Courses on Offer
Courses on Offer in Sem 1
HIST1016. The modern world (6 credits)
This course offers a broad historical survey which aims at introducing students to the major developments in world history, in a period from the late eighteenth century to the present during which the world became increasingly interdependent. The course will adopt a comparative approach where possible and will be particularly concerned with the theme of globalisation. This course does not aim to be a comprehensive survey of all aspects of the history of the modern world, but its range allows students to acquaint themselves with important developments in the areas of culture, religion, politics, society and the world economy.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST1017. Modern Hong Kong (6 credits)
This course explores the history of Hong Kong since the early 1800s from several angles: British imperial history, Chinese history, world history, and as a place with its own identity. Topics include: the opium wars, law and the administration of justice, gender and colonialism, Hong Kong and Chinese nationalism, the Japanese occupation, the 1967 disturbances, Hong Kong identity, the fight against corruption, the Sino-British negotiations and the retrocession to Chinese sovereignty, and developments since 1997. The goals of the course are to familiarize students with the history of Hong Kong, introduce the ways in which historians have approached this history, explore how Hong Kong’s past has shaped its present, and help students learn to read and write analytically. No previous knowledge of history or Hong Kong is required.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2031. History through film (6 credits)
This course looks at the manner in which film has portrayed events in history, considering the degree to which film can enhance or be detrimental to our understanding of history. Students may expect to gain some appreciation, not just of the films themselves, but of the degree to which any movie is the product of a certain historical period and reflect its values and preoccupations. This course should be particularly enlightening to students who are taking other United States history courses and American Studies majors.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2021. Nineteenth century Russia, 1800-1905 (6 credits)
This course surveys developments within the Russian Empire from the duel between Alexander I and Napoleon through the Revolution of 1905, the dress rehearsal for the Revolution of 1917 which destroyed Tsarism. This course focuses on internal developments, rather than on foreign policy; and thus includes topics such as Slavophilism vs. Westernizers, the tsarist reaction, and then reform under Nicholas I and Alexander II, the revolutionary movement from the Decembrists to the Bolsheviks, industrialisation, the Nationalities Question, and the peasantry before and after Emancipation. This course requires no prior knowledge of European history.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2103. Russian state and society in the 20th century (6 credits)
This course will analyze major themes and events shaping Russian history in the 20th century — decline of the Russian empire, the October revolution, the Civil War, the rise of the Soviet Union and World War II, the Khrushchev era and the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991. The course will explore the role of individuals, institutions and trends behind radical transformation of Russian/Soviet society. Particular attention will be paid to the lives of ordinary people affected by state policies and socialist culture.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2125. Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and the Jews (6 credits)
This course provides an overview of the history and historical interpretation of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, with particular focus on the principal victim of this regime, the Jewish population of Europe. This course examines in detail the development of the Nazi movement from the accession to power in 1933 until its culmination as perhaps the greatest destructive force in modern history with the Second World War. With a focus on political and ideological aspects as well as cultural and transnational issues, this course will also integrate the debates among historians when confronting this subject matter. This comprehensive overview of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and the Jews will examine how a dictatorship arose out of a democracy; the role and importance of propaganda and new media; the establishment of a racial state and the persecution of minorities; the responses to persecution and various forms of resistance; global reception and responses to the Nazi state; film, music, art and the cultural politics of German fascism; the causes of and evolution to the Second World War and the Holocaust; and the principal interpretations of and continuing debates regarding the Holocaust and responses by the wider world. Non-permissible combination: HIST2134.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2150. Global capitalism: The last 100 years (6 credits)
This course will survey the fall and rise of global capitalism, from the first wave of globalization at the turn of the century, through its collapse in the interwar period, and its second globalizing wave after World War II. Any survey of capitalism is necessarily global, as all countries in one way or another were confronted with its powerful political and economic impulses, even those, like the Soviet Union, that were for a long time presumed to have laid outside of capitalism’s ebbs and flows. These changes in capitalism included the Great Depression, the construction of the postwar financial and commercial regime known as Bretton Woods, the Cold War, decolonization, the financialization of the world economy that began in the 1970s, the Asian crisis of the 1990s and the recent global crisis, all of which will be covered in the course. We will explore the intersection between politics and economics, providing a lens for understanding these crucial structural changes in the international history of the 20th century and in the nature of capitalism. No prior knowledge of economics is required; the course aims instead to explain basic concepts so that students may read and understand with confidence any current events of contemporary international political economy, a crucial domain for understanding the world we live in.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2179. Law, empire and world history: From pirates to human rights? (6 credits)
