Undergraduate Course: The Invention of History (SCAN10010)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Social Anthropology |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | The past is ¿everywhere a battlefield of rival attachments¿ ¿ an arena fraught with contestation and dispute. Picking up this cue this course examines the politics of history, memory, and the past. It begins by examining time, and the way in which notions of time and history have been central both to the development of social anthropology as a discipline and to wider, racialised discourses about others in colonial contexts. Engaging with a growing body of anthropological work, and research done in related disciplines, which has emphasised the collective nature of memory, and the social construction of the past, it looks at how the past is understood, experienced, remembered and represented in different ethnographic contexts in the present. Memory, history, and ¿oral traditions¿ will be examined as different but related means of understanding, representing and politicising the past, alongside other, less discursive means of relating to the past, such as through performance, rituals, objects, bodies and landscape. Engaging with more recent arguments that have emphasised the limits to the ¿invention¿ of history, the course will consider how the study of ¿the past¿ inevitably involves not only notions of time and temporality, but also of landscape, space and place, and artefacts, bodies, practice, things and materiality. The politics of the past is in no way limited to how we understand or represent it; it is also finely related to questions of what to do with its materiality ¿ in the form of archaeological remains, ruins and heritage sites, objects and artefacts, bodies and bones, monuments and memorials. With reference to a variety of empirical examples and broader theoretical trends, lectures will explore the politics of the past through the following topics: Time and denial of co-evalness; nationalism and identity; memory and forgetting; commemoration and memorials; heritage and museums; landscape and place; ruins, ruination and affect; artefacts and bones; and kinship, performance and ritual. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 Anthropology courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2014/15 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Learn enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
|
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
12/01/2015 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
|
| Additional Notes |
|
| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
| tba |
Assessment Information
| Coursework 20% plus long essay of between 3000-3500 words 80% |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Joost Fontein
Tel: 07753306778
Email: |
Course secretary | Mr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: |
|
© Copyright 2014 The University of Edinburgh - 13 February 2014 2:17 pm
|
University Homepage