DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

GRADUATE PROGRAMME IN HISTORY

Historical Research:

Theory, Skill and Method

STUDENT HANDBOOK

2014/2015

Course Director: Sarah Hodges

Seminar Tutor: Sarah Hodges

This handbook is only available online

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Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Orientation 2

Aims and Objectives 2

Learning Outcomes 3

Teaching Arrangements 3

Assessment Guidelines 4

Assessment Deadlines 4

Course Module Reviews 4

TSM and your Dissertation 4

Submission 5

Plagiarism 5

Part-time Students 6

Complementary Modules to follow alongside TSM 6

Theory, Skill and Method 7

Basic Skills 7

Quantitative Research Skills 8

Assessment 9

Programme 10

Methods and Approaches to History 13

Assessment 13

Programme 14

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Introduction

‘Historical Research: Theory, Skill, Method’

(TSM) 2014/2015

This is a compulsory module, designed to help postgraduate students of history acquire the variety of

research skills needed to identify, initiate and complete a substantial piece of research in social, economic

or cultural history. It is designed for: All Taught Masters students

MA (by Research) students

MPhil/PhD students who have not already completed an approved training course

MPhil/PhD students who may have an MA, but whose previous training has not been in history.

NB MA in History & Film students are not required to follow the Quantitative Research Skills (QRS) strand of the course, and only follow the first term of the Methods & Approaches programme. Further details are available from the course director, Dr Jennifer Smyth.

Orientation

Aims and Objectives

The first two aims of this module are:

to support the work you do (in terms of reading, learning, research and writing) for your

own MA or PhD programme; and

to help you acquire the skills needed to undertake an extended piece of historical research

and writing.

Graduate students of history undertaking their first independent research need knowledge of a

wide range of sources and the means to access and survey them. They need to understand the

theoretical frameworks, many of them drawn from the social and human sciences, and from literary

studies, that inform existing work on their chosen topic, and to recognise the gaps and spaces that their

own work may attempt to fill. They need to know how to frame historical questions with which to

interrogate primary and secondary sources - and they need to know how to set about answering those

questions. They also face the challenge of presenting their work in written and in spoken form, in essays

and dissertation, and in seminar papers.

Believing that history is at once a highly practical and highly theoretical activity, we have planned

TSM with these needs in mind. It will introduce you to library, archival, and electronic resources here at

Warwick, and in the wider world. It will help you use information technology resources for the purposes

of research and for the presentation of your own work. It pays a good deal of attention to your own

writing of history, particularly the writing of your dissertation, from the very early stages of research

design when you map out an area for investigation, right through to its formal presentation (in perfectly

word-processed, immaculately proof-read, beautifully written prose). We believe that an understanding

of the ideas and theories that underlie historical work is just one among all the skills the historian must

possess, and so a major objective of the module is to help you understand the conceptual frameworks

used by the historians whose work you study. In this way TSM should keep you up-to-date with the

constantly developing field in which you have chosen to work.

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Learning Outcomes

Following TSM should enable you to:

outline a topic for research and make a survey of existing work in the field

draw on key concepts from one or more of the social, human and literary sciences

appreciate the advanced literature in one or more of the following: economic, social, cultural,

religious, political or literary history

discuss the theoretical underpinnings of this work, and suggest how your own research may contribute to it

locate and survey sources (archival, library, database, internet, literary, etc.) relevant to the

work you are undertaking for essays and dissertation

present your work in the form of a seminar talk to fellow students and staff in the History

Department

understand appropriate numerical, statistical, and computing techniques relevant to any data

collection and analysis you undertake

present your research findings, where appropriate, in tabulated and spreadsheet form

write lively, articulate, fully referenced and annotated and perfectly proof-read prose, in essays

and in your dissertation

have a wide and informed knowledge of recent developments in historical thinking

contribute to historical knowledge by means of your dissertation

Teaching Arrangements

Theory, Skill, Method is organised around three strands: ‘Basic Skills’, ‘Quantitative Research Skills’

and ‘Methods and Approaches to History’.

‘Basic Skills’ is taught mostly on Mondays from 11.00-12.00pm in F1.10. Some of these

sessions are compulsory, others are optional. Details of the sessions (and whether they are

optional or mandatory) can be found on the timetable, which can be accessed here:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/ma_studies/tsm/timetable/

You must attend all the compulsory sessions and at least four of the optional ones. These

sessions do not generally entail any pre-reading or preparation.

‘Quantitative Research Skills’ is taught on Mondays by several tutors (and students who

recently completed the module) in the Autumn Term (12-1pm) in R2.41 and in R1.14 during the Spring

Term. The sessions in the first weeks of Spring consist of drop-in sessions for ‘problem shooting’. All

sessions consist of a combination of lecture and discussions. To prepare, you should complete the

assigned reading and any exercises in advance of each session.

‘Methods and Approaches to History’ is taught on Monday afternoons. In alternate weeks,

there will be a lecture from 2.00pm to 3.00pm in Library 1, followed by a one-hour seminar led by the

seminar tutor (Sarah Hodges). Students will be allocated to Group 1 (3-4pm in H3.03) or Group 2 (4-5pm

in H3.03) during the first week of term. In the weeks without lectures, there will be seminar discussion

to explore the theme in greater depth. To prepare for these sessions, you should read the assigned texts

and consider the questions posed alongside each week’s readings. Attendance at these seminars is

compulsory; they are an invaluable opportunity to learn and to exchange ideas with your fellow

students and staff.

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Assessment Guidelines

TSM is an assessed component of your MA course. Overall you will write 5,000 words for assessment, in

two parts: a ‘Quantitative Research Skills’ essay of 2,500 words, and a ‘Methods and Approaches to

History’ essay of 2,500 words. As for all word-length indications in the History Department, you can have

10% over-length, but outside of the ‘10% rule’ you will be penalised. Footnotes are not included in the

word count, but should be kept short. More detailed guidelines about word lengths of assessed work can

be found in section 4.10 of the Taught MA Handbook, and below under the separate headings for

Quantitative Research Skills (page 7) and Methods and Approaches (page 12).

