This module will aim to provoke students into thinking about history in analytically new and creative ways, through introducing them to alternative historiographical approaches for understanding the past. Issues of objectivity and resources and the archive will be scrutinised from a variety of perspectives, including postmodern and postcolonial interdisciplinarities. By the end of the module students should have built on their use of a broad range of historical source materials and enhanced the necessary skills to make critical use of them. They will be able to demonstrate detailed knowledge of the most significant historiographical debates and comprehend the reasons why historical interpretations change and are revised. Furthermore, they will have been introduced to the work of important past and contemporary thinkers and philosophers of history such as Leopold Von Ranke, Karl Marx, Herbert Butterfield, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Hayden White.

The syllabus will be principally designed around discussions on questions of historiography and how past and recent controversies provide insights into interpretative differences for understanding both history and myth; enlightenment and romanticism; thinkers, philosophers and philosophies of history/historicism; empiricism and 'scientific' history; the influence of propaganda and secrecy; Marxism; the Annales school; revisionism; postcolonialism; gender and ethnicity; the peripheries of historical knowledge; the archive; subaltern studies; memory (remembering to forget); public history and commemoration; the end of history?

On successful completion of this module, the student will: - have learned how to see history not as a chronological narrative, but as a pattern of interweaving developments happening in different places at the same time; and - think thematically and write discursively and analytically with proper understanding of the complexities and subtleties of any given question.

On the completion of the module the student should have further developed an awareness of the value of systematic research and evaluation of diverse and competing interpretations of the subject matter.

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Understanding the complexity of societies in the past involves a number of skills that students master. Lectures and tutorials form a single part of the process of historical understanding alongside reading and research. Lectures are designed to introduce a student to a number of themes and events but will never provide all of the information necessary for achieving the objectives of the module. Through personal reading and research students will be better able to comprehend how historians and historiography have been influenced by contemporary ideas and debates. The learner will become: - knowledgeable of the key themes of historiography, through reading, writing and listening; - proactive by participating in lectures and tutorials; - creative through an active engagement with the assessment instruments; - responsible by exploring and understanding the impact of historical writing and debate; - collaborative by working together both formally and informally on assessments; and - articulate by conveying ideas through written and verbal means throughout the module.