Monash University Arts Undergraduate Handbook, 1997

Objectives

The Department of History has as its two main objectives:

to have undergraduate students understand how to `think historically', that is how to equip themselves technically and methodologically to understand, and in some cases to practise, the discipline of history;

to have students acquire a good general knowledge of several (preferably different) periods and areas of history, and of how different societies function and change.

Such understanding requires them to be able not only to criticise but also to construct for themselves an historical argument and, more generally, to undertake an analysis of a problem, issue or period in the past. Students are led, from first-year tutorials onwards, to deal with source criticism (the close reading and evaluation of primary documentary sources. Such source criticism, properly understood, instead of encouraging students to believe that `facts are facts' and that there is an `objective' historical truth, rather leads them to approach carefully all data, historical or otherwise. It also encourages them to read between (and behind) the lines of a text, and to be aware of how different ideas and values are not only in competition in a given period, and between cultures, but how they change radically over time and place.

While `method', in this sense, is integrated with `content' throughout the history degree, third-year students are offered the subjects HSY3060 (Uses of the past) and HSY3080 (Reading history), which examine recent trends in historiography and in `new knowledges' in the humanities. Satisfactory performance in one of these subjects is a requirement for all fourth-year honours students, who are also asked to take at least one other methodological subject.

Teaching in the department includes lectures and small discussion groups, which encourage habits of inquiry and debate. The writing of exercises and essays reinforces this training, and teaches reflective, analytical and rhetorical skills. Oral presentation is also important.

Although the department does not insist that students take a compulsory core subject or subjects, it encourages them to include in their history degree subjects devoted both to Australian history and to the history of other places and cultures, and to themes such as sexuality, religious history, world history, historical methodology, women's history, and so on. Since the department offers a broad spectrum of subjects, students have the opportunity to expose themselves to the histories of diverse cultures and themes, all of them informed by the methodological concerns mentioned earlier.

History is responsive to the wider community's interest in, and demand for, historical expertise and understanding. Hence this department offers a public history program at post-graduate level, and makes many other contributions to the community through teaching and research.

The Department of History expects certain skills, attitudes and knowledge of students at different stages of their degree. The student with a minor in history should have imbibed a firm sense of how historians think and argue and on what methodological basis. The student will have studied several different periods of history and various historical themes. A major in history will have a more advanced and self-conscious understanding of the methodological and epistemological bases of the subject, and a wider knowledge of a number of historical fields and themes. The student will have begun to practise writing history as well as studying it, because third-year students must undertake intensive research, based on documentary sources. Fourth-year honours students undertake research of their own choice, using primary sources, and complete a thesis of between 12,000 and 15,000 words. The thesis is expected to be original and to have applied a sophisticated understanding of methodological and historiographical questions to the research undertaken.

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