The introduction of the ‘rule of law’ provided perhaps the most widely referenced justification for the forcible imposition of imperial power around the globe in early modern and modern history. However, discourse around British justice cannot be simply understood as an alibi propagated to consolidate imperial legitimacy. Legal structures provided a ruling frame to organize, discipline and police newly conquered societies, leaving lasting legacies in postcolonial nation-states, the British post-imperial state, and in international law. Taking case studies from Ireland, India, Malaya, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Australia, South Africa, Kenya and Aden, the course will examine the rise of imperial, and later international legal orders, through various formative moments in the legal history of the British Empire. In dividing the world into rulers and ruled, it is in the legal history of empire where we can begin to consider the origins of concepts and questions that still dominate political discussions in the contemporary world. These include human rights, humanitarianism, racism, violence, and sovereignty.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2202. Christianity in Asia (6 credits)
In 1910, 18% of the world’s Christians were in the Global South. One century later, this number has exploded to 61%, with one fifth in Asia and the Pacific. How and why did this astronomical increase take place? This course surveys the history of Christianity in Asia from the early modern period to the present, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries while covering China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and others. Over a broad chronology, this course highlights how Asian Christianities were shaped and reshaped within specific regional contexts and in parallel with changes in Christianity worldwide. Students will explore the interactions between missionaries and indigenous Christians, the various expressions of Christianity, and context-specific constraints such as imperialism, nationalism, and broader interreligious settings. Using both primary and secondary sources, this course illustrates the shape of Asian Christianity from past to present, the thorny nature of religious encounter, and its surprising outcomes in World History.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2209. Nineteenth-Century colonial Hong Kong (6 credits)
Hong Kong in the mid- and late nineteenth century as a small but dynamic colony witnessed modernising impulses, urbanisation, racial tension, and cultural exchanges that were unique but also relevant to other British colonies and Chinese cities. Beyond the simplified narrative of a ‘barren rock’ transformed into a vibrant port city, this course explores the complex co-existence of different communities, the challenges in governing a diverse transient population, the preoccupation with health and diseases, and the constant transnational interactions during the first six decades of British colonial rule in Hong Kong. By focusing on primary source materials in tutorials and assignments, this course provides an opportunity for students to familiarise themselves with sets of source materials useful for Hong Kong history, laying foundations for them to develop research projects on Hong Kong history in the future.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST3080. Historical Gaming (6 credits)
History takes many forms in the world around us. It is an academic discipline practiced professionally in universities. It is taught out of textbooks in schools. And it often takes the form of commercial entertainment, such as heritage sites, museums, movies and magazines. In the past few decades, computer games have emerged as another popular source of representations of the past as entertainment. But while such games regularly feature the past as a setting, historians have rarely taken them seriously or considered them as a potential medium for the delivery of historical research. However, some historians, especially those concerned that professional history with its emphasis upon detailed evidence, critical argument and open debate should be more accessible, have begun to explore the benefits of using this medium to push beyond the limitations of written history. They have asked new questions. Can computer games help historians to reach new audiences? Could this medium allow the immersive effects of film and the complexity of written scholarship to be combined? This course focuses upon history as practice and methodology. It challenges students both to reflect upon the disciplinary conventions of academic history and to innovate by applying these to the medium of gaming. In the course, students design a historical game based upon academic research, combining truthfulness with playability, and enhancing access to the past as a source of open-ended discovery and critical debate.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2070. Stories of self: History through autobiography (6 credits)
Who has felt authorised to narrate their life history and what has compelled them to tell explanatory stories that make sense of their lives? How accurate is it to call autobiography the history of the self? Do we encounter other histories or selves in autobiography? What is the history of autobiography and how do we read it? Historians reading autobiography for documentary evidence of the past and endeavouring to write about it objectively will find that their task is complicated by the autobiographer’s subjective and often highly creative engagement with memory, experience, identity, embodiment, and agency. This course is intended for students who wish to explore the interdisciplinary links between autobiography, history, literature, and personal narrative, and to acquire strategic theories and cultural understanding for reading these texts.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST3029. Transnational history: A new perspective on the past (6 credits)
