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HIST413: Approaches to Religious History

Not available 2013/2014

Course Convenor: Professor Andrew Jotischky & Professor Michael Hughes

Teaching: Lent Term

Assessment: One seminar presentation (20%) and an essay comprising 5,000 words (80%) on a subject to be agreed with the course tutor.

This module explores the ways in which historians concerned with the theory and practice of religion have approached their discipline. It is intended for students whose research falls under the general rubric of 'religious history' or that has some component concerned with religious practice, belief or thought. Its purpose is to offer such students guidance in developing their own research questions and in deploying the methods best suited to answering them. This will be done by examining the ways in which particular historians have exploited the possibilities provided by the history of religion with a view to discovering what they have achieved and how they went about doing it. The course will be run as a reading group, the exact choice of works to be read being determined chiefly by the research interests of the students.

Readings for the First Session:

• Hufton, Olwen, 'What is Religious History Now?', in David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 57-79.
• Van Engen, John H., 'The Christian Middle Ages as a Historiographical Problem', American Historical Review, 91 (1986), 519-52.
• Jean-Claude Schmitt, 'Introduction', to his Religione, folklore e società nell'Occidente medievale, trs. Lucia Carle (Bari, 1988), pp. 1-20; trs. into English under the title 'Religion, Folklore and Society in the Medieval West', in Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein (eds), Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings (Malden, MA, 1998), pp. 376-87.

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