Module Information

The module begins by asking when, why and how History established a presence in universities as an academic discipline in its own right. It addresses the processes through which a disciplinary matrix was constructed, exploring the invention and the imposition of procedures and regulations which were to govern how histories were (and in important respects still are) made. Professionalisation, as the module will demonstrate, transformed the ways in which history was researched, written, published and taught. But it did so at different times in different countries, and in regions or even individual universities within those countries. How far did indigenous trends and traditions within each country promote the professionalisation of history? To what extent did one country's historical institutions and approaches to the study of the past serve as a model for others - for `late developers' in professionalizing history? In the nineteenth century, and for much of the twentieth century, professional historiography was deeply implicated in nation-building and nationalism. Yet, at least in some periods and for some purposes, historians also conceived of themselves as an international community, conducting a single `grand conversation'. The seminar programme reflects this tension, comprising a mixture of transnational themes and national case-studies.

This module builds on some of the themes and questions already opened up in the Core module for this MA scheme. It alerts students to the distinctiveness of the practise of history as a profession, both in relation to earlier historiographical traditions and in relation to amateur historiography, but also to ever-changing definitions of what it has meant to be a professional historian. It provides students with opportunities to apply some of the historical methodologies (notably comparativist method and the `cultural transfers' approach) with which they will already have become familiar through the `Skills and Sources' module. Finally, it is designed to provide an intellectual context for work on a range of kinds of Dissertation, including biographical studies of individual historians, studies of particular university history departments, and investigations of the histories of historical publications.