HIST42730: Negotiating Life in Early Modern England

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• To support students in developing an independent command of primary material in the economic, social and local history of early modern England, with an appreciation of the nature and form of sources and the ability to deploy different methods and techniques to interrogate them
• To help students develop a deep engagement with historiographical trends and historical interpretations in the economic, social and local history of early modern England.

• This course introduces students to some key themes in the economic, social and local history of early modern England. An important aspect of the course requires students to think through the usefulness of historians' focus on the local, the validity of local and regional histories of economic and social life, and the relationship between locality, region and nation. The relationship between archival, printed and material sources such as houses and landscapes receives attention. An opening session focuses on the relationship between the sense of the self and the sense of community. Subsequent sessions deal with the household (as a physical structure "the house" and as a social, economic and political unit, "the household"); riot, rebellion, protest and popular politics; the nature of community (and of crime - something that cut across senses of neighbourhood and could divide communities); work and labour relations; wealth and poverty (both in its sense as a lived experience and in terms of social structure); sexuality and the body (and the sources we might use to interrogate this sometimes difficult and opaque subject); landscapes, communities and senses of place and space; and old age, dying and death.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Knowledge of the historiography on early modern England
• Knowledge of documentary, material and visual sources for this subject.
• Understanding how social, economic and cultural, as well as political and religious historians have approached the study of these sources.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Ability to critically interpret relevant primary sources.
• Familiar with the ways in which early modern administrative processes generated documentation.
• An ability to relate documentary, material and visual sources to one another.

Key Skills:

• Independent research skills appropriate to historical research at Level 4.
• Ability to synthesise complex evidence from a range of primary sources.
• Ability to synthesise complex information from a range of perspectives in secondary studies.
• Ability to formulate an historical question for essay work.
• Ability to formulate cogent historical argument in essay form.
• Effective oral and written communication, appropriate to Level 4.
• Ability to reflect on reading and answer questions arising in seminars.
• Ability to present scholarly references and bibliography.

• Student learning is facilitated by a range of teaching methods.
• Seminars require students to reflect on and discuss: their prior knowledge and experience; set reading of secondary and, where appropriate, primary readings; information provided during the session. They provide a forum in which to assess and comment critically on the findings of others, defend their conclusions in a reasoned setting, and advance their knowledge and understanding of the social and cultural history of early modern Britain and Europe.
• Structured reading requires students to focus on set materials integral to the knowledge and understanding of the module. It specifically enables the acquisition of detailed knowledge and skills which will be discussed in other areas of the teaching and learning experience.
• Assessment is by means of a 5000 word essay which requires the acquisition and application of advanced knowledge and understanding of an aspect of the social and cultural history of early modern Britain and Europe. Essays require a sustained and coherent argument in defence of a hypothesis, and must be presented in a clearly written and structured form, and with appropriate apparatus.

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