Newcastle University > Undergraduate > Find a Degree > Module

• Offered for Year: 2020/21

• Module Leader(s): Dr Scott Ashley
• Lecturer: Dr Willow Berridge, Dr Christina Mobley, Dr James Gerrard, Dr Sophie Moore, Dr Nicola Clarke, Dr Philip Garrett
• Teaching Assistant: Miss Victoria Lucas

• Owning School: History, Classics and Archaeology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Aims

This module seeks to provide a global framework for understanding the Middle Ages, defined broadly from 500CE-1500CE. By privileging networks of circulation of people, goods, and ideas, this module stresses the interconnection of the global past. This module will introduce students to interdisciplinary methodologies that will allow them to recover the past of people and places for whom we have few or no written documents. Drawing on expertise from across the school of HCA, methodologies will include object analysis, textual analysis, climatology and ecology. Instructors will model how to understand the local history of the global through a series of specialist case studies. These illustrate the benefit of the global as an analytical framework by tracing how communities in seemingly disparate parts of the world understood and consumed global ideas and goods. By encouraging them to examine the past from a variety of perspectives, this module invites students to see familiar places in a new light and unfamiliar places as more central than previously understood.

The module aims are
•       To introduce students to the emerging discipline of the Global Middle Ages.
•       To introduce students to interdisciplinary methodologies used to recover the past.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module may include the following large themes, with specific case studies dependent on research lead teaching.

Migration
Ethnogenesis
Religion
Networks of trade and exchange
Networks of knowledge
Empires and complex societies
Dark Ages
Slavery
Gender
Power

Teaching Methods

Please note that module leaders are reviewing the module teaching and assessment methods for Semester 2 modules, in light of the Covid-19 restrictions. There may also be a few further changes to Semester 1 modules. Final information will be available by the end of August 2020 in for Semester 1 modules and the end of October 2020 for Semester 2 modules.

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Our teaching strategy is based on a flipped classroom. Students are expected to come to class having completed the assigned reading in order to fully participate in active learning, lead by in-classroom activities. Seminars are spaces for students to workshop specific case studies, developing the competencies in the multidisciplinary methodologies and analytical skills targeted in the module aims.

Assessment Methods

Please note that module leaders are reviewing the module teaching and assessment methods for Semester 2 modules, in light of the Covid-19 restrictions. There may also be a few further changes to Semester 1 modules. Final information will be available by the end of August 2020 in for Semester 1 modules and the end of October 2020 for Semester 2 modules.

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Informed by pedagogical research, this course adopts an outcome based assessment model. In order to ensure accessibility to socially and neurologically diverse student population, this course uses scaffolded written assignments to build critical writing skills, facility with the material and historical research.

Reading Lists

• HCA1003's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• HCA1003's Timetable