Assessment Deadlines

Methods & Approaches to History essay (History & Film students ONLY): Term 2, week 1 (Thursday 8 January 2015)

Quantitative Research Skills Essay: Term 2, Week 3 (Thursday 22 January 2015)

Methods and Approaches to History Essay: Term 2, Week 10 (Thursday 12 March 2015)

Essays are to be handed into the History Graduate Programme Office (H3.40) by noon of the day in question. These dates are deadlines. Only in very exceptional circumstances can extensions be given. You should discuss extensions with the Course Director of your MA in the first instance; the Director of Graduate Studies must authorise any extensions. For extension procedures please contact the Postgraduate Co-ordinator (H3.40).

Assessment feedback

Detailed comments from two internal markers will be provided via Tabula for each assessment within

20 days of the dates above. An internally agreed mark will also be confirmed, but please note that this

remains provisional until ratified by an external examiner.

Course Module Reviews At the end of the autumn term and when TSM finishes in the early summer term, you will

be asked to complete a course module review for each element of TSM. This can be done via

feedback forms: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/postgraduate/ma_studies/tsm

Your response to the content and teaching of the various courses you have taken is

extremely valuable, especially in planning for the future. Please note your attendance on the number

of seminars relevant to your programme of study will also be monitored. The TSM Module Convenor

makes a report on the attendance and reviews they have read to the Postgraduate Committee. They

report back to students on the results of the questionnaire, and the Staff-Student Liaison Committee

also considers these reports.

TSM and your Dissertation

You should be considering possible dissertation topics from your very first weeks on the Programme,

and you will be expected to have found a supervisor by the end of January if you are a full-time

student and towards the end of term 3 if you are part-time. For details, please see the ‘Dissertation

Timeline‘ in the Taught MA handbook (appendix IV). The timing of the assessments in TSM is geared

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to enable you, if you wish, to use both assignments (the ‘Quantitative Research Skills’ essay and the

‘Methods and Approaches to History’ essay) as part of your preparation for your dissertation work.

Should you wish to do this, you should talk to your dissertation supervisor about the selection of

relevant topics for both assignments.

Submission Use https://tabula.warwick.ac.uk/coursework/ to access Tabula, the ‘coursework management’ system which will enable you to submit your essays/assignments. When you get to the ‘coursework management’ system, you will be presented with a screen which lists all the essays/assignments that you are due to submit this year under the heading ‘Your assignments’. The list is annotated to show those essays which are due, those which you have already submitted and any which are over-due. Click on individual assignments to view or upload your essays, as appropriate. You will be asked for a word count. Please enter this as a number (with no commas or spaces), e.g. 4900 After you’ve submitted your work, the system will send an email to your Warwick email account to confirm your submission. You are required to provide two hard copies of your assessed work by noon on the deadlines listed above to complete the submission procedure. Please ensure that you attach a print-out of your Tabula e-submission confirmation email and a completed submission form, available online.

Plagiarism

When writing essays, always identify your sources for specific information and, where appropriate,

the ideas which you use. It is bad academic practice for a student to fail to do so, just as it would

be for an author writing a book or scholarly article. Copying without acknowledgement from a

printed source is as unacceptable as plagiarising another student’s essay.

It is equally wrong to reproduce and present as your own work a passage from another

person’s writing to which only minor changes have been made, e.g., minor alteration of words or

phrases, omission or rearrangement of occasional sentences or phrases within the passage. This

remains plagiarism even if the source is acknowledged in footnotes because it would appear to the

reader that the basic structure and phrasing is your own, whereas in reality you would be

reproducing someone else’s structure and phrasing.

Unacknowledged quotation, disguised borrowing, or near-copying will be treated as

plagiarism and penalised according to its extent and gravity.

Your attention is drawn to the University’s Regulation B, Essays, Dissertations, Reports and

Other Assessed Work, not Undertaken under Examination Conditions as Laid Down in the University

Regulations for the Invigilation of Examinations (University of Warwick Calendar, Section 2; online at

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/gov/calendar/section2/regulations/cheating/ and to the fact

that, in extreme cases, the penalty for plagiarism is a grade of zero in the whole module. The History

Department may use plagiarism software or other appropriate means to identify plagiarism in

students’ assessed and non-assessed work. In the last few years the University disciplinary machinery

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has imposed penalties in several cases on students who have been convicted of plagiarism in

assessed work. If you are uncertain about what constitutes plagiarism, please talk it over with your

module tutor, personal tutor, or the Director of Graduate Studies.

Finally, it cannot be repeated enough that all assessed work should conform

to the guidelines as described in the departmental ‘Style Guide for Graduate

Students’:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/postgraduate/ma_studies/style_guide_12-

13_current.pdf

Bad writing, inadequate proof-reading and incoherent footnoting will lower your grades. Final

dissertations may be referred for resubmission for the same reasons.

Part-time Students

Part-time students may follow TSM over two years. You are very strongly encouraged to take the

‘Methods and Approaches to History’ strand in your first year. You may take ‘Basic Skills’ and ‘Quantitative

Research Skills’ in either the first or second year of study. Keep a record of the Basic Skills sessions you

attend. You should let the Postgraduate Coordinator know which sessions you have attended by

completing the feedback form online at the end of the first year (even though at that point you will not yet

have completed the course), and again at the end of your second year:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/postgraduate/ma_studies/tsm

Part-time students should note that although every effort has been made to schedule the various

elements of the course in regular time slots, especially in the first weeks of the course, many additional

sessions are scheduled at different times. Some of the optional elements of the course are also scheduled

at variant times. Please check the timetable well in advance to allow sufficient time for planning ahead.

Part-time students should discuss their pathway through the module with their MA

Course Director and with the MA Director, Sarah Hodges There should be an agreed account of

how the student is to take the course on file in the Graduate Programme Office (H340) by the

beginning of November 2014

If you have any questions regarding the pacing of your MA, please consult the MA

Director

Complementary Modules to follow alongside TSM

HISTORIOGRAPHY

Students interested in recent thinking in historiography are warmly invited to follow the History

Department’s third year undergraduate lecture course on ‘Historiography’. The lectures take place

on Tuesdays at 10:00 in L4 (Science Concourse). The syllabus and lecture schedule for

‘Historiography’ are available on the Department website. Graduate students may also download

and print out the Historiography Handbook, available on the website at

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/undergraduate/modules/hi323/.

