History Writing: Theory and Practice (HI9K0)
Module Convenor: Claudia Stein
This 60 CATs module 'Writing History: Theory and Practice' is core for all MA history students (full time and part-time). As a core module it complements the teaching of the more specialised MA History modules on offer, by providing a broad theoretical and methodological framework for understanding of the past and present aims of the discipline of history. As well as covering more recent themes and approaches to historical research, it will enable students to prepare for the dissertation research and writing process.
The module is based on the understanding that all history writing requires knowledge of the discipline’s fundamental methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Excellence in academic history writing requires knowledge of discipline’s foundational methodologies, e.g. source criticism, and an awareness of how the different source materials have been made meaningful by historians, using different theoretical approaches, often stemming from neighbouring disciplines in the human and social sciences. But today’s historians also require an awareness and sensitivity of the contemporary political, economic, and social-cultural context in which their writing is done in order to move the discipline’s agenda into the future. The module introduces students to fundamental methodological and theoretical approaches and their respective historical 'context' since WWII. Guided by experts, students learn that historical methodologies and theories are reflections of the changing historical context of the discipline. They are encouraged to critically assess their own historian context and how it shapes their own meaning-making of the past. They also learn how such context inspired historians to made creative and imaginative meaning of the past and reflect on how their own historical context shapes their 'meaning-making' of the past. The module also prepares students to develop the necessary research and communication skills, by instilling into them a sense of intellectual initiative, curiosity, and rigour. They learn how to explore and interrogate a wide range of primary sources and interpret them through different theoretical lenses in order to prepare for the writing of their dissertations. Moreover, students will gain a sophisticated set of oral and written skills to formulate and express new interpretations in appropriate academic language. History is continuously re-written in light of an ever-changing present and the module will guide students through the complexities of research in an interactive and artisanal experience.
Indicative Syllabus
Term I
Week 1: What is Historical Practice? Introduction into Methodology of History Writing and the Purpose of Theory
Week 2: Practice: The Interplay of Methodology and Theory, using secondary literature examples
Week 3: Theories of Power: Class (Marxism)
Week 4: Practice: Constructing a line of argument in an essay/dissertation (essay/dissertation title, organisation of introductions, overall line of argument)
Week 5: Theories of Power: Class, the ‘New’ Social History, and feminism
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Practice: How to Structure a Larger Section and a Paragraph? Topic Sentences
Week 8: The ‘New’ Cultural History: the Historian as an Anthropologist and the question of power, agency and historical change
Week 9: Practice: Effective Use of Quotations
Week 10: The Social Construction of What? Introduction into the History of Social Constructionism (Introduction into the most used historiography concept since the 1970s, its different approaches form the 1970s.
Term II
Week 1: Writing practice: How to plan and write a essay outline/dissertation proposal?
Week 2: ‘The Linguistic Turn’ (1970s to today)
Week 3: Practice: How to deal with visual and material sources?
Week 4: Decolonising Europe: the Development of Postcolonial Theory and Where It Stands Today
Week 5: Practice: Oral History in times of ‘lived experience’
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Global History: Its Rise and Today’s Mission
Week 8: Moving Beyond Human Experience? Non-Human History Today
Week 9: A New Longing for Human Authenticity Across Time? Sensing and Feeling the Past
Week 10: Practice: Digital Humanities
Indicative Reading List
Primary sources:
Modern Records Centre Archives Warwick Records Office ,;Archives Early Modern English Books
Online American Newspapers Archive; The Old Bailey; Online Nineteenth-century British Newspapers Illustrated
London News; British Parliamentary Papers; British History Online Web Gallery of Art. A full list of databases available
via the library can be found here: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/search~S1/v?history
Secondary Sources:
Becker, Stefan, History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice (Cambridge, 2022)
Black, Jeremy, and Donald M. MacRaild, Studying History, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke, 2007)
Davies, Martin, Doing A Successful Research Project(Basingstoke, 2007)
Eric Foner, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003)
Gunn, Simon, and Lucy Faire (eds), Research Methods for History (Edinburgh, 2011)
McDowell, W. H., Historical Research: A Guide (London, 2002)
Storey, William Kelleher, Writing History: A Guide for Students, 3rd ed.(Oxford, 2008)
Swetnam, Derek, Writing Your Dissertation, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 2000) Bentley, Michael. Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1999)
F. Bentley, Michael. A Companion to Historiography (2002)
Berger, Stefan, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003).
Brown, Callum, Postmodernism for Historians (2005)
Burrow, John, A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus to the Twentieth Century (2007)
Carr, E.H., What is History? (Cambridge, 1961)
Claus, Peter and John Marriott, History: An Introduction to Theory, Method and Practice (2012)
Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History (1946)
Duara, Prasenjit (ed.), A Companion to Global Historical Thought (2014)
Ermath, Elizabeth Deeds, History in the Discursive Condition: Reconsidering the Tools of Thought (2011)
Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup (eds), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth- century History and Theory (1999)
Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Fifty Key Thinkers on History (2008)
Hunt, Lynn. Writing History in the Global Era (2014)
Iggers, George G. and Q. Edward Wang, A Global History of Modern Historiography (2008)
Lambert, Peter and Schofield, Peter, Making History (2004)
Maza, Sarah. Thinking about History (2017)
Munslow, A., The Routledge Companion to the Historical Studies (London, 2006)
Poster, Mark, Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges (1997)
Rochona, Majumdar, Writing Postcolonial History (2010)
Smith, B. The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (1998)
Shryock, Andrew/Smail, D.L., Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present (2001)
Southgate, Beverley, History: What and Why: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspectives (1996)
Stunkel, Kenneth R., Fifty Key Works of History and Historiography (2011)
Walker, Garthine (ed.), Writing Early Modern History (2005)
Woolf, Daniel, A Global History of History (2011)
Assessment
- 3000 word essay (33%)
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3000 word essay (33%)
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Dissertation plan (34%)