HI1101 Doing History

Module Organiser: Professor Sean Duffy
Duration: Michaelmas term
Contact Hours: 1 hr lecture per week and 8 seminars over the course of the term
Weighting: 5 ECTS

This module will introduce you to the sources that historians use in trying to reconstruct the past. These ‘primary’ sources include written documents, and you will work with a variety of texts – from official archives to legal documents and from personal memoirs to annals and chronicles. But historians also use other sources – for example, archaeological remains and our architectural heritage, and visual art and literature – and you will learn how they can help us to fill in the picture. You will also get the opportunity to engage with these sources in some of the great national repositories located on our doorstep, such as Trinity’s own Long Room, Ireland’s National Museum, National Gallery, National Library, and National Archives.

When historians use these primary sources to piece together the past, they produce ‘secondary’ sources – the books and articles with which you are already familiar. But these are not ‘the truth’. They are a version of the past as interpreted by men and women who, no matter how hard they try, cannot but be affected by their own experiences and preconceptions. And so this module will also introduce you to some central issues in historiography – the writing of history – in order to enrich your experience in the reading of history throughout your Trinity years.

Using Visual Sources (PDF, 900kb)

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:

• Discuss the value of different types of written and non-written sources used by historians
• Undertake a review of a scholarly book
• Deliver a brief oral presentation on a set topic to a seminar group and to write-up a report on the presentation
• Outline and discuss the connections between history and heritage