Skip to main content

Module

HIS1102 : History Lab I

  • Offered for Year: 2021/22
  • Module Leader(s): Dr Fergus Campbell
  • Lecturer: Dr Samiksha Sehrawat, Dr Simon Mills, Dr Andy Clark, Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips, Dr Bruce Baker, Dr Martin Farr, Ms Anne Redgate, Dr Ellie Armon Azoulay
  • Owning School: History, Classics and Archaeology
  • Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters
Semester 1 Credit Value: 20
ECTS Credits: 10.0

Aims

History Lab I (and its semester two counterpart, History Lab II) is a historical survey taught through case studies. The goal is to teach – and learn – through meaningful microcosm, rather than attempt a whistle-stop tour of everything.

Across the two modules, each member of staff will give three interconnected lectures on a specific case-study from their field: one lecture about a discrete moment/event/issue and its attendant historiography, a second lecture that features primary sources on the same, and a third lecture that features public or private representations of that event as a basis for methodological issues. The integration of these differing dimensions will showcase how historians think and work by highlighting examples of differing historical interpretations and ongoing negotiations with the past.

A key aim of the module is to support students in developing strategies for independent learning: specifically, how to get up to speed with unfamiliar topics quickly. The formative assessments will be geared towards a) summarizing the argument and methodology outlined in the lectures, and b) contextualising the events or people of the case studies in time and space.

Outline Of Syllabus

Topics covered will vary from year-to-year, but most members of History staff will contribute a block of three lectures every year, giving students chance to explore a wide range of different periods, places, and approaches. They will thus be encouraged to draw parallels and see interconnections cross-culturally and cross-culturally, in order to move away from thinking of history in narrowly national or regional terms, a practice which tends to prioritise western histories and/or the Global North.

Each of the two History Lab modules will concentrate on a particular broad theme, with case studies ordered chronologically throughout the semester. Depending on what case studies are scheduled for inclusion in a given year, the themes may therefore change, in order to maintain a clear and coherent ‘fit’ between topics and overall theme.

Themes may include:

•       conflict
•       cities
•       social change
•       radical ideas
•       memory
•       labour
•       health

Case studies may include:

•       The ‘Martyrs’ of Cordoba, 850-859
•       The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-37
•       The Russian Revolution, 1917
•       The Jarrow Crusade, 1936
•       Civil Rights demonstrations in Birmingham, AL, 1963

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities
Category Activity Number Length Student Hours Comment
Structured Guided LearningLecture materials181:0018:00Asynchronous sessions: 1) Source and Case study; 2) historiography. Recorded lectures. Contact Hours
Guided Independent StudyAssessment preparation and completion621:0062:00Writing position papers for portfolio
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesLecture21:002:00Module introduction and conclusion - two PiP lectures
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesLecture91:009:00Live PiP Q and A Session each week
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesLecture91:009:00The third lecture of each case study on non academic versions of the event will be PiP
Guided Independent StudyDirected research and reading1001:00100:00Directed reading to support lectures
Total200:00
Teaching Rationale And Relationship

LECTURE materials will enable students to gain a wider sense of historical argument and debate and how such debates operate, which also allows them to develop comparisons between different historiographical debates.

Q and A sessions will enable students to ask the lecturers questions about their lectures in a live PiP setting.

Assessment Methods

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

Other Assessment
Description Semester When Set Percentage Comment
Portfolio1A100Students to choose 3 x 1000 word position papers 3000 words in total, incl. footnotes but excluding bibliography
Formative Assessments
Description Semester When Set Comment
Written exercise1MStudents pick and prepare a 1000-word position paper in order to have feedback in order to choose the selection of papers.
Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Submitted work tests intended knowledge and skills outcomes, develops key skills in research, reading and writing.

As formative assessment, students will write a position paper of 1000 words for for every other week, which they will bring to class for discussion and peer review, supervised by the workshop leader. At the end of the semester, students will need to choose 3 out of the papers to submit as their summative assessment, having had the chance to revise them based on workshop discussion.

All Erasmus students at Newcastle University are expected to do the same assessment as students registered for a degree.
Study-abroad, non-Erasmus exchange and Loyola students spending semester 1 only are required to finish their assessment while in Newcastle. This will take the form of an alternative assessment, as outlined in the formats below:

Modules assessed by Coursework only:
All semester 1 non-EU study abroad students will be expected to complete the standard assessment for the module; to be submitted no later than 12pm Friday of week 12. The essays should be set so as to assure coverage of the course content to date.

Study-abroad, non-Erasmus exchange and Loyola students spending the whole academic year or semester 2 are required to complete the standard assessment as set out in the MOF under all circumstances.

Reading Lists

Timetable