Introductory description

The 15 CAT module introduces students to some of the central ideas about the purpose and practice of history writing since the 18th century to the 1990s. It is important to this module that such theories and methodologies did not float in ‘empty’ space but were expressions a specific wider socio-cultural and political context at a particular moment in time. The central message of this module is: methodologies and theories of academic history writing always reflects the values, morals and norms of the specific society in which it is written. They did not float in 'empty' space but were expressions of wider socio-cultural and political concerns.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Part I: History Writing in Modernity: Grand Narratives of Human Reason and the Progress of Civilisation

1. History Writing in the Enlightenment: Purpose and Practice
2. History Writing as an Art or a Science? Or Both? 19-Century Views in Germany and Britain
3. History as Class Struggle
4. Total History? The Annales School and the Rise of Social History
5. The Rise of the New Social History: Socialist Humanism and Feminist History of the 1960s and 1970
6. Reading Week

Part II: History Writing in Post-Modernity: Challenging History's ‘Grand Narratives’
7. The Past as a ‘Foreign Land’: Microhistory and the 'Ethnographic Turn'
8. Literary Criticism and the ‘Linguistic turn’
9. Power/Knowledge and the Human Subject in History: Michel Foucault
10. The Rise of Postcolonialism

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the development of the academic study of history throughout the world since the mid-eighteenth century to the 1990s.
• Demonstrate an awareness of recent and contemporary debates in the theory and practice of historical writing, within and outside of the West.
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing scholarship.
• Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity.
• Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.

Indicative reading list

• Bentley, Michael. Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1999). Focuses on broad trends in largely European history-writing from the Enlightenment period onwards.
• 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), explains it very well and has a super useful glossary of key terms!
• Burrow, John, A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus … to the Twentieth Century (2007).
• Carr, E.H., What is History? (1961). A core text that you should read in full at the start of the year.
• Claus, Peter and John Marriott, History: An Introduction to Theory, Method and Practice (2012)
• Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History (1946). A classic!)
• Duara, Prasenjit (ed.), A Companion to Global Historical Thought (2014).
• Ermath, Elizabeth Deeds, History in the Discursive Condition: Reconsidering the Tools of Thought (2011). Examines the state of history-writing in the light of the postmodern challenge.
• Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup (eds), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-century History and Theory (1999). This is particularly useful for the way it introduces a theoretical and methodological vocabulary for studying twentieth-century historiography.
• Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Fifty Key Thinkers on History (2008). Provides short essays on fifty mainly European and US historians, historiographers, and thinkers who have had an impact on history-writing.
• Hunt, Lynn. Writing History in the Global Era (2014)
• Iggers, George G. and Q. Edward Wang, A Global History of Modern Historiography (2008). Examines history-writing as a global phenomenon, getting away from the Eurocentricity of much of the existing literature on historiography. Focuses on the period covered in this module (in contrast to Woolf, below).
• Lambert, Peter and Schofield, Peter, Making History (2004). (very clear introduction to the topic)
• Maza, Sarah. Thinking about History (2017).
• Munslow, A., The Routledge Companion to the Historical Studies (London, 2006) (library electronic resource)
• Poster, Mark, Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges (1997) (library electronic resources).
• Rochona, Majumdar, Writing Postcolonial History (2010).
• Smith, B. The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (1998). Provides a particularly useful account of nineteenth-century developments in historical thinking and writing, and the professionalization of the discipline.
• 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). Provides short introductions to key writings of fifty historians and thinkers who have had an impact on history-writing, from all over the world.
• Walker, Garthine (ed.), Writing Early Modern History (2005). Provides a really helpful discussion relevant to all historians, not just early modernists.
• Woolf, Daniel, A Global History of History (2011). Takes a broad sweep, with chapters on the different historical epochs of the past three millennia.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.