Summer reading lists for some of our history courses. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh in September to begin your postgraduate journey. We will be in touch with Offer Holders over the summer with details of course choices and information about Welcome Week. If you have any questions about your History programme, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Dr Jeremy Dell (Jeremy.Dell@ed.ac.uk).We want to remind you that it's never too early to start thinking about your dissertation. While you will of course have a busy summer preparing your move and the start of your postgraduate studies, do challenge yourself to start thinking about what are the topics and methods that you may wish to explore for a dissertation. If you do not have a topic, then the summer can be an opportunity to consider what you may wish to examine. Read widely and follow your interest. Also consider what will be practical for a primary-source based dissertation. Will there be sufficient sources that you will have access to (either digitally or physically)? When you have a topic that you are interested in, read a little deeper – what are historians disagreeing over in the more recent journal articles? Where are the frontiers of research on this topic? What methodologies are they employing?In the meantime, if you are keen to start exploring your chosen degree topic further, we have put together a list of some preparatory reading. Please do not look to purchase many of the books listed below. They are suggestions and not exhaustive. Many libraries will have copies of these books and Amazon and Abebooks will hopefully have cheap second-hand copies of other works. Many of them are available as ebooks from the University Library, via the online catalogue: http://discovered.ed.ac.ukMSc in HistoryIt is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebookAlastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skillAntoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:Developing Historical ResearchThe core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)The following are also of use:Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebookEric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebookLaura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebookJoan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebookHistorical MethodologyThere are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University LibraryE.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, aboveDipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebookLynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebookEve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (2008)Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebookLinda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd edn. (2021)The following articles may also be of interest:Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483MSc in Contemporary HistoryIt is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebookAlastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skillAntoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:Developing Historical ResearchThe core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)The following are also of use:Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebookEric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebookLaura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebookJoan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebookHistorical MethodologyThere are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University LibraryE.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, aboveDipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebookLynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebookEve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (2008)Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebookLinda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd edn. (2021)The following articles may also be of interest:Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483Contemporary History readingsGeoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (1966)Brian Brivati, Julia Buxton, and Athnony Seldon, eds., The Contemporary History Handbook (1996)Peter Catterall, 'What (If Anything) is Distinctive about Contemporary History?', Journal of Contemporary History 32, 4 (1997): 441-52 Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present: Essays, Sketches and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s (2000)Robert Gildea and Anne Simonin, eds., Writing Contemporary History (2008)Jan Palmowski and Kristina Spohr Readman, 'Speaking Truth to Power: Contemporary History in the Twenty-First Century', Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (July 2011): 485505Kristina Spohr Readman, 'Contemporary History in Europe: From Mastering National Past to the Future of Writing the World', Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (July 2011): 506-530Anthony Seldon, ed., Contemporary History: Practice and Method (1988)Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (2006)John M. MacKenzie, "Edward Said and the historians." Nineteenth Century Contexts 18, no. 1 (1994): 9-25.Alon Confino, "Collective memory and cultural history: Problems of method." The American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (1997): 1386-1403.Marcus Colla, “The Spectre of the Present: Time, Presentism and the Writing of Contemporary History,” Contemporary European History 30 (2021), 124-35.MSc in Intellectual HistoryIt is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebookAlastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skillAntoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:Developing Historical ResearchThe core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)The following are also of use:Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebookEric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebookLaura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebookJoan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebookHistorical MethodologyThere are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University LibraryE.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, aboveDipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebookLynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebookEve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (2008)Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebookLinda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd edn. (2021)The following articles may also be of interest:Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483Intellectual History readingsAntony Grafton, ‘The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950-2000 and Beyond’, Journal of the History of Ideas 67/1 (2006), pp. 1-32.Stefan Collini, ‘Intellectual History’, in: Making History, online: https://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/intellectual_history.htmlRichard Whatmore, What is Intellectual History?, (Cambridge 2016).Samuel Moyn / Andrew Sartori (Eds), Global Intellectual History, (New York 2013).Jacques Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan, (Oxford 1993)Riccardo Bavaj, Intellectual History, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (2010), online: https://docupedia.de/zg/Intellectual_HistoryTony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956, (Berkeley 1992).Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, (New York 1991).Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Conceptual History, Memory and Identity. Interview by Javiér Fernández Sebastián’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 2.1 (2006), pp. 99-127, online: http://www.javierfsebastian.com/wp-web/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/entrevista-CONTRIBUTIONS-KOSELLECK.pdfReinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Series: Cultural Memory in the Present. Translated by Todd Samuel Presner, (Stanford 2002).Peter Gordon, ‘What is intellectual history? A frankly partisan introduction to a frequently misunderstood field’ (2012), http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/harvardcolloquium/pages/what-intellectual-historyAnnabel Brett, ‘What is intellectual history now?’, in: David Cannadine (ed.), What is history now? (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 113-131.‘Ideas in Context: Conversation with Quentin Skinner’, by Hansong Li, in: Chicago Journal of History, Vol. VII Autumn 2016, online: http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/fall16/7.12.pdfImportant academic journals with contributions to intellectual history include:Intellectual History ReviewModern Intellectual HistoryHistory of European IdeasJournal of the History of Ideas MSc in Medieval HistoryIt is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebookAlastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skillAntoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:Developing Historical ResearchThe core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)The following are also of use:Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebookEric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebookLaura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebookJoan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebookHistorical MethodologyThere are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University LibraryE.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, aboveDipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebookLynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebookEve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (2008)Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebookLinda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd edn. (2021)The following articles may also be of interest:Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483Medieval History readingsTexts available online via Edinburgh University Library are marked *Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (eds.) The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 2: 400‐1400, Oxford, 2012 (*available online)Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe, London, 2011 (*available online)John Arnold, What Is Medieval History?, Cambridge, 2008Marcus Bull, Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages, Basingstoke, 2005 (*available online)Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (ed.), Historiography in the Middle Ages, Leiden, 2002 Nancy Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History, London, 2005 This article was published on 2024-08-01
