Advanced Research Seminar in American History

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• a wide variety of secondary source material relating to American history, including theoretical frameworks used in the field.
• the history of America, in particular the different approaches taken by historians to American history.
• a wide variety of primary sources relating to American history.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• utilise and develop your time-management skills.
• use to good effect textual, visual and material culture sources, synthesising this material to develop cogent and persuasive arguments.
• research complex historical questions and communicate your findings convincingly and concisely in written assignments.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• undertake a thorough critical analysis and assessment of a variety of textual, visual and material culture sources.
• apply your developed knowledge of American history, structuring your ideas and research findings into well-ordered written assignments.
• engage with historiography and theoretical frameworks, contributing to the debates relating to American history and its relationship to the wider world.

Themes to be explored in this module may include re-interpreting American history, transformations in historiography, the state in American history, and sources and secrecy in American history.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include seminars.

Learning methods include close analysis of a range of primary sources and discussion of key themes and ideas.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Elaine Frantz Parson (2016). Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction. University of North Carolina Press.

David K. Johnson (2004). The Lavender Scare: the Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. University of Chicago Press.

Richard Hofstadter (1996). The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays. Harvard University Press.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss (2020). Hate in the Homeland: the New Global Far Right. Princeton University Press.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External