How can we move beyond ethnocentric approaches to history focusing upon the nation? What is the significance of the movement of individuals and institutions through networks spanning places, spaces, regions and political units to processes of historical transformation? Recently, calls have been heard for historians to respond to critiques of the national and comparative paradigm by adopting what has been referred to as a “transnational” or “entangled” perspective on the past. This involves the study of the flow of ideas, people and commercial goods across the networks and institutions that linked and overlay particular political units, rather than the units themselves. This course allows students to become familiar with this new perspective. Through small group discussion it provides an opportunity to discuss the problems and possibilities of transnational history and to critically evaluate recent works advancing attempts to move “beyond the nation” from fields as diverse as the history of empire, migration, politics, and youth.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST3075. Directed reading (6 credits)
The aim of this intensive reading course is to provide an opportunity for students to pursue a specialized topic of study with a faculty member. Throughout the semester, the student and teacher will consult regularly on the direction of the readings and on the paper or papers (not to exceed 5,000 words) that will demonstrate the student’s understanding of the material. This course cannot normally be taken before the fifth semester of candidature and is subject to approval. Students wishing to take this course should consult with a teacher who is willing to supervise the reading project before enrolling. Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST3076. Tourism and History (6 credits)
Tourism has been described as the largest peaceful movement of people. It also plays an important economic function in many societies. But tourism is never simply about travel and economics. It both reflects and influences identity, culture, society, urban planning, politics, and history. National or local identity, for example, is often forged though images produced or reproduced for tourists, while tourism often represents how a place views itself, how it is viewed by others, and how it wants to be viewed. This course considers these issues by examining a range of works on tourism worldwide and asking how they apply to tourism in Hong Kong since the mid-1900s. The course examines both the outward-facing aspects (a place presenting itself to the world) of tourism and the inward-looking aspects (convincing the local public that it should open that place to tourists).
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST4024. Writing Hong Kong History (6 credits)
This course looks at various themes, problems, and issues in Hong Kong’s history since the 1800s. Rather than focusing on historical events, we will look at the ways in which certain themes have been studied. Thus we will be less concerned with dates and facts than with analysis and interpretation. Topics include: general approaches to Hong Kong history, the Opium War and the British occupation of Hong Kong, colonial education, regulation of prostitution and the mui tsai system, colonial medicine, colonialism and nationalism, WWII and the Japanese occupation, industrialization and economic development, history and identity, legacies and artifices of colonial rule, and history and memory. The goals of the course are to introduce students to the ways in which scholars have approached Hong Kong history, assess how theories based on other historical experiences can be used to understand Hong Kong history, and help students learn to argue effectively in written and oral presentations.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST4017. Dissertation elective (capstone experience) (12 credits)
This is a research course which requires submission of an extended written dissertation. All students taking the Dissertation elective are required to take HIST4015. The theory and practice of history (capstone experience).
Co-requisite/Prerequisite: HIST4015.
Note: For History majors only; a whole-year course. Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST4023. History research project (capstone experience) (6 credits)
Students who wish to undertake a research project on a specialized historical topic in either semester of their final year of study may enroll in this course with the approval of the Head of the School of Humanities on the recommendation of the departmental Undergraduate Coordinator. The course aims at providing an opportunity for intensive research leading to the production of a long essay (not exceeding 7,000 words) which will be supervised by a faculty member with expertise in the chosen area of study.
Note: For History majors and minors only.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST4028. History without borders: Special field project (capstone experience) (6 credits)
Enrolment in this special course is extended to students majoring in History by invitation, and on a performance-related basis. For those students invited to apply for enrolment this exclusive capstone course will provide an opportunity to design their own field project in a subject related to the History discipline. It will also provide funding to support field work undertaken across geographical, political and cultural borders, in Hong Kong and/or overseas. The course thus provides History majors with a unique, funded opportunity to design, plan and make their own creative contribution to historical knowledge. Students invited to submit a project proposal must do so by the specified deadline. The department panel will then notify applicants of approval or non-approval within the period specified. Those students eligible to enroll in the course who are interested in taking up the Department’s invitation and whose project proposals are successful will be provided with financial support to be used for the purpose agreed. A range of innovative activities may be designed by students, including, for example, travel overseas to conduct field research, the editing and publication of a special online journal, attendance or organisation of a conference, workshop, or specialist history summer course. Each student will be supervised by a staff member working in a related field.