FROM MANUSCRIPT TO PRINT

Historians with an interest in developing their research and palaeographical skills in Renaissance and

Early Modern Europe are encouraged to participate in a series of classes and workshops organised by

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the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. Students may choose to follow the skills programme

throughout the year, or to focus on one particular term. Only occasional attendance, especially in the

case of Term 2, is not advisable. Historians may find of special use the material covered in Term 2,

which emphasizes palaeography and textual editing. To register and/or further information contact

the Renaissance Centre secretary, Jayne Brown, renaissance@warwick.ac.uk (office: H4.48b, near the

Graduate Space).

Further information can also be found on the web page:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/postgradstudy/manuscripttoprint/

Theory, Skill and Method

Please see visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/ma_studies/tsm/timetable/

for details on which sessions take place when, which elements are compulsory or optional, and

any further up to date changes.

Basic Skills

The purpose of this strand is twofold: to equip you with a toolkit of useful analytical and

methodological techniques, and to provide training in writing logical, persuasive and elegant history.

Some of the sessions thus concern the designing and structuring of a piece of extended historical

writing. Others provide practical training in using archives, or in employing newspaper sources. As

noted above, some of these sessions are compulsory and some optional. (For details, please see the

TSM timetable). At the end of Term 1 and 2 you must submit information confirming which sessions

you attended by completing the feedback form available at

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/postgraduate/ma_studies/tsm/

Completing this form constitutes the assessment for this strand of the module. It is therefore

vital that you submit it.

Basic Skills Programme Term 1 Term 1 Week 2 Library Introduction (Lynn Wright) Monday 6 October, 11am-12pm, Library Seminar Room Week 3 Library referencing and EndNote (Sam Johnson) Monday 13 October, 11am-12pm, Library Training Room Week 4 Planning and writing an extended piece of writing, Sarah Hodges Monday 20 October, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering) Week 5, Finding a Supervisor (Sarah Hodges) Monday 27 October, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering) Week 7 Archival materials, Martin Sanders [MRC] Monday 10 November, 11am-12pm, Modern Records Centre Week 8 Introduction to the Modern Records Centre, Martin Sanders [MRC] Monday 17 November, 11am-12pm, Modern Records Centre Week 9 Doing & Funding a Research Degree, Director of Graduate Studies (tbc)

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Term 2

Week 3 Historians, legal sources and secret documents (David Anderson)

Monday 19 January, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering)

Week 4 Historians and visual sources (Jonathan Davies)

Monday 26 January, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering)

Week 5 Historians and newspapers (Tim Lockley)

Monday 2 February, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering)

Week 7 Historians and personal records (Laura Schwartz) tbc

Monday 16 February, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering)

Week 8 Historians and political thought (Gabriel Glickman)

Monday 23 February, 5pm-6pm, room tbc

Week 9 Historians and medical records (Roberta Bivins)

Monday 2 March, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering)

Week 10 Speaking History (Sarah Hodges)

Monday 9 March, 11am-12pm, F1.10 (Engineering)

Quantitative Research Skills

The purpose of this strand of TSM is likewise two-fold: to provide training in basic quantitative

skills and to initiate the process of conducting original research. The strand consists of a series of

lectures and training in both IT and historical skills useful for quantitative analysis.

The first thing to say about this strand is that it does not assume any specialist mathematical

skills. If you can count then you will be able to complete this strand without any difficulties. We do,

however, expect that you either possess or acquire basic competence in the use of common word

processing and spreadsheet programmes. At the start of the year you will take an ‘IT evaluation’ to

determine whether you would benefit from additional training in these skills. The University’s IT

Services Training programme provides extensive training in the use of Microsoft Word, Excel and

other packages and you are encouraged to take advantage of these sessions. We also organise a

number of mandatory training sessions in the first weeks of term to make sure you have the skills

needed to complete this strand of TSM. Finally, the Department website contains useful information

and a self-training programme called ‘Computing for Historians’, which you can find at:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/res_rec/skills/computing_intro/

If you have any concerns about your quantitative skills, you may like to start here, and please

don’t hesitate the MA director, Sarah Hodges, if you have any questions.

In addition to reading the assigned texts and attending all sessions you may wish to

consult one of the following:

J. Elliott, Using Narrative in Social Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (London, 2005)

Charles Harvey and Jon Press, Databases in Historical Research (Basingstoke, 1996)

Pat Hudson, History by Numbers: An Introduction to Quantitative Approaches (London, 2000)

John H. Kranzler (ed.), Statistics for the Terrified (3rd edn, 2002)

Sonja Cameron and Sarah Richardson, Using Computers in History (Basingstoke, 2005)

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‘Research Tools and Methods’, http://www.sosig.ac.uk/research_tools/

‘Enabling Digital Resources for the Arts and Humanities’, http://www.ahds.ac.uk

Assessment

This strand of TSM is assessed via an essay of 2500 words, based fundamentally upon the

quantitative analysis of material drawn from appropriate historical sources. The purpose of this

essay is for students to demonstrate skill in the use of quantitative analysis to support their

historical research. The training necessary for undertaking the essay is provided by the bespoke

module on quantitative research skills which includes examples from the research of both staff

and students in the Department. Additional support in the use of IT packages such as Excel is

available from IT services and from the ‘Computing for Historians’ online package.

Research for this essay is likely to involve the creation of some sort of analytical database, but

this is not a requirement. Your database, should you be using one, might consist of an Excel

spreadsheet containing data derived from a primary source such as a census. It might instead

constitute a ‘text database’. (A text database is a ‘collection of related documents assembled into a

single searchable unit’, such as a book.) In past years successful essays have analysed topics ranging

from the composition of the population runaway slaves in the American south to the frequency of

biblical references in early modern English literary works to mortality and health records from the

Boer War. The central requirement for the successful completion of this essay is that you engage

intelligently with your source material and that you demonstrate competence in the manipulation of

quantitative data for the purposes of historical research. The essay does not require sophisticated

mathematical skills or the construction of a vast electronic database.

