Spring 2009

HIS 347L • Seminar in Historiography-W

Course Description

This course aims to prepare outstanding undergraduate students to undertake major historical research projects during their senior year. To this end, the class will proceed along four parallel tracks. First, it will familiarize students with the concept of historiography and enhance their skills in analyzing secondary sources. Second, it will acquaint students with a range of different methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of history. Third, it will expose students to some of the primary-source repositories available on the UT campus and discuss the various ways that historians interpret primary sources. Fourth and most important, it will provide a forum for students to develop their own projects, which they will complete during the 2006-2007 academic year. About half of students responsibilities in this course consist of independent work on defining a topic and writing a prospectus, the major requirement for the semester.

Texts

Reading Will Include the Following: Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

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