Perceiving the Past

Module code: HS2401

‘History is one damn thing after another’ (Alfred Toynbee attrib.) or is it?  Writing history is, of course, far more complicated than that and in this module on historiography we will explore how history has developed as an academic discipline and why an understanding of historiography, or the different ways in which historians research and represent the past, is essential to writing good history. We will begin the team-taught lecture programme with an introduction to what historiography is, moving on to explore the way in which ‘history’ has emerged as an academic discipline. We will then go on to examine a range of different (though sometimes overlapping) theoretical, methodological and historiographical approaches to the study of the past. These may include: 

• Empiricism
• Marxism
• The annales school
• Economic and social history
• Gender history
• Visual history;
• Materiality and history
• Anthropology and history
• Global history
• Oral history
• Heritage
• 'Public' history

By the end of the module you will have a good grasp of what historiography is. It will also give you key historical skills and lay important intellectual and practical foundations on which to build as you progress into your honours years studying History at the University of Leicester.