In many cases this will be your first experience of conducting primary research. Choosing a

topic therefore constitutes part of the challenge of writing this essay. You might wish to use the

essay to explore themes that you will explore more fully in your dissertation, or you might instead

base the essay on material and/or historiographic questions emerging from one of your modules.

In all cases you should focus fundamentally on the research questions explored in the essay, on

the virtues and defects of your chosen source(s), and on the historiographic and/or

methodological context in which you situate your own research.

Depending on the nature of the research question explored in the project, marking will

reflect, variously, the effort and originality of the collection of data under analysis, the historical and

historiographical significance of the conclusions reached, the complexity and accessibility of the

source material, and the clarity of the exposition. Specifically, you will be expected to demonstrate:

a) Skill in the use of quantitative analytical methods such as counting, or the construction of

percentages, averages and frequencies to analyse and interpret historical sources.

b) Consciousness of the significance of the conclusions reached for the historical understanding

of the problem under consideration. This might include analysis of the relevance of the

project to an existing historical or historiographical debate.

c) Sensitivity to the strengths and weakness of the source(s) used for this project. This might

entail discussions of:

i. the process of transferring information from the source(s) to a database for the purpose of

analysis (this process is often called data modelling),

ii. treatment of your source(s) in other historical works, and

iii. specific issues raised by particular types of data (for example your treatment of foreign or archaic currencies, or the decisions you have taken in classifying the occupations listed in a

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census).

d) Competence in the creation and manipulation of spreadsheets and/or databases and/or

text databases, including, where appropriate, the use of software packages such as

Access or Excel.

e) Presentational skills. The essay should contain:

iv. a succinct report on the methodology used to analyse the sources. This methodology

might consist of a relational database or spreadsheet. It might instead comprise a more

unstructured analytical form such as a Word document, v. a clear statement of the conclusions reached, and vi. clear and informative visual presentation of material (where appropriate).

Databases and spreadsheets are not themselves required as part of the essay (although where

appropriate, they might usefully be included as an appendix). Please note that all essays should have

numbered pages and you should consider the most appropriate method of integrating any graphics

into the text of your essay. Charts and tables should not be included in the word count.

Above all, the project should demonstrate the use of quantitative skills in the service of

historical analysis rather than as an end in themselves and it will be assessed on that basis.

QRS

Programme

Term 1

Bespoke IT training sessions will take place in the first term. Information about these sessions will

be given in the Week 1 meeting for all new postgraduate students on Monday 29 September at

10am in F1.07 (Engineering). Session times will also be posted on the TSM timetable:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/ma_studies/tsm/timetable/

Week 1 – Diagnostic Test of Basic IT skills for all MA students

Group evaluations will be held on Wednesday 1 October. Further information will be provided at

induction by the PG Coordinator.

Week 2 – Why Quantify: An Introduction to Quantification in Historical Research (Sarah Hodges with

John Morgan)

Monday 6 October, 12-1, R.2.41 (Ramphal Building)

In this session we will discuss the following:

the assessment procedures for the quantitative research skills section of TSM

why quantification matters to historians

source assessment and data-modelling by historians (for some guidelines see Sonja Cameron and Sarah Richardson, Using Computers in History, pp. 76-87)

Week 3 – An Introduction to Sampling (Sarah Richardson)

Monday 13 October 12-1, R2.41

All historians sample their data in some way. This session will consider different approaches to

sampling with their strengths and weaknesses.

Reading:

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P. Hudson, History By Numbers (2000), ch. 7

R. Schofield, ‘Sampling in Historical Research’, in E. A. Wrigley (ed.), Nineteenth Century Society, pp. 146-90.Week 4 – Simple Statistics for Historians (Sarah Richardson)

Monday 20 October, 12-1, R2.41

This session will cover some basic but essential statistical methods for historians including using

time-series, indices and descriptive statistics. It will also cover the presentation of statistical

material.

Reading: P. Hudson, History By Numbers (2000), chs. 3-5

M. Botticini, ‘A loveless economy? Intergenerational altruism and the marriage market in a Tuscan

town’, Journal of Economic History, 59 (1999)

Steve Hindle, ‘Power, poor relief, and social relations in Holland Fen, c. 1600-1800’, Historical

Journal, 41 (1998)

Martha Olney, ‘When your word is not enough: race, collateral and household credit’, Journal of

Economic History, 58 (1998)

Robert E. Dowse; John A. Hughes, ‘Girls, Boys and Politics’, The British Journal of Sociology, 22

(1971)

Week 5 – Spatial Analysis for Historians (David Beck)

Monday 27 October, 12-1, R2.41

This session will explore some simple methods by which space can be visualised in historical research,

and discuss why it is important to think about these. It will also include a brief discussion of some

tools you can explore for creating and presenting maps in your work. It would be useful (but not

essential) to bring along you laptops/tablets.

Reading:

David W. Miller, ‘Social History Update: Spatial Analysis and Social History’, Journal of Social History, 24

1990), pp. 213-220

David Lambert, ‘“Taken captive by the mystery of the Great River”: Towards an historical geography of

British geography and Atlantic slavery’, Journal of Historical Geography, 35 (2009), pp. 44-65

R. J. Mayhew, ‘Border Traffic: recent exchanges between historical geography and intellectual history’,

Journal of Historical Geography, 38 (2012), pp. 340-343

Robert Schwartz, Gregory, Ian and Thévenin, Thomas, ‘Spatial history: railways, uneven development,

and population change in France and Great Britain, 1850-1914’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History,

42 (2011), p. 53-88.

Any of the projects or case studies on http://www.historicalgis.org/projects.html or

http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/index.php.

Web Resources (from the simple to the complex):

http://www.historypin.com/

http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/

http://rumsey.geogarage.com/

http://republicofletters.stanford.edu

http://www.port.ac.uk/research/gbhgis/

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Week 7 – Using Quantitative Data in Research (Sarah Richardson with Greg Wells)

Monday 10 November, 12-1, R2.41

Some relevant readings may be posted on the website prior to this session. Please check there.

