Postgraduate handbook 2005 - Arts

Master of Public History
(1.5-year program)

Course code: 3077 + Mid-year entry available + 18 months full-time, 3 years part-time + On-campus (Clayton)/Caulfield), multimode (online and face-to-face)
Course coordinator: Seamus O'Hanlon

Course description

This course offers a vocational program for historians and related professionals. Graduates may go on to work in the fields of commissioned history, heritage conservation and management, oral history, community history, museums and related areas. The program has excellent links with the heritage industry and professional historians working in these fields. The public history program draws on teaching strengths across the faculty, and students have a number of opportunities to build professional networks through assessment tasks.

Entry requirements

A bachelors degree with at least a credit average in the final year or demonstrable professional experience at senior level in a relevant area. Such applicants will need to supply a CV, a 1000-word statement and names of two professional referees.

Course structure

Students complete 72 points consisting of 48 points at level 4 and 24 points at level 5 chosen from the list below. Not all electives are available each year.

Compulsory level 4 units

Students must choose two units in consultation with the course coordinator:

• HYM4095 History and heritage (online and face-to-face)
• HYM4510 History and the museum (online and face-to-face)
• HYM4560 The past around us (online)
• HYM4620 Family history and genealogy (online and face-to-face)
• HYM4820 Local and community history (online and face-to-face)

Level 4 electives

• HYM4115 Private and public voices in Renaissance correspondence
• HYM4120 Reading and writing Australian history
• HYM4140 The Raj imagined
• HYM4180 Images of the natural world: issues in environmental history
• HYM4200 History and memory
• HYM4270 Research methods in biography and life writing
• HYM4280 Reading and writing biography and life stories
• HYM4320 Citizens: histories of Australian citizenship
• HYM4330 Cultures of devotion in Renaissance Italy
• HYM4340 The highland clearances: displacement, migration and memory in Scotland
• HYM4430 Perfecting America: rhetoric, reform and reaction
• HYM4500 Contours of racial thought
• HYM4840 Text and community in Renaissance Italy
• JWM4010 Reading Jewish texts: from antiquity to modern times
• JWM4020 Between homeland and holy land: Israel in Jewish thought
• RLM4060 Medieval women and their world: constructing identities 1100-1450
• RLM4070 Buddhism: society, politics and ethics
• RLM4090 The authority of the text: the hermeneutical question
• RLM4110 Ecology, gender and the sacred
• RLM4120 Social theory, belief and history
• Other units offered in the faculty, with the approval of the course coordinator

Compulsory level 5 units

• HYM5170 Public history placement
• HYM5100 Public history research project

Minimum pass grade

To graduate with the Master of Public History, students must gain a credit (60 C) or above in core units and a minimum credit average overall.

Exit points

Students who have completed 24 points of the Master of Public History may apply to exit with a Graduate Certificate in Public History. Students who have completed 48 points of the Master of Public History may apply to exit with a Graduate Diploma in Public History.

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