Teaching and learning methods
Teaching methods will include:
- weekly one-hour lecture and one-hour seminar
- directed individual and group activities around primary sources
- short presentations given by students on the module
- group discussions including feedback from the tutor
Lectures are designed to introduce you to key themes, historical debates and historians' approaches. Further reading and seminar discussions of primary and secondary source material are designed to consolidate your knowledge and understanding. In seminar discussions you will be expected to engage in critical analysis of primary sources and to formulate and articulate arguments. And you will be encouraged to express your own ideas about a topic.
Learning activities will include:
- independent study, reading and research in preparation for each seminar
- putting together and delivering short presentations as directed by the lecturer
- in-depth study of textual and visual primary sources
- participation in small group and whole seminar discussions
This module, like all of the 15 credit History modules offered to second year students, will be research led and it will focus heavily on primary sources. You will study an individual source in depth each week. As such, this module will provide you with a sound preparation for the source-based work undertaken in year 3 during the Special Subject and the dissertation.
Study time
Type |
Hours |
Seminar |
12 |
Revision |
24 |
Wider reading or practice |
12 |
Completion of assessment task |
54 |
Lecture |
12 |
Preparation for scheduled sessions |
36 |
Total study time |
150 |
Resources & Reading list
Journal Articles
D. Purkiss (1997). ‘Desire and its Deformities: Fantasies of Witchcraft during the English Civil War’. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 27(1).
Textbooks
M. Gaskill (2005). Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy.
M. Stoyle (2011). The Black Legend of Prince Rupert’s Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War.
R. Poole (ed.) (2000). The Lancashire Witches.
O. Davies (1999). A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth-Century Somerset.
B.P. Levack (2006). The Witch-Hunt in early Modern Europe.
C. Hole (1986). Witchcraft in Britain.
K. Brigges (1962). Pale Hecate’s Team: An Examination of the Beliefs on Witchcraft and Magic among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries.
A.Macfarlane (1970). Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England.
P. Elmer (2016). Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting and Politics in Early Modern England.
H. Trevor-Roper (1947). Four Centuries of Witch-Belief.
B. Rosen (1991). Witchcraft in England, 1558-1618.
M. Stoyle (2017-18). Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Exeter.
C. Ewen (1929). Witch-Hunting and Witch Trials.
J. Sharpe (1996). Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550-1750.
J. Sharpe (2002). ‘The Witch’s Familiar in Early Modern England’, in G.W. Bernard and S.J. Gunn (eds), Authority and Consent in Tudor England.