Week 8 – Using Quantitative Data in Research (Maxine Berg with Sheilagh Holmes)

Monday 17 November, 12-1, R2.41

Week 9 – Using Quantitative Data in Research (Sarah Hodges with Naomi Pullin)

Monday 24 November, 12-1, R2.41

Week 10 – QRS Project Planning (Sarah Hodges and Sarah Richardson)

Monday 1 December, 12-1, R2.41

Term 2

Week 1 – QRS Drop-in Session/Troubleshooting (Sarah Hodges and Sarah Richardson)

Monday January 7, 12-1, S0.20

These sessions will discuss the assessment. Students are encouraged to bring their projects to the session.

Week 2 – QRS Drop-in Session/Troubleshooting (Sarah Hodges and Sarah Richardson)

Monday January 12, 12-1, S0.20

Week 3 – QRS Drop-in Session/Troubleshooting (Sarah Hodges and Sarah Richardson)

Monday January 19, S0.20

Week 3 - Thursday 22 January 2015– QRS 2,500 word Assessment due

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Methods and Approaches to History

This strand of TSM underpins the aims of the entire module, in that it alerts graduate students of

history to the many theoretical frameworks, often derived from related and contiguous disciplines

that inform historical writing. The lecture/seminar structure should allow you to explore these

concepts and theories in some depth, and to interrogate the writing of historians who use them. It

should also help you to build up an informed knowledge of recent developments in historical

thinking as well as a history of the discipline - a history of History - itself.

Lectures take place fortnightly. Each is followed by two one-hour seminars, to allow the

themes of the preceding lecture to be discussed; all seminars are led by the TSM seminar tutor (Sarah

Hodges). There will also be a fortnightly second round of seminars for each lecture, to allow for

further exploration of the themes. The ‘required readings’ constitute mandatory minimal preparation

for the seminar; these have been selected by the lecture team because they are, variously, good

examples of ways in which historians have approached the ‘theory’ or concept in question, or because

of their fundamental importance to historical theory and practice, or because they introduce seminal

approaches and methodologies. The questions attached to each seminar are for guidance as you read.

A set of seminar readings follows on page 16.

If you would like to do some preliminary reading we recommend:

Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, The Houses of History. A Critical Reader in Twentieth-century History

and Theory, Manchester University Press, 1999.

Ludmilla Jordanova, History and Practice, Longman, 2000.

Keith Jenkins (ed.), The Post Modern History Reader, Routledge, 1997.

Mary Fulbrook, Historical Theory, Routledge, 2002.

Assessment

This strand of TSM is assessed by means of a 2,500 word essay. The aim of this essay is to explore

the theoretical aspect of historical research, and your essay should, as a minimum requirement,

engage with theory. You may choose to focus on one of the themes of the TSM module, or you

may link one of the theoretical themes (or one of the individual works of theory) to an area of

your own research interest.

You may opt to relate this essay to your proposed dissertation topic, but this essay could also

be related to the content of one of your MA modules, or you may choose to explore theory as theory,

by analysing a set of ideas or approaches (‘gender’, ‘power’, etc.) studied in this strand. You may

either use any of the questions listed in the individual seminars as the basis for an essay title, or

you may devise your own title. In any case, your ‘Methods and Approaches to History’ seminar

tutor should be consulted over the choice of topic and theme. The longer Additional Reading lists

will be useful in preparing the ‘Methods and Approaches’ essay.

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Methods & Approaches Programme

TERM 1

Week Lecturer Topic Required Reading

1 Sarah Hodges Introduction (no reading required)

2 Laura Schwartz Gender McClintock, Imperial Leather

Downs, ‘From women’s history to gender history’ in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner and Kevin Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2010, 2nd ed.)

3 (seminars only) Gender

4 Stuart Elden Space Lefebvre, Urban Revolution

5 (seminars only) Space

6 Reading Week

7 Aditya Sarkar Class Communist Manifesto (ideally read the 1998 Verso edition with intro by Eric Hobsbawm)

Sennett, The Hidden Injuries of Class (1973): 1-50

8 (seminars only) Class

9 Claudia Stein Power Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. An Introduction (engl. 1978 [1976]) 10 (seminars only) Power

TERM 2

Week Lecturer Topic Required Reading

1 Howard Chiang The Body Heinrich, The Afterlife of Images

2 (seminars only) The Body

3 Rebecca Earle Race Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

4 (seminars only) Race

5 Gabriel Glickman

Religion Kley, The religious origins of the French Revolution

6 Reading Week

7 (seminars only) Religion

8 Giorgio Riello Materiality Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption 9 (seminars only) Materiality

10 Sarah Hodges End of term surgery

No lecture or seminars: drop in meetings in H0.26

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Introduction

Term 1, Week 1

Please note there are no readings for this introduction.

Gender (Laura Schwartz)

Term 1, Weeks 2 and 3

Required Readings: Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the

Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), especially chapter 1 AND Laura Lee Downs,

‘From women’s history to gender history’ in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner and Kevin

Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010,

2nd ed.)

Jane Austen, through the words of the female protagonist in Northanger Abbey, passed a celebrated judgement on history texts:

History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in ... I read it a little as a duty but it

tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and

kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing and

hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome.

While there is a tradition of women writing history outside the academy, historical writing until quite

recently was a highly gendered exercise. By the 1970s, within the context of the rise of ‘second-wave

feminism’ and its intervention into the ‘new’ social history, there was a call for an exploration of

women’s history that did not just add women to the existing narratives but sought to ask new

questions, and develop new methods to answer them. Gender history as an idea first came to light in

the mid 1970s with individuals such as Joan Kelly and Natalie Zemon Davis advancing new approaches

to history. The most optimistic feminist historians saw gender history as the way to ‘demolish entirely

the ghettoisation of women’s history’ and the way in which to break down the barriers that enshrined

the exclusively male orientation of traditional historical topics. Most historians agree that gender is by

definition inclusive. Nothing is gender neutral. An analysis of the effects of gender history takes all

historians away from the histories of ‘man’ as the universal. And many historians of gender also see

nothing as fixed, or essential in the manifestation of gender; rather each age, each set of historical

circumstances, has produced its own definitions of masculine and feminine. The analytical possibilities

seemed endless. Joan Scott in her important essay ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’,

gave the first systematic explanation of this new approach. She described gender as ‘a constitutive

element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes’, the ‘knowledge

that establishes meanings for bodily difference’. It was not only about women and men, but also, she

continued, society’s ‘primary way of signifying relationships of power’.

