- Department: History
- Module co-ordinator: Dr. Elizabeth Spencer
- Credit value: 10 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2021-22
- See module specification for other years: 2022-23
This module provides a practical and theoretical introduction to working with historical objects and material culture. It introduces students to the range of ways in which historians have made use of material culture in the course of their research, and the way in which such approaches have influenced historiographies of the medieval, early-modern, and modern periods. In practical workshops based in two York museums, students will learn how to handle historical objects properly, and the deceptively complicated task of describing them accurately. They will also learn how to ‘read’ objects, working out how attributes such as material, finish, or provenance can be interpreted and analysed in order to tell historians about their production, use, and value in the society in which they were created.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Spring Term 2021-22 |
The module aims to:
At the end of this module students will be able to:
Teaching Programme:
Students will attend a 2-hour seminar, two 4-hour workshops and a mini-conference in the spring term.
The provisional programme is as follows:
Week 1: Briefing (1 hour)
Week 2: Context/theory seminar: Objects in History (2 hours)
Week 3: Practical workshop I: Handling Objects. held at York Castle Museum (4 hours)
Week 4: Practical workshop II: Collections, held at the National Railway Museum (4 hours)
Weeks 5-8: Independent project work
Week 8: Project Mini-Conference (3 hours)
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
University - project Project Portfolio |
N/A | 100 |
None
Students will submit a project portfolio in week 10 of the spring term for summative assessment, comprising of a 300-word curatorial description and a 1000-word reflective essay.
The short technical description of their chosen object(s) will focus on one (or more) of its attributes, including but limited to its material, size, colour, maker, provenance, dissemination or location. They may include up to 3 photographs of their object alongside the description. Students will also write a reflective essay which effectively describes the object and explains its historical significance.
Prior to that in week 8, students will make a short presentation to the group at the mini-conference about their chosen project, the research they have undertaken, and their likely direction for the reflective essay.
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
University - project Project Portfolio |
N/A | 100 |
Following their formative assessment task, students will receive constructive verbal feedback from the module convenor and their peers during the mini-conference, which they can then take forward into the completion of their final project portfolio.
For their summative assessment task, students will receive written feedback within four working weeks of the submission deadline, after which the convenor will be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if necessary. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment for Taught Postgraduate Programmes..
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
Hicks, Dan and Mary Carolyn Beaudry (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Harvey, Karen (ed.). History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources. London: Routledge, 2009.
Kwint, Marius, Jeremy Aynsley and Christopher Breward (eds). Material Memories: Design and Evocation. Oxford, 1999.