Studying at York
Knowledge & Beliefs in World History - HIS00085C
Module summary
This course introduces first year History students to important themes in intellectual and cultural history, and challenges them to think critically about the power of knowledge and belief in different cultures over time. It encourages students to explore how ideas have developed and travelled across different social and cultural contexts. It places strong emphasis not only on the ways ideas and beliefs have been formed and propagated by elites, but also on how the hierarchies of power that ideas help to create have been subverted and questioned by a wide range of historically marginalised groups. This is done with a focus on race and gender, and from a global perspective. Students are encouraged to make comparisons that will enable them to deconstruct the simplistic binaries of ‘science’ vs ‘religion’ and ‘modern’ vs ‘traditional’ forms of knowledge, to explore more fully how knowledge exchange occurred between different societies, and to consider the challenges of trying to uncover the full complexity of individual beliefs.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Autumn Term 2022-23 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
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To help students understand important ideas in intellectual and cultural history over the past 1500 years
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To encourage students to explore intellectual and cultural history from the perspective of a wide range of historical actors across time and place
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To familiarize students with the ways in which historians understand intellectual and cultural developments in past societies
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To introduce students to many of the different areas of study available to them in Stages 2 and 3.
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will have:
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Acquired a broad knowledge of, and some of the scholarship relating to, intellectual and cultural history in Western and non-Western societies;
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Demonstrated an ability to analyse critically, and make connections between, focussed studies from across time and place;
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Practised core skills necessary to a history degree, notably note-taking, critical analysis, and the ability to form arguments orally and in written work, through effective contributions to seminar activities, oral presentation, essay-writing, and group work
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Demonstrated understanding of, and the ability to construct arguments about, intellectual and cultural changes and continuities.
Module content
Teaching Programme:
Teaching will be in 2 x 1 hour lectures each week, taught over 8 weeks. 1 x 1 hour discussion seminar in Weeks 2, 4, and 6 and 8 and 1 x 2 hour discussion seminar with formative work session in Weeks 3, 5, 7, and 9. Each week students will do reading and preparation in order to be able to contribute to discussion and complete the formative skills tasks.
The provisional outline for the module is as follows:
Block 1: Understanding the Natural World
Lectures
1. The Pre-Global Globe
2. New Worlds, Ancient Texts
3. Empire, Time, and Scientific Knowledge
4. Mastering Nature: the Anthropocene as History
Seminars:
1. The ‘Scientific Book’
2. What Time is It?
Block 2: Human Being
5. Translation and Knowledge
6. The Fall of Natural Man: the origins of comparative ethnology
7. Relative Humanity
8. Making ‘New Men’ through Revolution
Seminars:
3. How to Measure Cultural Difference in the Renaissance
4. How the Steel Was Tempered: socialist ‘New Men’
Block 3: Religions and Cosmologies
9. Creating a Christian Cosmos
10. Questioning the Christian Cosmos
11. Controversies of Faith, Crises of Power
12. The Rise of Secularism
Seminars:
5. The Early Christian Cosmos
6. Radical Politics and Religion
Block 4: Popular Cultures, Dissent and Radicalism
13. Popular Movements and Knowledge
14. The Limits of Social Discipline
15. Contesting the Future across Imperial Space
16. Decolonisation and Knowledge: Remaking the World
Seminars:
7. Vernacular Language and Revolt
8. How to Unthink an Empire
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
Formative work:
Students will complete four formative assessment tasks during the autumn term, comprised of exercises on note taking; referencing; making an argument and structuring essays.
Students will work in groups to complete these tasks in tutor-led sessions, for which they will be expected to carry out preliminary reading and preparation.
Students have the option of submitting one formative essay (max 1,500 words) for each Introduction to World History module they take. These essays can be submitted in weeks 5, 6 or 7, at the student’s discretion. It is not recommended that students submit more than one essay in any single week. All students are encouraged to submit at least one essay.
Summative work:
Students will choose one of the four essay questions and submit a 1,500-word assessed essay in Week 1 of Spring Term. It is worth 100% of the course mark.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Students will receive verbal feedback during the formative work classes and a short written statement from their tutor within 20 working days of the class. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 20 working days of the submission deadline. For more information, see the Statement on Assessment.
Indicative reading
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, you might like to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
Daston, Lorraine, Against Nature Cambridge Mass., The MIT Press, 2019.
Whatmore, Richard. What Is Intellectual History? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.