In this session on gender history we will explore how gender history has evolved and the impact it

has had on the discipline of history. We will reflect on how we might use gender ‘as a category of

analysis’ in our own work. What can we learn when we look at a theme or topic in history through the

lens of gender?

Suggested Essay Questions:

1. How can gender be a ‘category of historical analysis’?

2. What is the relationship between women’s history and gender history?

3. Examine McClintock’s book as a gendered history of British imperialism. How does the

language of gender construct and legitimise imperialism?

4. How do gendered definitions of work or family, or the law, shape our understanding of

women’s and men’s roles in history?

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Further reading:

Judith M. Bennett, ‘Feminism and History’, Gender and History 1.3 (1989): 251-72.

Kathleen Canning, ‘Gender History, Meanings, Methods and Metanarratives’, in K. Canning, Gender

History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class and Citizenship (New York, 2005): 3-62.

Olwn Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, vol. 1, 1500- 1800

(London, 1995).

Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley,

1993).

Joan Scott, ‘Gender: a Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, in J. Scott, Gender and the Politics of

History (New York, 1988). Originally published in the American Historical Review, 91.5 (1986).

Alexandra Shepard and Garthine Walker (eds.), Gender and Change: Agency, Chronology and

Periodisation (Chichester, 2009), especially the introduction, and chapters 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8.

Space (Stuart Elden)

Term 1, Weeks 4 and 5

Core Reading: Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Henri Lefebvre was a French philosopher, sociologist, and urbanist, who wrote on a wide range of

topics from the 1920s until his death in 1991. His work has been influential in a range of fields,

especially for his critique of everyday life; the production of space; the right to the city and the urban

revolution. Although Lefebvre wrote about the events of May 1968, and some of his students were

involved in the protests, by urban revolution Lefebvre principally means a revolution of the urban,

rather than a revolution in the urban.

Seminar Questions:

1. What is the relation between the urban revolution and the right to the city?

2. Does it make sense to talk of the production of space? What aspects need to be

understood to comprehend this idea?

3. Lefebvre’s understanding of the transition from the rural to the urban was initially

shaped by his experience in France. Does his schema help to make sense of other

countries, including those outside of Western Europe?

4. How have things changed in the forty-plus years since Lefebvre made these claims?

5. What are the roles of capitalism and the state in the urban revolution?

Additional Reading:

Several of Lefebvre’s books have been translated in recent years. The two best for a wider sample of his work are Writings on Cities (1996) and State, Space, World (2009). See also Key Writings (2003), The Production of Space (1991) and the three volumes of the Critique of Everyday Life (2014).

The secondary literature is growing rapidly. Among the books on Lefebvre, see:

Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible (Continuum, 2004), especially chapter 4.

Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2006).

Lukasz Stanek, Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

A good, though variable, collection of essays is:

Kanishka Goonewardena et al., Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre (Routledge, 2008).

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For applications of Lefebvre’s work, see, in particular

Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso, 1989).

Neil Brenner, New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (Oxford University Press, 2004). Some of Brenner’s articles are also available to download at http://urbantheorylab.net/publications/

Class (Aditya Sarkar)

Term 1, Weeks 7 and 8

Required reading: The Communist Manifesto (ideally, read the 1998 Verso edition with the introduction by Eric Hobsbawm) AND Richard Sennett, The Hidden Injuries of Class (Cambridge, 1977): 1-50.

Suggested seminar/essay questions:

1. Is Marxism obsolete?

2. Is class still a relevant concept?

3. ‘Class is a useful concept for historians only to the extent that it throws light on relationships

between subjective identity and social structure.’ Discuss.

Further reading:

G. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History (1978).

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Marx and History’ in E. Hobsbawm, On History (1997).

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Karl Marx’s Contribution to History’, in R. Blackburn (ed.), Ideology in Social Science (1972).

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Class Consciousness in History’ in I. Meszaros (ed.), Aspects of History and Class Consciousness (1971).

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London, 1984).

Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, in A. H. Halsey et al (eds), Education: Culture, Economy, and Society (Oxford, 1997): 46-58.

M. Bush (ed.), Social Order and Social Classes in Europe since 1500 (1992).

David Cannadine, Class in Britain (1998), pp.1-23; pp. 164-89.

Fiona Devine, Mike Savage, John Scott and Rosemary Crompton (eds), Rethinking Class: Culture, Identities and Lifestyles (2004).

Patrick Curry, ‘Towards a Post-Marxist History’ in Adrian Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History. English Society, 1570-1820 (1993).

Geoff Eley and Keith Neild, The Future of Class in History. What’s Left of the Social? (2007).

G. Eley & K. Neild, ‘Farewell to the Working Class’, International Labor and Working-Class History (2000).

Patrick Joyce (ed.), Class: A Reader (1999).

J. Lawrence, ‘The British Sense of Class’, Journal of Contemporary History 35.2 (2000): 307-318.

Terry Lovell, ‘Bourdieu, Class and Gender: “The Return of the Living Dead”?’, Sociological Review 52: Supplement 2 (2005): 35-56.

J. Pakulski & M. Waters (eds), The Death of Class (1996).

Sheila Rowbotham and Huw Beynon, ‘Handing on Histories’, Sheila Rowbotham and Huw Benyon (eds), Looking at Class: Film, Television and the Working Class in Britain (London, 2001): 2-24.

Mike Savage, Class Analysis and Social Transformation (2000).

Mike Savage, ‘Space, Networks and Class Formation’, in Neville Kirk (ed.), Social Class and Marxism: Defences and Challenges (1996), Chapter 3.

Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self and Culture (London, 2004).

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Power (Claudia Stein)

Term 1, Weeks 9 and 10

Required Reading: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. An Introduction (engl.

1978 [1976]).

Michel Foucault has been hugely influential in shaping an understanding of power that was no

longer centred on actors or underlying structures toward the idea that ‘power is everywhere’,

diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and ‘regimes of truth’. The lecture and seminar

investigates his understanding of power in one of his major later works. In The History of

Sexuality, vol. 1, Foucault not only clarifies his understanding of the ‘power/knowledge’ nexus

but also presents his ideas of ‘biopower’, a concept that has gained considerable influence in

many disciplines of the humanities over the very recent past.

