HSY3080

Reading history

Bill Kent and others

8 points
* Two lectures and one tutorial per week in the first part of the semester (Workshops may be substituted for lectures in the later part)
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this subject should have developed an understanding of key theoretical and conceptual issues in the reading of diverse kinds of texts and the relationship between `text' and `genre', and a greater awareness of the nature of historical writing. The subject also aims to assist students in developing skills in critical reading and the analysis of historiographical debate and to lay the groundwork for successful thesis-writing.

Synopsis The modern discipline of history was founded on the study of sources - letters, diaries, official archives, parliamentary debates and enquiries, newspapers and journals, statistics, portraits, maps, photographs, films, sound recordings, furniture, buildings - anything, indeed, which survives from the past. This subject focuses on the types, or `genres', of such sources: their origins and history, the uses made of them by their originators and by later historians, and how they may be read. `Reading' includes the interpretation of visual, oral, architectural and material sources as well as textual ones. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of periods and cultures, and specialists will discuss various conceptual approaches, textual and archival practices and writing experiences. Themes will include the translation of oral communication into writing and the rendering of writing into print; issues of authorship and audience; the construction of inquisitorial, confessional and narrative sources; the rise of the press and the history of the newspaper; the interpretation of maps, photographs, and documentary film; and architectural analysis. The subject will also examine the role of historians in collecting, editing and interpreting sources and will conclude with an examination of the main genres of historical discourse: the scholarly article, the monograph and the thesis. In the concluding section of the subject students will be introduced to the elements of thesis writing.

Assessment Classroom exercise (1000 words): 20%
* Critical essay (3000 words): 40%
* Literature review (1000 words): 20%
* Project/thesis proposal (1000 words): 20%

Prescribed reading

A handbook of sources and readings will be available at the commencement of the course.

Recommended texts

Becker A L (ed.) Writing on the tongue U Michigan, 1989
Boyarin J (ed.) The ethnography of reading U California P, 1992
Culler J The pursuit of signs Routledge, 1981
Cunningham V In the reading gaol: Postmodernity, texts and history Blackwell, 1994
Ellis J C The documentary idea Prentice-Hall, 1989
Fitzpatrick D Oceans of consolation: Personal accounts of Irish migration to Australia MUP, 1994
Guimard J American photography and the American dream UNC Press, 1991
Johnson B The critical difference: Essays on the contemporary rhetoric of reading Johns Hopkins, 1980
Mallon T A book of one's own: People and their diaries Ticknor and Fields, 1994
Ong W Orality and Literacy Methuen, 1982