Second Year Module
Module Leader: Vivienne Aldous
Rationale and Content:
This mandatory module is designed to further develop practical research skills and methodological understandings using the historical study of communities of the past as a context. It seeks to provide skills and understandings for application in concurrent year two modules and for those students who may conduct archival research as part of dissertation work in year three. It will introduce students to a range of primary sources, including census, trade directories, contemporary newspapers, poll books, local authority records and parliamentary papers. It will examine representations and experiences of community and place and adopt a comparative approach to examining environmental, cultural, social and familial experience and change.
This module will examine environmental, social and cultural change in the context of communities of the past. Some content will draw on the experience of communities within the locality (Suffolk) and wider region. Students will develop skills in the location and interpretation of primary source materials including census, trade directories, contemporary newspapers, poll books, criminal statistics, local authority records and parliamentary papers. The module will examine definitions, representations and experiences of place and community. Students will investigate topics such as identity and class, household and occupational structures, patterns of migration and residential settlement, experiences of leisure and the development of municipal and local governance; superstitition, folklore and belief, as well as institutions of religion, education, and welfare.
Learning and Teaching Strategies:
This module will be delivered through weekly lectures and seminars plus tutorial support. Where appropriate supporting resources will also be made available online. Seminar sessions will be designed to encourage student participation and will support students in strengthening their skills of presentation, discussion,argument and debate,and in evaluating,interpreting and using secondary and primary sources.
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Module
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Mode
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Weighting %
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Length
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Submission date
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Local Histories: People and Place
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1. Book review/document commentary
2. Individual presentation
3. Essay/report
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40
10
50
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2,000 words
10-15 minutes
2,500 words
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Week 6
As allocated
End of semester
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Recommended introductory reading:
J.Beckett, Writing Local History, (Manchester, 2004).
D.Hey, The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History, 2nd Ed. (Oxford, 2010)
K.Tiller, English Local History: An Introduction, 2nd Edition, (Stroud, 2002).
K.D.M.Snell, Parish and belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales, 1700-1950 (Cambridge, 2006)
F.Grace, Rags and Bones: A social history of a working-class community in nineteenth-century Ipswich, (London, 2005).
Further reading:
J.Black and D.MacCraild, Nineteenth-Century Britain, (London, 2003)
D.Cannadine (ed.), Exploring the Urban Past: Essays in Urban History by H.J.Dyos, (Cambridge, 1982)
M.J.Daunton, Progress and poverty. An economic and social history of Britain, 1700-1850, (Cambridge, 1995)
M.Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City: Working Class Housing 1850-1914, (London, 1983).
M.Daunton, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain Vol. 3, (Cambridge, 2001).
M. Drake, (ed.), Time, Family and Community: perspectives on family and community history, (Oxford, 1994).
J.Golby, (ed.), Communities and Families (Cambridge, 1994).
F.Grace, The Late Victorian Town, (Chichester, 1992)
E.Higgs, Making Sense of the Census Revisited: Census Records for England and Wales, 1801-1901, (London, 2005)
K.Laybourn (ed.), Social Conditions, Status and Community, 1860-1920, (Stroud, 1987)
P.Waller, The English Urban Landscape, (Oxford, 2000)
S.Porter, Exploring Urban History, (London, 1990)
D.R.Mills. and K.Schürer, Local communities in the Victorian census enumerators' books, (Oxford, 1996).
R.Sweet, The English Town, 1680-1840: Government, Society and Culture, (London, 1999)
E.A.Wrigley & R.Schofield, The population history of England, 1541-1871: A Reconstruction, (London, 1981).
J.K.Walton, The British Seaside, (Manchester, 2000)