Master of Public History

Course code: 3077 + Course abbreviation: MPubHist + Total credit points required: 72 + 1.5 years full-time, 3 years part-time

Study mode and course location

On-campus (Caulfield; Clayton)

Multimode (Clayton)

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.

Minimum pass grade

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

Course structure

Students complete 72 points consisting of 48 points at level 4 chosen from the list below and 24 points of core level 5 units. Note that not all units are available each year. All units are 12 points unless otherwise stated.

Compulsory level 4 units

Students must choose two from these compulsory units in consultation with the course coordinator:*

HYM4095 History and heritage
HYM4510 History and the museum
HYM4560 The past around us
HYM4620 Family history and genealogy
HYM4820 Local and community history

* Units are taught face-to-face at Caulfield or online, except for HYM4560 which is only taught online.

Level 4 electives (taught at Clayton)

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

HYM4115 Private and public voices in Renaissance correspondence
HYM4120 Reading and writing Australian history
HYM4140 The Raj imagined
HYM4175 Interpreting the Bible: Jewish and Christian perspectives
HYM4180 Images of the natural world: issues in environmental history
HYM4185 Colonial encounters: ideas of race and 'otherness' in the British world, 1650–1900
HYM4200 History and memory: oral history, life stories and commemoration
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
HYM4690 Pageant and power: the Renaissance Papacy
HYM4840 Text and community in Renaissance Italy
HYM4900 History, biography and autobiography
HYM4950 Hidden transcripts: cultural approaches to the past
HYM4960 The body, gender and history
JWM4020 Between homeland and holy land: Israel in Jewish thought
JWM4030 Jewish history and Jewish memory: writing and reading the Jewish past
RLM4060 Medieval women and their world: constructing identities 1100-1450
RLM4070 Buddhism: society, politics and ethics
RLM4100 Religion in Australian society
RLM4110 Ecology, gender and the sacred
RLM4140 Confronting death through ceremony and symbol: a cross-cultural analysis
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

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
48 points of the Master of Public History may apply to exit with a Graduate Diploma in Public History.

Course coordinator

Dr Seamus O’Hanlon

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