Introductory description

This 30 CAT module is core for single honours history students, and optional for joint honours students. As a core module it complements teaching in specialised History modules, by providing a broad context for an understanding of the discipline of history. As well as covering themes and approaches to historical research, broadly conceived, it will enable students to undertake a research project on a topic of their own choosing, as preparation for the dissertation in the final year.

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.

The module will introduce students to current themes and approaches to history writing. Examples include Marginality, Race, Gender, Environmental History, Microhistory, Public Memory, Emotions History, Intellectual History, various types of Global History, etc. The themes and approaches treated may change from year to year depending on staff availability.

The module will also introduce students to various types of source material (oral, material, visual, printed, quantitative, government records, digital, etc); and writing and research skills including editing, integrity, and ethics.

Staff on the module will share their own research interests and introduce students to research culture.

Students will have the opportunity to present their research topic, questions, approaches and sources in ‘works in progress’ seminars led by the students. The aim of these sessions is to share current research and elicit peer feedback.

Learning outcomes

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

• Demonstrate an awareness of, and engagement with, a range of theoretical perspectives / methodological approaches in historical writing
• Generate ideas through applying current historical methods to the analysis of primary source material.
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing scholarship.
• Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity.
• Design and undertake a piece of historical research

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
 Black, Jeremy, and Donald M. MacRaild, Studying History, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke, 2007)
 Davies, Martin, Doing A Successful Research Project (Basingstoke, 2007)
 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). 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) excellent glossary of key terms!!!
 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.

Research element

Research project

Subject specific skills

see learning outcomes

Transferable skills

see learning outcomes