HIST645 - GRADUATE RESEARCH SEM: Historical Research and Writing

Status
O
Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
HIST645 - GRADUATE RESEARCH SEM: Historical Research and Writing
Term
2019A
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST645401
Meeting times
R 0200PM-0500PM
Meeting location
3401 WALNUT STREET 330A
Instructors
WILLIAMS, HEATHER
Description
The aim of this course is to explore and test ways of (re)constructing past cultural practices. The exploration bgins with some basic concepts of culture and cultural change and their relationship to social dynamics. Next we try to identify and apply the most appropriate sources and methods for analyzing cultural "languages" (myth or narrative, symbol, and ritual) and their "text." We will look especially at tools and insights that can be adapted from literary criticism and sociolinguistics, as well as from ethnography -- always within the "discipline of historical context" (E.P. Thompson). Emphasis will be on documentary sources, published and unpublished, but visual imagery and the material record in general, as well as oral traditions, will be included. The principal interpretive questions will resolve around two clusters of issues. One cluster involves evidence and standards of verification; the other involves the ethics and rhetoric of cultural translation/representation.
Course number only
645
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false