Making Histories

Module Code: HIS-00001-C

Convenor: Lucy Sackville

Term taught: Autumn

Pre-requisite for Elective: not available as an elective

Credits: 20

This module is designed to introduce students to the skills required for studying history at degree level and the methods and approaches that inform historical practice. The module will help students to develop core skills such as: bibliographical research; note-taking; critical reading and source analysis; essay writing; surveying historical debates (that is, presenting historiographies); and oral, as well as written, presentation skills. Students will have the opportunity to apply these techniques and to develop their independent research skills by researching, presenting and writing-up a York-related historical case study which they will select from a series of suggested topics. The themes and locations of the different topics will be further explored during a guided walking tour in week four. The case studies will introduce students to the variety of sources used by historians – material, visual and textual – and encourage them to make connections between the specific case studies and broader historical questions, perspectives and themes.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, students should have:

  • an understanding of some of the principal methods and approaches used by historians
  • applied core degree-level study skills, including: note taking; bibliographical search techniques; source analysis; essay writing; giving presentations; undertaking independent research

Teaching Programme

The module will be taught through nine two-hour seminars in Weeks 2-10 of the Autumn Term. In addition the students will attend two one-hour workshops run by the library in Weeks 2 and 3. These workshops will take place in a computer room. The students will also attend three one-hour lectures in Weeks 4, 5 and 6, and a guided walking tour in week 4.

  1. Briefing
  2. Studying history: two-hour seminar and one-hour library workshop
  3. Reading critically: two-hour seminar and one-hour library workshop
  4. Working with primary sources: two-hour seminar and one-hour lecture; walking tour
  5. Debating history: two-hour seminar and one-hour lecture
  6. Historical perspectives and approaches: two-hour seminar and one-hour lecture
  7. Presentations: two-hour seminar and one-hour Turnitin workshop
  8. Writing history: two-hour seminar
  9. Writing history: two-hour seminar
  10. Summary and reflection

Assessment

Formative assessment for this module will be:

  • an anotated bibliography, and
  • a comparison of two articles on the same theme.

Summative assessment for this module will be:

  • an essay to be submitted in week one of the Spring Term

Preliminary Reading

  • Jeremy Black and Donald M. MacRaild, Studying History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.