GEN1000 Perspectives on General Education
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The past is passed and why it matters! This module seeks to enhance students’ understanding of the relevance of historical knowledge to the everyday life of the present-day. Students explore some basic components of historical thinking and historical analysis, e.g. ideas about change, causality and context, types of historical evidence and issues of contested interpretations of the past. Through reading, discussion, site visit and library and internet research, historical inquiries and historical representations are analysed and evaluated. Students also examine the changes and transformation of an individual, a social group or an aspect of social life over time to recognise the meanings and values of human phenomena, particularly in the 19th and 20th century.
Upon completion of this module, students should be able to:
a. identify different types of source and their usefulness for historical study;
b. gather and assess historical information to construct historical accounts;
c. access the changes and transformation human life in historical dimension;
d. examine the meanings and values of human phenomena in historical dimension; and
e. critically evaluate an historical interpretation or representation.
1. Historical thinking
1.1 Uses and meanings of history
1.2 Facts and historical reconstruction
1.3 Historiography
2. Historical analysis and interpretation
2.1 Primary and secondary evidences
2.2 Change, causality and contingency
2.3 Historical context and value judgments
3. Representations of the past
3.1 Film
3.1 Museum
3.2 Historic site
4. History of everyday life
4.1 Diaspora and migration
4.2 Ethnicity, class and gender
4.3 Work, family and daily life
1. Short assignments (25%)
2. Group project (25%)
3. Final essay (50%)
1. : Abrams, L. (2016). Oral history theory (2nd ed.), London and New York: Routledge.
2. Berkhofer, R. F. (2008). Fashioning history: Current practices and principles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
3. Carr, E., & Evans, R. (2001). What is history? (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave.
4. Macdonald, S. (ed.). (2006). A companion to museum studies. Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing.
5. Mclane, B. A. (2012). A new history of documentary film (2nd ed.). London: Continuum.
6. Rosenstone, R. A. (1995). Visions of the past: The challenge of film to our idea of history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
