Postgraduate Course: Professional Skills for Historians (PGHC12002)
Course Outline
School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 12 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 0 |
ECTS Credits | 0 |
Summary | This course introduces PhD students to the skills needed to conduct and disseminate historical research at the professional level. The course will introduce students to the historical profession and prepare them - in practical as well as intellectual ways - to work on their own dissertation projects. By the end of the semester, students should have a good idea of what professional historians do, and should be prepared to start doing it themselves. |
Course description |
Designed for first-year PhD students, the course introduces and develops the key professional skills necessary for writing history and being a historian. Topics may include the art of literary presentation, the practicalities of getting published, other forms of dissemination, such as conference presentations and engagement with social media, and the broader context in which professional history is produced, such as debates around ethical concerns, knowledge exchange, and the process of applying for jobs in history.
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | None |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate an ability to understand and apply specialised research or professional skills, techniques and practices considered in the course
- demonstrate originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers; and a considerable degree of autonomy
|
Reading List
Oliver Daddow, 'The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism', Rethinking History, 8:3 (2004), 437-57
Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London: Granta, 2000), esp. introduction and ch.1.
Eric Foner, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003), preface and ch.1
Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)
Eric Hobsbawm, On History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1997)
Richard Howells and Robert Matson, Using Visual Evidence (London: Open University Press, 2009)
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
Kelley, Donald R., Frontiers of History: Historical Inquiry in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)
Iggers, Georg, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1997)
Jordanova, Ludmilla, History in Practice, 2nd edn (London: Hodder Arnold, 2008)
Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: Objectivity and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr David Silkenat
Tel: (0131 6)50 4614
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Martina Benkova
Tel: (0131 6)50 3533
Email: |
|
|