Questions:

1. According to Foucault, what is 'modern' about 'modern’ power?

2. What does Foucault understand by the ‘repressive hypothesis’ and how does it relate to practices of power?

3. According to Foucault, what is the relationship between knowledge and power?

4. How can sex be a form of power?

5. According to Foucault, what makes 'truth' true?

6. One of Foucault's main claims about power is that it is 'productive'. What does this mean?

7. What does Foucault understand by ‘biopower’ and how does it differ from ‘sovereign power’?

Additional Reading:

Michel Foucault, ‘The Birth of Social Medicine’, in Michel Foucault, Power, ed. J.D. Faubion, (2000), 134-156.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977).

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–78 (2007).

Michel Foucault,‘The Right of Death and Power over Life’, in Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (1984), pp. 258-272.

Michel Foucault, ‘The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth-Century, in Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (1984), pp. 273-290.

Michel Foucault, ‘Truth and Power’, in Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (1984), pp. 51-75.

Michel Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, in Afterword to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. H.L. Dreyfuand, Paul Rabinow (1982) [Also available on JSTOR: Critical Inquiry, Summer 1982, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1343197].

Davidson, Arnold L., Foucault and His Interlocutors (1997), pp. 107-182.

Gutting, Gary, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005) [A very, very good and affordable introduction!]

Rabinow, Paul and Rose Nicklas, ‘Thought on the Concept of Biopower’ [see http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/pdf/rabinowandrose-biopowertoday03.pdf].

Rabinow, Paul, and Rose, Niklas, ‘Biopower Today’, BioSocieties 1 (2006): 195–217.

Please also consult the Handbook of the Historiography Module for further secondary readings on Foucault.

The Body (Howard Chiang)

Term 2, Week 1 and 2

Core reading: Larissa N. Heinrich, The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body

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between China and the West (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

Seminar / Essay Questions:

1. In what ways do bodies matter in history? Identify two to three historiographical

trends, inter-related or not, that have characterized the study of the body.

2. Has the historical study of the body dissolved into pure analyses of language?

3. What is the relationship between the body and material culture?

4. Is the body always already political?

Further reading for the seminar:

Scott, Joan W. ‘The Evidence of Experience’, Critical Inquiry 17.4 (1991): 773-797.

Meyerowitz, Joanne, ‘Sex Change and the Popular Press: Historical Notes on Transsexuality in the

United States, 1930-1955,’ GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4.2 (1998): 159- 187.

Porter, Roy, ‘History of the Body Reconsidered’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed.

Peter Burke (Cambridge, 2001): 233-260.

Winichakul, Thongchai, ‘Maps and the Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam’, in Asian Forms of the

Nation, ed. Stein Tonnesson and Hans Antlov (London: Curzon Press, 1996), 67-91.

Background readings (for essays):

Bynum, Caroline. ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,’ Critical

Inquiry 22.2 (1995): 1-33.

Csordas, Thomas J.,’Introduction: The Body as Representation and Being-in-the World,’ in T.

Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience (Cambridge, 1994).

Duden, Barbara, The Woman Beneath the Skin: A Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany

(1991), chapter 1: ‘Towards a History of the Body’.

Feher, Michel, (ed.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body, vols 1-3 (New York, 1989)

Featherstone, Mike, Hepworth, Mike and Turner, Bryan S. (eds.), The Body: Social Process and

Cultural Theory (London, 1991).

Foucault, Michel, read selections from The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow: ‘The Body of the

Condemned,’ ‘Docile Bodies,’ ‘We ‘Other Victorians,’ ‘The Repressive Hypothesis’, ‘The Politics

of Health in the Eighteenth Century’ (London, 1984).

Frank, Arthur W., ‘Bringing Bodies Back in: A Decade Review,’ Theory, Culture, Society 7 (1990)

Hancock, Philip et al. (eds.), The Body, Culture and Society (Buckingham, 2000).

Hillman, David, Mazzio, Carla (eds.), The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern

Europe (New York, 1997).

Jenner, Mark. ‘Body, History, Text in Early Modern Europe,’ Social History of Medicine 12 (1999):

143-54.

Ibid. and Taithe, Bertrand, ‘The Historiographical Body,’ in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (eds.),

Medicine in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam, 2000).

Latour, Bruno. ‘How to Talk about the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies’, Body

and Society (2004): 205-29.

Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard, 1990).

Lowe, David M., The Body in Late-Capitalist USA (Durham, 1995).

Lock, Margaret. ‘“Cultivating the Body”: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and

Knowledge’, Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993): 133-55.

Outram, Dorinda. ‘Body and Paradox’, Isis 84 (1993): 347-52.

Park, Katharine, Nye, Robert A., Destiny is Anatomy, Review of Laqueurs Making Sex: Body and

Gender from the Greeks to Freud. The New Republic, 18, (1991): 53-57.

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Porter, Roy. ‘History of the Body’, in Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing

(1992), pp. 206-32.

Price, Janet and Schildrick, Margrit (eds.), Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader (Edinburgh,

1999).

Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, 1985).

Simon Schaffer, ‘Self Evidence’, Critical Inquiry 18, no. 2 (1992): 327-362.

Shilling, Chris, The Body and Social Theory (London, 1993).

Starobinsky, Jean, ‘The Natural and Literary History of Bodily Sensation,’ in Michel Feher (ed.),

Fragments for a History of the Human Body, vol. 2 (New York, 1989).

Sawday, Jonathan, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture

(London, 1995)

Vila, Anne. ‘The Making of the Modern Body’ [essay review], Modern Language Notes 104 (4)

(1989): 927-36.

Race (Rebecca Earle)

Term 1, Weeks 3 and 4

Core reading: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981).

Questions:

1. How do early modern and modern understandings of race differ, and how are they similar?

2. How do the techniques used to interpret human difference reflect the societies and

periods from which they have emerged?

3. How has the historiography of race changed in the last three decades and why?

Additional Reading:

Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, ‘Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-

Saharan Africans’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 54:1 (1997), pp. 19- 44.

