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Module

HIS1102 : History Lab I

  • Offered for Year: 2020/21
  • Module Leader(s): Dr Felix Schulz
  • Lecturer: Professor Graham Smith, Dr Anton Caruana Galizia, Professor Jeremy Boulton, Dr Darakhshan Khan, Dr Fergus Campbell, Ms Anne Redgate, Dr Matt Perry, Dr Vicky Long
  • 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

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Assessment Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Reading Lists

Timetable