This is a first-year foundational module which introduces students to aspects of studying European history from the Protestant Reformation to present days. The core lectures introduce key historical topics – such as the relationship between religion and politics; sovereignty and citizenship; nationalism; colonialism – providing the major contextual parameters for each topic and outlining the contours of the relevant historiographical debate. The small group seminars are based on focused analysis of specific aspects of historical evidence in the contexts set out by lectures. The seminar aims to aid students to critically evaluate different kinds of evidence (documents, academic argument, testimonials etc.) and develop skills of historical and contextual analysis. 

All materials will be available in English or English translation but may also be read in the original language. 

  Suggestive bibliography 


	Lynn Hunt, History: Why it matters (Medford, Mass.: Polity, 2018), pp. 30–61. 
	

	Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in History and Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016 – 2nd edition). 
	
	
	Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992 - originally 1949). 
	
	
	E. H. Carr, What is History? (London: Penguin, 2018 – originally 1961). 
	
	
	Sarah Maza, Thinking About History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 
	
	
	Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza (eds.), A Companion to Western Historical Thought (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). 
	

	John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (London: Routledge, 2015 – originally 1984). 
	
	
	Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006 – second edition). 
	
	
	David Löwenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 
	
	
	Paul Veyne, Writing History: Essay on Epistemology (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), trans. Mina Moore-Rinvolucri. 
	
	
	Aviezer Tucker, Our Knowledge of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 
	

	Penelope J. Corfield, Time and the Shape of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 