Note: For History majors only, and by invitation. Assessment: 100% coursework.
Courses on Offer in Sem 2
HIST1021. Introduction to Modern Legal History (6 credits)
In recent years legal history has emerged as a thriving field, drawing on ideas from across disciplines to better understand the relationship between legal institutions and practices and historical change over time. Exploring the ways in which the development of law shaped societies across the world in the early-modern and modern period, this course will offer students a broad introduction into this history. We will examine a wide range of questions that touch on law’s relationship to topics of fundamental historical importance, including political movements, gender and race relations, economic change, colonialism and imperialism, and religion and tradition. Taking a global and comparative approach to these themes the course will take case-studies from across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. No previous knowledge of legal history is required.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2013. Twentieth-century Europe, Part I: The European Civil War, 1914-1945 (6 credits)
This period can be seen as a Thirty Years’ War fought over the problem of Germany, beginning with the First World War, 1914-18, and climaxing with the total defeat of Germany at the end of the Second World War, 1939-45. Tensions between the Great Powers were exacerbated by new ideologies such as Fascism, Nazism and Communism, which appeared in Europe as part of a general crisis in Western Civilisation after the First World War. An attempt will be made to evaluate the debate between different schools of historians on what Fascism, Nazism and Communism signified. Finally, one of the main aims of the course is to describe, and explain, the mass murders involving the deaths of millions carried out by a new breed of leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2014. Twentieth-century Europe, Part II: Europe divided and undivided, 1945-1991 (6 credits)
After the Second World War, Europe was divided into two camps, with Germany itself split into Western and Communist portions. The survey of the Western camp will focus on British, French and West German politics, social change, student revolts, and the growth of the consumer society and mass culture. In studying the ‘Other Europe’, the course will concentrate on the way Communism evolved and changed in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European empires, concluding with the dramatic popular revolutions that so suddenly toppled the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the even more momentous collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union in 1991. As the pace of change in the whole of Europe increased so dramatically in 1989, the course ends with a series of questions. What are the prospects for European unity, economically and politically? What role will the new unified Germany have in Europe? What are the prospects for Russia and the other republics that have emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Empire?
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2091. The British Empire (6 credits)
This course examines the history of the British Empire from the late eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. The British Empire once spanned so much of the globe that it is impossible to understand the history of the modern world (including Hong Kong) without considering the role of British colonialism and imperialism. Topics include: the cultural and material foundations and the economic, political, and social consequences of empire; the relationship between metropole and periphery; collaboration and resistance; the dynamics of race, gender, and class; the relationship between empire and art; new national and local identities; decolonization, and independence; and the legacies of empire. The goals of the course are to familiarize students with the history of the British Empire; introduce them to the ways in which historians have approached this history; and help them learn to read and write analytically.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2107. The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1931-1952 (6 credits)
Few events in the modern history of Asia and the Pacific have been as important or as transformative as the Second World War. This course explores the far-reaching effects that this conflict had on the state, society, and individuals in, and between Japan, China, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the British and French Empires. Importantly, this course will examine how this conflict helped change war—conceptually and in real terms—from a narrowly defined engagement between military forces to one that encompassed a ‘total experience’ involving the mobilization of virtually all segments of society. In this course we will also trace the interconnectedness between the transformation of war and the development of new technology, changed concepts of morality, ‘just war,’ and altered perceptions concerning the relationship between the state and society, the soldier and the civilian. Finally, this course will help students understand more fully how and why this war, and the numerous acts of barbarism that defined it, still influence relations today on personal, national, and international levels in Asia and the Pacific.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2136. The Graeco-Roman world: From Homer to Augustus (6 credits)
This course covers the history of the Graeco-Roman world during the first millennium BCE: from the Greek Early Iron Age to the rise of the Roman Empire. The main topics include material culture, the Greek city-states, the Persian Wars, Greek politics and theatre, Athenian imperialism, ancient daily life, mythology and religion, Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and the Roman Republic and Empire (about 70/30% Greece/Rome). While the focus is on Greece and Rome, attention will also be paid to their interaction with neighbouring cultures such as Persia and Anatolia, as well as to the reception of the Classical world up until today. We will reads selections from many well-known ancient texts in English translation.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2188. The making of modern South Asia (6 credits)
This course will explore the history of the Indian subcontinent from the 18th century to the present day. We will begin by examining the twilight of the Mughal empire on the one hand, and the gradual expansion of European power across the region on the other. After looking at the ways in which the Portuguese and the Dutch established themselves around the Indian Ocean littoral at a time when territorial control was firmly in the hands of local rulers, we will then examine how large parts of this region were incorporated into the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the process we will examine the pivotal political, economic and social transformations witnessed under colonial rule and examine its legacies. Using a focus on South Asia to probe and better comprehend the development and dissolution of colonialism, we will simultaneously probe forms of colonial control to identify the forces that have most profoundly shaped the region today.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2208. The Silk Roads (6 credits)
The Silk Roads were a network that connected peoples and regions across the Afro-Eurasian landmass. The circulation of people, information, and cultural and material wares through this network impacted the history of all societies involved, shaping political interactions and bringing new technologies, art forms, and ideas. This course will examine how the Silk Roads linked and transformed regions and societies through trade, diplomacy, religion, and conquest. We will explore how societies interacted across vast distances; the emergence and interaction of the religious traditions of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, and Christianity; the journeys of people, objects, and ideas; and the roles of nomadic conquest and imperialist competition. By analyzing sources of various kinds, from historical texts to archaeological artifacts, frescos, and maps, students will gain insight into the connected history of Afro-Eurasia and appreciate the lasting impact of the Silk Roads in today’s cultural landscape.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2053. The Cold War (6 credits)
There is not a week that passes in which we do not learn from some opinion piece or another that the world is heading for another Cold War, or perhaps the world is in one already, and has been for many years, or that it might be we can avoid it. This makes the “Cold War” something more than some historical period. It has become a paradigm for understanding some kind of political reality, both old and new. What is this Cold War? This course will focus on the history that has come to define the Cold War, and which is analogized in so many opinions in many, often contradictory ways. But it will also focus on the historiography of the Cold War, that is, on the ways historians and other scholars have defined the Cold War over the decades, and how that definition and its historical meaning has changed over time. What the Cold War was remains unclear and contested. This course aims to explore why that is and what that means for our future.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2118. Chinese and Americans: A cultural and international history (6 credits)
China and the United States are two very important nations in the world today. Their interactions and relations have had deep impact on both Chinese and American lives and the rest of the world. This course will explore Sino-American relations in the last several hundred years with special focus on their shared values and experiences and emphasize both diplomatic and people-people relations from cultural and international history perspectives.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2186. Death and destruction from above: A history of aerial bombing, from zeppelins to drones (6 credits)
Since World War I, millions of soldiers, civilians, and suspected terrorists have died as a result of aerial bombing. Conventional and atomic bombings, moreover, have resulted in the destruction of countless military targets and the incineration of vast square kilometres of urban landscapes. What factors have made this possible, accepted, and “legal”? Throughout this course, students will explore the technological and military developments that have made such killing and wanton destruction possible. Moreover, students will examine the ideological, political, and doctrinal thought from Douhet to Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that has not only attempted to legitimate, but advocate, the targeting of civilians from above. Students will also be asked to investigate why legal proscriptions or conventions against aerial bombing never materialized in the pre-World War II era and examine why many nations have still refused to adhere to any restrictions on aerial warfare. Upon completion of this course, students will have a better understanding of how airpower, whether in the form of bombers, ICBMs, or unpiloted drones, has revolutionized warfare and changed the way strategists have conceptualized targets. Students will also gain a better understanding of how the indiscriminate yet effective employment of air power has often obliterated any distinction between combatants and civilians in today’s world.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2212. Performing history in the 20th and 21st centuries (6 credits)
This course applies perspectives from Performance Studies to the study of history. Whether we are looking at historical actors or those who interpret their actions for future generations, performance offers a creative and critical lens through which to engage with the past. Throughout the term we will explore how individuals who live in different times and places can be likened to performers on a stage. Concurrently, we will interrogate how historians can also be likened to performers as they gather evidence and narrate the past. Performance Studies provides a critical lens to explore answers to questions such as: Whose voices are heard and archived? How do ideas of performance illuminate the intersections of history with identities and institutions? What are the racialized, gendered, and cultural performances that shape historical memory, structures, and societies? We will rethink what it means to perform, explore why performative processes matter, question how historical memory connects with performances of power, challenge binary framings, and complicate dominant narratives. With a performance based approach, students will explore a broad range of performances including but not limited to films, social media, dance and theater, visual art, political events, protest, and everyday happenings.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST2213. Witchcraft, magic, and the devil in early modern Europe and America (6 credits)
In 1692, hundreds of people, including men, women, and children, were accused of witchcraft. Twenty were executed. What led the members of a small community in Salem, Massachusetts, to persecute and even kill each other? Historians have sought to answer this question for decades. They have approached Salem from a variety of angles, using economic, social, legal, anthropological, and gender studies frameworks to explain the occurrences of 1692. During the semester, we will explore some of these methods. While the events that took place in Salem remain the most sensational and well-known, they were not isolated incidents. Thus, we will connect the Salem Witcraft Trials to the massive witch hunts that took place in Europe between 1400 and 1700. During this time, widespread fears about witchcraft led to the persecution and execution of tens of thousands of people. Fascinating and chilling, witchcraft raises productive and provocative questions about human society and belief, about fear and responses to fear, about the cultural norms that permit and even encourage the deadly persecution of individuals, and the patterns of gendered expectations that put one gender (usually female) at heightened risk for witchcraft accusations.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST3083. Intellectual history of early modern East Asia (6 credits)
This seminar explores the dynamic relationship between ideas and social change in early modern East Asia. Students will engage deeply with a selection of primary sources from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Ryūkyū Kingdom, understanding their themes, conceptual frameworks, and rhetorical strategies. Students will also learn to craft their own method for situating these texts within historical contexts, drawing insights from Western and East Asian traditions in the history of ideas, history of mentalities, and cultural history. Topics to be discussed include nativism, nature and society, and learning. Selections are drawn from the works of Han Yu, Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, Yi Kyubo, Sŏng Hyŏn, Yi T’oegye, Yi Yulgok, Kumazawa Banzan, Ogyū Sorai, Itō Jinsai, Lê Quý Đôn, Lý Văn Phức, Sai On, and others. All readings will be provided in English translation.
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST4015. The theory and practice of history (capstone experience) (6 credits)
This course aims to acquaint students with some of the theoretical and practical considerations which underlie the study and writing of history by considering the development of the discipline of history from its beginnings in the ancient world through to the postmodernist critique. The course is especially recommended to those who wish to pursue history at the postgraduate level. All students taking HIST4017. Dissertation elective (capstone experience) are required to take The theory and practice of history (capstone experience).
Assessment: 100% coursework.
HIST4035. History applied: Internship in historical studies (capstone experience) (6 credits)
This capstone course allows students to apply historical thinking in the community. Under the supervision of the course coordinator students select from among a wide variety of partner institutions, organizations, associations, businesses and others, and embark upon the collaborative challenge of uncovering their past. Instead of simply requiring students to work for specified hours at ‘historical sites’ (museums, archives, etc) the course requires them to use the research techniques and methodological approaches they have learned in the discipline to construct and present a history of their selected community partners. They build preparatory research into polished consultancy papers detailing key findings about the partner, their development over time, and the passions and preoccupations of the individuals who have played an especially prominent role in their development. The course provides History students’ with a unique opportunity to design, plan and present creative contributions to historical knowledge and to engage with community members in discussions about the value and potential uses of history in the present. During the internship, students prepare and present their research-based consultancy paper. They also write a journal critically detailing their own initial expectations and reflecting upon the actual experience of conducting research, communicating their findings and putting history to use.
Assessment: 100% coursework.