Historical Textual Criticism

2020/2021

Учебный год

ENG

Обучение ведется на английском языке

4

Кредиты

Кто читает:

Департамент истории

Статус:

Курс обязательный

Когда читается:

1-й курс, 3, 4 модуль

Преподаватель

Ссорин-Чайков Николай Владимирович

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course is to ground students in forms of critical analysis of texts as historical sources for their 'area' and 'field' of study. It uses a wide range of examples of historical work that draws on both different textual material and different methodological strategies. The course views texts as complex and often ambiguous phenomena, as having lifelines and biographies that are socially embedded and situated. Materials of the course reflect on a variety of methodologies of critical analysis that have emerged after linguistic turn and in reaction to the postmodern challenge of the late twentieth century. The focus of the course is equally theoretical and empirical. A large part of the course is designed to incorporate the 'learning-by-doing' principle, and therefore maintain a practical focus of theoretical criticism. Students will learn about the interplay between the form and content of texts, as well as about the constructions which build narratives. The purpose of this interdisciplinary, experimental course is to encourage students to think critically about textual means of analysis in the ways in which we – scholars, commentators, decision-makers and ‘lay’ human beings – divide up the world, categorise, delineate and fence off certain areas from other ones; provide theoretical and methodological tools, equipping students to deploy a critical approach to ‘area’, ‘field’ and ‘subject' in their academic and professional (and other) lives. Students are encouraged to think critically about key questions of historical methods, ethnographic fieldwork and genealogies of our divisions of the world.

Learning Objectives

• knowledge of how to analyze key features of text and narrative as historical sources, including the issues surrounding texts’ authorship and edition, and its status as original or copy.
• ability to contextualize historical sources, characterize different texts and narratives, and apply various approaches to the textual analysis

Expected Learning Outcomes

• understanding theoretical and methodological issues in the analysis of texts and narrative theory, such as fictionality, narrative instances, focalization, plot, discourse, and their implications to historical research
• learned skills of historical analysis of texts in practice of research

Course Contents

• The inquisitor.
• Language games.
• Performativity.
• Facts and scientific texts.
• The cultural biography of things.
• Archival turn.

Assessment Elements

• attendance
  Based on the class attendance
• Seminars participation
• review
• Exam
  Exam is organized in a form of a take home final essay: this is essay-long discussion of randomly selected two questions from the list of exam questions. Exam asks students to debate across empirical material and different approaches covered in the course. Specifically, in answering each of these questions, students are required to use at least three individual pieces of writing from this course syllabus, not to repeat material in discussion of each of the two questions, and in answering both questions to draw on only one piece of readings that you presented on in class. Late assignments will be marked down by 10% of the mark per day and if you plagiarize, you fail. Formula for calculating accumulative and final marks:
• attendance
  Based on the class attendance
• Seminars participation
• review
• Exam
  Exam is organized in a form of a take home final essay: this is essay-long discussion of randomly selected two questions from the list of exam questions. Exam asks students to debate across empirical material and different approaches covered in the course. Specifically, in answering each of these questions, students are required to use at least three individual pieces of writing from this course syllabus, not to repeat material in discussion of each of the two questions, and in answering both questions to draw on only one piece of readings that you presented on in class. Late assignments will be marked down by 10% of the mark per day and if you plagiarize, you fail. Formula for calculating accumulative and final marks:

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (4 module)
  Macc.=·0,2 * Mattendance + 0,4 * Mparticipation + 0,4 * Mreview Mexam = Messay Mfinal = 0,2 * Macc. + 0,8 * Mexam

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Verdery, K. (2014). Secrets and Truths : Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police. Budapest: Central European University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=714232

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Shapin, S. (2008). The Scientific Life : A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=285089