- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
The course will provide a detailed introduction to the most significant event of the twentieth century using primary and secondary sources. Direct work with primary materials will offer students the chance to study at first hand the materials out of which the historiography of the Revolution has been constructed. Until the recent opening of Soviet archives, not much more information was available to professional historians. The problems associated with the use of documentary evidence, its partial nature, its context, its gaps, assessments of its value will be constantly analysed throughout the course. Primary Sources: For the first part of the course dealing with Revolution from February to October the core text will be the three volume collection of documents edited by Browder and Kerensky. This will be supplemented by memoirs and other documentary collections. For the period of the Civil War we will have a much more eclectic range of documents. These will include material only recently declassified from soviet archives, memoirs, reports from western governments as well as large published collections.
Students taking this module must also take the second part in Semester 2.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
The aims of this module are:
Students who complete this module successfully will:
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 and a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight three-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
For formative work, students will produce a text commentary.
The summative assessment will consist of two parts, to be submitted together:
a) Two text commentaries of 500-750 words; and
b) One 1,500-word essay.
The commentaries comprise 50% and the essay 50% of the overall mark for this module. Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Following their formative task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative work during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For summative assessment tasks, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
For semester time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading: