HIST2002B Historiography (Advanced)

This course will lead you through a ‘history of history’, introducing you to the major trends in modern historical scholarship. It seeks to answer questions like: What is history and why do we study it? More importantly, how do we study it? The first few weeks will begin with some important basics, from conceptual questions about the study of history to useful skills like how to do your assigned course readings in the shortest time possible. We will then turn to the main subject of the course, starting with the emergence of university history education in the 19^th century and covering the most significant developments in historiography up to the present day.

The course will meet each week in a seminar format. While there will be a lecture element to each class, there will also be an emphasis on lively discussion about each topic.

Learning Goals

This course has three main goals:

1. To familiarise you with some of the most important intellectual trends in historical scholarship from the 19^th century to the present day.
2. To explore how and why these historiographical trends have emerged and to understand their significance for the academic study of history.
3. To prepare you for your future courses and research in history at CUHK.

Course Schedule

Assessment Overview

Your performance in the course will be assessed on the cumulative basis of different types of assignments (described in more detail below) and your attendance. There will not be an exam or quiz component. The weighting of the different factors is as follows:

Historiographical Essay                     40%
Discussion Participation                    30%
Reading Summaries (x6)                    20%
Symposium Presentation                    10%

Your final letter grade will be determined by your overall course percentage. You will not be graded on a curve. Grades will be assigned according to the following set thresholds:

A         90%                             C+       65%
A-        85%                             C         60%    
B+       80%                             C-        55%
B         75%                             D         50%
B-        70%                             F          >50%

Grade Descriptions

A                     Exceptional: Exceeds expectations. Demonstrates impressive knowledge, clarity, analytical ability, and a firm grasp of course material.

A-                    Strong: Has most of the qualities of A-grade work but has some minor areas for improvement.

B (+/-)             Good: Shows a solid understanding of course material. Has some flaws in writing or argumentation and may contain minor errors or misunderstandings.

C (+/-)             Satisfactory: Demonstrates an acceptable level of knowledge but suffers from lack of clarity, misunderstandings, historical errors, or weak argumentation.

D                     Unsatisfactory: Achieves the minimum passing grade but fails to meet most expectations of knowledge and argumentation.

F                      Failed: Does not meet basic expectations of knowledge, understanding, and/or timeliness in submission.

Course Readings

Each week you will be assigned approximately 40–50 pages of reading. This will be a mixture of primary sources and academic literature that explores important aspects of the week’s theme. All required course readings will be posted on the Blackboard course website at the beginning of the semester. You will not need to purchase or acquire any course materials yourself.

Reading Summaries

Before each seminar, you will complete the readings assigned for that week and then write a short summary (approx. 250–500 words) that you will submit in hard copy at the end of the class. This is a reading comprehension exercise that will help to develop your skills in analysing and explaining texts in a short space. It will also help you remember the readings during tutorial discussions.

You should describe both the content of the readings (what they are about) and the authors’ central arguments. You can find sample reading summaries and a short how-to guide on Blackboard to give you a better idea of how to write them. You will only need to write reading summaries for six out of the eleven weeks of reading. This means that you get to skip five reading summaries; you can choose which ones. These summaries will form 20% of your overall course grade.

New Approaches to World History Seminar

This term, the History department will be holding the third series of its ‘New Approaches to World History’ seminar. This will take place online on Zoom every Thursday from 8^th September to 1^st December for a lecture by a leading world historian. At the end of the lecture, members of the audience will have the chance to engage in a Q&A with the speaker. A complete schedule of events, with topics, dates, and times, will be released soon.

Since this seminar has a clear relevance to our historiography course, I would like you to attend no fewer than three meetings of the New Approaches to World History Seminar. You should also ask at least one question during one of the Q&A sessions. Your attendance and participation in this seminar will form part of your overall participation grade for this course.

Historiographical Essay

The main assignment of the course will be a historiographical essay (2,000–2,500 words) at the end of the semester, due on 5^th May. For this essay, you should select a prominent historian of the 20^th or 21^st century and write a historiographical analysis of their major works. You should show how your chosen historian’s work relates to the wider scholarly field and make an argument about what you think their most important contribution to historiography is/was. You will be free to choose your own subject and title, on two conditions:

1. The essay must focus on the works of a single historian and their historiographical significance.
2. You must come to my open-door hours at least once before Reading Week to discuss your idea for your final paper.

