I have the outline and reading list for the first class of the semester. (Just need to pick some nice juicy documents to look at…). Which means, only 9 more to go.
If you’re interested, here’s a formal blurb and a list of the planned seminar topics. (Sorry if I’ve posted it before. I can’t remember.)
(though it will probably be mainly England and Wales in reality…)
Brief description
This module will develop students’ critical awareness of historical sources and methods of research through examination of a range of sources relating to crime and the use of the law in early modern Britain and the varied ways in which historians have used them. It will introduce sources including legal records and official correspondence, pamphlets and polemics, criminal ‘biographies’ and trial reports. It will examine key historiographical debates on social relations and tensions, particularly gender, religion and ‘class’ conflict, as well as the importance of techniques and theories derived from other disciplines in the development of the historiography since the 1970s.
Content
1. Introduction
2. Prosecutions and punishments
3. To catch a thief
4. Crimes of blood
5. Riot and popular politics
6. Disputes and litigation
7. Morals and manners
8. Respectable fears and myths
9. Whose justice? Class, control and ideology
10. Witchcraft: a special case?
Does that sound fun?
And if nothing else, I’ve learned to write the right kind of form-filling babble. (You should see the buzz-words in the Learning Outcomes section. Oh yay.)
4 comments on “Hah! Progress”
They aren’t trying to force you to split it all up into ‘Learning Objects’, are they? Learning Objects are, apparently, ‘small chunks of learning’. I wish I was making this up.
You only have to teach 10 classes a semester?
Jonathan, I don’t even *have* to teach that. It’s the sheer luxury of this fellowship, the research comes first and foremost. However, there are clear expectations from the people paying for it that I should do some teaching to build up experience; it’s just up to me how much and when.
Chris: I’ve not come across ‘learning objects’ so far, I don’t think. But I believe it all too well. (They say that people who can, do, and people who can’t, teach. Don’t we need to add a category for the people who simply lecture teachers on how to teach?)
I’d sign up if I could!