Sources for Postgraduate Research in the Modern Humanities and Social Sciences

Wedi cwblhau'r modiwl dylai'r myfyrwyr fedru:

1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the research use of a selected range of key primary sources in the modern humanities and social sciences, including understanding of practical and methodological issues associated with those sources.
2. Demonstrate an ability to use these sources in specified tasks and in their own research.
3. Conduct independent research utilising one or more of the sources studied in the module.
4. Communicate effectively their use of these sources orally and in written form.

Academic rationale of the proposal:

The module is an extension and enhancement of the current HYM0410 Sources for Modern History, which will be withdrawn as part of the department'r MA scheme redesign. It is aimed at history students in the first instance, though it may also have wider recruitment potential across other departments (e.g. International Politics, Geography, TFTV). It introduces postgraduate students to key primary sources in the modern humanities and social sciences, and provides them with essential research training in the methodologies and approaches required to utilise these sources in their own research, through a series of three-hour workshops tailored to the student'r individual research needs. The workshops may also be attended as one-off training days (not for credit) by internal or external students.

Brief Description:

The module comprises a series of eight workshops, from which the student must attend a minimum of four (that is, the four most closely associated with their own research interests and projected MA topic). Each workshop will be six hours in total, comprising three hours of seminar work (in the morning) and a three-hour practical session (in the afternoon), or equivalent. Eight workshops will be offered; the topics are likely to vary slightly from year to year depending on staff availability.

Content:

Workshop topics (indicative list) ? students will attend 4 x 6 hour sessions :
1. Public opinion: opinion polling and polling analysis
2. Private opinion: the Mass-Observation Archive On-Line
3. From private to public: diaries, letters, published correspondence and memoirs
4. Oral history training day
5. Newspapers (to include history of newspapers; introduction to content analysis; and NLW visit)
6. Radio and television (to include seminars on history and methodology, and visit to NSSAW)
7. Reading a film
8. Public records and Freedom of Information (to include session on public archives in the electronic age)
9. Visual and sound sources
10. Landscape, topography and the modern built environment

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Mae'r modiwl hwn yn cydymffurfio a FfCChC Lefel 7