Fundamentals: Perspectives and Approaches across the Historical Discipline

Course goals

This course aims

1) to make you aware what it means to do historical research. We will analyse what kinds of questions historians try to answer and discuss how they justify the relevance of these questions. We will also explore what kinds of strategies historians apply that help them to contribute to solving historical problems.
2) to develop your ability to contribute to historical research. You learn how to identify interesting research topics and how to formulate relevant research questions.
3) to familiarize you with the different research traditions of Cultural History, Economic and Social History, International Relations and Political History. You learn to critique, compare, and creatively use these approaches to answer your own research questions.

Content

The course consists of a series of interactive seminars by teachers from the four disciplines mentioned above. We will dissect texts together to find out authors’  research strategies and methodologies in answering a particular question. In the first half of the course, students will critically comment on one research article representing one sub-discipline and then compare their findings with a group of fellow students on the same theme in a joint presentation, highlighting the comparisons and differences between the four approaches. In a final individual research paper, the students address a historical question of their choice through the lens of (at least) two different approaches.