The essay should be written to academic standards with a central thesis, reference to relevant academic literature, and appropriate citations in footnotes. You are free to follow any accepted academic citation style such as Chicago, Harvard, or MLA. If you are not sure about how to write citations, use the Chicago Manual of Style quick citation guide: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Symposium Presentation

In the last week of term, we will hold a class symposium in which each student will give an oral presentation to the rest of the class about the subject of their historiographical paper. Depending on student numbers, you will have approximately 10–20 minutes to present your research to the other students. There will be a Q&A session after each presentation in which other students will have the chance to ask you questions about your subject. Your symposium presentation (and questions to other students) will be 10% of your final grade.

If you want, you can supplement your presentation with a short PowerPoint slideshow or use other kinds of visual/audio accompaniment as appropriate. Feel free to get creative – remember, the goal is to spark the most interesting symposium discussion that you can!

Tutorials and Participation

In addition to regular seminars, there will be four tutorial sessions during the semester. These will serve as opportunities for a broader discussion of the course’s themes. They will also be a chance to discuss course assignments (particularly the final historiographical essay) and for you to ask any questions that you might have. Remember that active participation in both seminar and tutorial discussions is expected and will be 30% of your overall course grade.

To be clear, participating in discussions means that you will actually have to speak. Sitting in silence is not participation and will not count towards your participation score. But don’t worry! You don’t have to be an expert (or even knowledgeable) about a topic to join in the discussion. Any kind of contribution, even if it is just a simple comment or a question, will count as participation and will thus add to your course grade. So don’t be shy!

The tutorial schedule is to be announced (TBA)

For a general introduction to the subject, the following (non-compulsory) books are recommended, all of which are available in the CUHK library system or online:

John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000).

E.H. Carr, What Is History? (London, 1962).

Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction, 7^th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2010).

Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, rev. ed. (Middletown, CT, 2005).

Daniel R. Woolf, A Global History of History (Cambridge, 2011).

Assignment Submission, Extensions, and Lateness Penalties

You will be expected to submit your essay by 11:59 pm on the due date by uploading it to the relevant section of the Blackboard course website along with a signed declaration of academic honesty from VeriGuide (https://academic2.veriguide.org/portalcuhk/).

Scheduling conflicts and unforeseen circumstances can sometimes make it difficult to meet deadlines. If you are unable to submit your work on time, please contact your professor as soon as possible and he will be happy to grant you an extension if you have a legitimate reason to require one.

If you fail to submit work on time and the professor has not granted you an extension, you will incur a daily lateness penalty of 1 percentage point. For example, if you submit your historiographical essay (worth 30%) 3 days after the deadline, you will lose 3 of the 30% available; if you submit it 5 days late, you will lose 5 of the 30%, etc. The professor will not accept any further submissions after 7 days have passed unless he had granted special permission.

Attendance and Absences

You are expected to attend all seminars and tutorials. For every class that you miss without the professor’s approval, 1% will be deducted from your final course grade. If you have a valid reason for being absent from a seminar (such as a doctor’s appointment, a family emergency, or similar), please contact the professor as soon as possible to ask for permission.

Plagiarism and Academic Ethics

Studying at university requires a high standard of professionalism and honesty in your academic work and personal conduct. This falls under the broad category of academic ethics, which the professor takes very seriously (and so should you). The professor expects you all to behave in an honest and respectful manner in class and your assignments. Unethical behaviour, including plagiarism, will not be tolerated. You can find more information on university policy at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

If you are unsure about the definition of plagiarism or academic ethics, feel free to ask the professor and he will be happy to discuss it with you in more detail.

Open-Door Hours

The professor is available in his office (KHB 123) every week from 2 to 5 pm on Friday so that anyone can speak to me about anything they want. If you would like to chat with him about any aspect of the course, your university studies, career development, favourite historical books, and movies, or anything else, feel free to drop in and he will be happy to see you. In the event that the university is forced to move back to online teaching, the professor will hold his open-door hours on Zoom.

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

• In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
• For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.