HST6870: Life Stories: Men and Women in War and Revolution, 1917-49
15 credits (semester 1)
Module Leader: Professor Mary Vincent
| Module Summary |
This module will allow students to explore issues of identity and how these changed during the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. The emphasis will be on how identities are expressed in individuals' own textual production. Seminars are thus structured around different genres of 'ego-document' (indcluding diaries, memoires, interviews, and children's drawings), allowing students to consider how identities are negotiated in different, and often harsh, social and political circumstances. The module thus explores individual and collective identities, locating the individual in the momentous history of twentieth-century Europe.
| Teaching |
The module will be taught in five, two-hour classes. Each will focus on personal testimony, exploring particular themes such as the lived experience of men and women during revolution and war; the relationship between identity and physicality; ideas of citizenship, and political action ; political and class identities etc. Such topics will also be located in the historical literature, considered in comparative perspective.
This is a field with a rich literature that feeds into wider debates in the English-speaking world as to the nature of historical investigation. Classes will enable students to share knowledge, debate controversial issues and listen and respond to the views of others in a structured environment. Students will, in addition, have an individual tutorial with their own supervisor in which to discuss the work they will write for assessment for this module.
| Assessment |
Students will prepare a short paper (not more than 3000 words) which demonstrates an ability to handle bibliographical resources and which explores one of the key themes raised by an in-depth study of a particular topic in modern comparative history.
| Intended Learning Outcomes |
By the end of the unit, a candidate will be able to demonstrate:
- A more profound understanding of the history of the period 1914 to 1949, and the extent to which this was shaped by the experiences of war, occupation, and revolution, coming to independent conclusions on salient issues of interpretation and source criticism.
- The ability to distinguish between and critically evaluate different schools of interpretation and historical debate on the early twentieth century, attaining an awareness of current research issues beyond the published literature.
- The ability to elaborate and defend an intellectual position to other members of the seminar group as well as presenting scholarly arguments and historiographical debates to them.
- An awareness of the contribution made by other academic disciplines to our understanding of twentieth-century history.
- Their ability to engage in group discussions of interpretative issues.