cradle of the Reformation (Simon Burton)
Week 5: Ramism, Encyclopaedism and Universal Reform (Simon Burton)
Week 6: Religious Controversy and Enlightenment Print Culture (Felicity Loughlin)
Week 7: Victorian Britain, Religion and the Age of the Periodical: Newspapers, Magazines and Journalism
Student Learning Experience
Students will receive seven two-hour sessions of specialised teaching in the David Welsh Room in New College Library, with input from the New College Library heritage collections specialists. They will then pursue an individual supervised research project with 3 individual or group supervision sessions on one of the items in the special collections which has been contextualised earlier in the course.
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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 |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 14,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
181 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
4000-word research essay (90%)«br /»
500-word poster (10%)«br /»
«br /»
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| Feedback |
Students will produce the poster in Week 6, and receive written formative feedback on it from their research supervisor before they begin their individual research projects. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of a particular book, manuscript, pamphlet or periodical within the New College Library Heritage Collection associated with a particular period of Christian history
- Demonstrate the ability to critically contextualise it, showing knowledge of similar articles within the New College Collections and elsewhere
- Demonstrate the ability to carry out a supervised research project critically showcasing the book, manuscript, pamphlet or periodical in question
- Demonstrate a wider understanding of the importance of historic archives and archival materials to understanding and contextualizing the history of Christianity in Scotland
- Demonstrate the ability to summarise the importance of the document to an educated non-specialist audience
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Reading List
Initial bibliography
Week 2
Duffy, Eamon. Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240 - 1570. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006
Week 3
Paul Parvis, ¿Packaging Irenaeus: Adversus Haereses and its editors¿, in Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, eds, Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
Weeks 4 and 5
Anon., The Church of Scotland¿s Lament over the Pride of Her Ministers, with their Top Wiggs, and Long Gravates (n. d., 18th century). [NCL ¿ B.c.4.28/9]
Brown, John, The oracles of Christ, and the abominations of antichrist compared: or, A brief view of the errors, impieties, and inhumanities of Popery, and of the great danger of its speedy prevalence in Britain. (Glasgow, 1779) [NCL ¿ C.a.c.2/1] Bruce, Archibald, The Catechism Modernized: And Adapted to the Meridian of Patronage and Late Improvements in the Church of Scotland; With Suitable Creeds and Prayers (Edinburgh, 1791). [NCL ¿ E.a.8/1-3] Hume, David, The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by Himself (London, 1777) [NCL ¿ H.d.3/1]
Millar, Robert, The History of the Propagation of Christianity and Overthrow of Paganism (Edinburgh, 1723) [B.21.56-57]
Witherspoon, John, Ecclesiastical Characteristics, or, The Arcana of Church Policy: Being an Humble Attempt to Open up the Mystery of Moderation, Wherein is Shewn a Plain and Easy Way of Attaining to the Character of a Moderate Man, as at Present in Repute in the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1763) [NCL ¿ G.a.16/2]
Week 6
Brown, S. W. and W. McDougall (eds), The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, 1707¿1800 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012)
Brown, S. J. B., ¿Religion in Scotland down to 1900¿, in T. Devine and J. Wormald (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford, 2012).
McLean, R., R. Young and K. Simpson (eds), The Scottish Enlightenment and Literary Culture (Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press, 2016)
Sher, R. B., The Enlightenment & the Book: Authors and their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007)
Week 7
Altholz, J., The Religious Press in Britain, 1760¿1900 (London: Greenwood, 1989).
Baylen, Joseph O., ¿The ¿New Journalism¿ in Late Victorian Britain¿, Australian Journal of Politics and History 18 (1972), 367-85.
Brown, S. J., W. T. Stead: Nonconformist and Newspaper Prophet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)
Brown, S. J., Providence and Empire Religion, Politics and Society in the United Kingdom, 1814-1914
Easley, A., A. King and J. Morton, The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Periodicals (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016).
Royle, Edward, Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement, 1791¿1866
Shattock, J. and M. Wolff, The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982).
Stainthorp, C., ¿Secular Community and Identity in the Poetry of British Freethought Periodicals¿, Partial Answers 23 (2025), pp. 105-29. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Knowledge of the material culture aspect of the history of learning; curiosity for learning; critical analysis; ability to evaluate texts as subjects and objects and identify their historical importance; understanding the contextual nature of texts. |
| Keywords | Archives,heritage collections,New College Library |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Simon Burton
Tel: (0131 6)50 8920
Email: Simon.Burton@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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