Ania Loomba and Jonathan Burton (eds), Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion

(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Making Empire Respectable: Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth-Century

Colonial Cultures’, American Ethnologist 16 (1989), pp. 26-51.

Brad Hume, ‘Quantifying Characters: Polygenist Anthropologists and the Hardening of Heredity’,

Journal of the History of Biology 41:1 (2008), pp. 119-158.

D. Ruggles, ‘Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty: Race, Genealogy, and Acculturation in al-Andalus’,

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34:1 (2004) pp. 65–94.

David Brion Davis, ‘Constructing Race: A Reflection’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series,

54:1 (1997), pp. 7-18.

Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (London:

Routledge, 1989).

Eugene M. Avrutin, ‘Racial Categories and the Politics of (Jewish) Difference in Late Imperial

Russia’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8:1 (2007), pp. 13-40.

Jennifer L. Morgan, “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and

the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1770’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series,

54:1 (1997), pp. 167-192.

Nancy Ordover, American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism

(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Robert Bartlett, ‘Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity’, Journal of Medieval and

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Early Modern Studies 31:1 (2001), pp. 39–56.

Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1988).

Thomas Hahn, ‘The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern World’,

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31:1 (2001), pp. 1-37.

Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

Religion (Gabriel Glickman)

Term 2, Weeks 5 and 7

Core reading: Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the

Civil Constitution 1560-1791 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).

The problem of how to place religion within the historical discipline has generated reliably

vigorous disputes. The reputation of leading Enlightenment historians was tinged by controversy

over this question; some of the liveliest debates in contemporary secondary scholarship have

formed over the role allocated to religion as a force in society, politics, culture and the

imagination. This lecture will look at the way in which attitudes towards religion have shifted

through two centuries of historical writing, and consider how we can most credibly come up with

a rubric to debate the changing role of doctrine, belief and confessional institutions in human

society after 1500.

Seminar/essay questions:

1. Is it still meaningful to refer to the ‘disenchantment of the world’ in Early Modern Europe?

2. Why is it so difficult to separate the ‘religious’ from ‘the secular’ in the study of history?

3. Why has the study of religion proved so problematic for historians?

Additional reading:

Derek Beales, ‘Religion and culture’ in T.C.W. Blanning, ed., The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2000).

Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth-Century (Cambridge, 1975), chs. 3, 8-9.

P. Collinson, ‘Religion, Society and the Historian’, Journal of Religious History 23 (1999).

R.W. Scribner, ‘Reformation and Desacralisation: from Sacramental World to Moralised Universe’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia & R. Scribner (eds), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden, 1997)

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), chs. 1-2

A. Walsham, ‘The Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World Reassessed’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008).

Blair Worden, The Question of Secularisation', in A. Houston and S. Pincus, eds., A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration (Cambridge, 2001).

B.W. Young, 'Religious history and the eighteenth-century historian', Historical Journal. 43 (2000).

Materiality (Giorgio Riello)

Term 2, Weeks 8 and 9

Core Reading: Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (London, 1997).

Daniel Miller is a well-known anthropologist of material culture and consumption. He belongs to

the UCL ‘school of material culture anthropology’ and follows the steps of Mary Douglas, author of

the important The World of Goods (1979 - with Baron Isherwood). The discipline of anthropology,

with its focus on the everyday, has influenced the ways in which historians approach material

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culture and objects in their studies. This week we will consider Miller’s best known book Material

Culture and Mass Consumption in which he provides a template for the study of material culture,

artefacts and consumption.

Seminar/ Essay Questions:

1. What is the relationship between material culture and consumption?

2. How has the meaning of materiality been interpreted by Hegel, Marx etc. and what does

objectification mean?

3. Has the relationship between objects and people changed over time?

4. In what ways does material culture help historians? And what are its limitations?

Further Readings

Adamson, Glenn, Thinking Through Craft (Oxford: Berg, 2007): 69-78

Berg, Maxine, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth

Century’, Past and Present, 182 (2004): 85-142.

Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence (London, 2001), pp. 9-19.

Clunas, Craig, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China

(Cambridge, 1991).

Dannehl, Karin, ‘Object biographies: From production to consumption’, in Karen Harvey (ed.),

History and Material Culture: a student’s guide to approaching alternative sources (Abingdon:

Routeldge, 2009), pp. 123-138

Dikotter, Frank, Exotic commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China (New York, 2007).

Grassby, ‘Material Culture and Cultural History’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35/4 (2005), pp.

591-603.

Hamling, Tara and Richardson, Catherine, ‘Introduction’, in Tara Hamling and Catherine

Richardson (eds.), Everyday Objects (Aldershot, 2010), pp. 1-13 Harvey, Karen, ‘Introduction:

History and Material Culture’, in Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture (London,

2009), pp. 24-47.

Auslander, Leora, ‘Beyond Words’, American Historical Review, 110/4 (2006), pp. 1015-1044.

Hurcombe, Linda M, ‘Materiality’ , in Archaeological Artefacts as Material Culture (Abingdon,

2007), pp. 109-118

Johnson, Matthew H., Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English Landscape (London,

1993): vi-xi Prown, Jules David, ‘Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory

and Method’, Winterthur Portfolio 17 (Spring 1982): 1-19

Prown, Jules David, Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (New Haven and London,

2001).

Riello, Giorgio, ‘Things that Shape History: material culture and historical narrative, in Karen

Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: a student’s guide to approaching alternative sources

(Abingdon, 2009), pp. 24-46.

Styles, John, ‘Product Innovation in Early Modern London’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), pp. 124-

169.

Styles, John and Vickery, Amanda, ‘Introduction’, in John Styles and Amanda Vickery (eds.), Gender,

Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830 (Studies in British Art 17) (New

Haven, 2006), pp. 1-34 (pp. 1-2, 14-22) Tarlow, Sarah, ‘Emotion in Archaeology’, Current

Anthropology, 41:5 (2000), pp. 713-730

Turkle, Sherry, ‘Introduction: the things that matter’, in Sherry Turkle (ed), Evocative Objects: Things We Think with (Cambridge, 2007, pp. 3-12 (pp. 3-8).