REVAMPING OUR TWO CORE COURSES IN THE FIRST YEAR OF STUDY

Duke Univeristy, Department of History


Rationale for the Development of New Core Courses

Discussions among faculty and graduate students identified a clear consensus that the department's two required core courses were not sufficiently connected to a larger intellectual trajectory for graduate students, and might more effectively foster the development of intellectual community among the incoming class.

Dissatisfaction with Current "Core" Historiography Seminar (301)

* Inconsistent approach to seminar (sometimes key works in social theory; sometimes introduction to variety of historical method through tour of scholarship by Duke historians)

*Central thread to course often missing

* Insufficient connections to later coursework

Dissatisfaction with Current "Core" Research Seminar (302)

* Focus on developing finished product for M.A., encouraging continuation of previous research, rather than experimentation and honing of general research skills

*Chance to develop culture of intellectual feedback with presentation of paper drafts offset by lack of opportunities for collaborative work or extending knowledge of how to formulate historical problems, connect them to relevant sources and research methodologies, and navigate virtual and physical libraries


Hoped for Consequences of the New Core Courses

1) more cohesive, intellectually confident, and energized cohort of students

2) fewer difficulties in launching and carrying out independent research, even in the face of unanticipated problems

3) fewer students falling through cracks of the program, with resulting decline in average time to degree and attrition from program


Assessing Actual Consequences of New Core Courses, Intended and Otherwise

There won't be any easy way to measure the medium or long-term impact of these new core courses until we make it to the medium or long term. (Even then, isolating the impact of these courses from the many other changes we are contemplating will be difficult if not impossible.)

In the shorter term, we'll be looking closely at:

  • student evaluations of the new courses; and
  • the assessments of the faculty who teach them.
  • In the slightly longer term, we expect to consider:

  • the assessment of 2-4 year graduate students about the impact of the new core courses on their later graduate student experiences; and
  • the views of other faculty who teach graduate students on how well the new core courses seem to have prepared their students for more advanced work.

  • Basic Contours of New 301: Introduction to Historiography

    * Sustained examination of theoretical and historiographical readings central to current practice in the discipline

    * Focus on a handful of pivotal debates in history, such as "what is/was nationalism," or "what is/was capitalism," or "what is/was gender," using those questions to develop a cohesive set of readings in social theory and historical scholarship

    * Choice for the faculty rotating into the course choice over the main organizing questions and the scholarship to examine them, but not the basic structure of the seminar

    * Key goals of seminar:

  • provide significant points of contact for all entering students
  • avoid pitfall of attempting to cover too much ground thinly
  • create intellectual community in cohort through common conceptual foundation for later coursework
  • Fuller description of 301
    This segment of the larger February 2004 Report discusses the new expectations for the core course in historiography.


    Rejected Alternatives

    Very few participants in the department's deliberations argued that our current core offerings did the job that we would like them to do. Some participants in the debate (mostly faculty members whose own graduate school experience lacked required core courses) raised the possibility of simply junking both 301 and 302, contending that the best way to get history graduate students energized was to give them as many chances to pursue their own independent research as possible. We declined to follow that path on the basis of the following considerations:

  • our graduate students generally need some sustained attention to the distinguishing conceptual orientations and practical habits of historians, along with some consideration of how historians so frequently borrow from the intellectual tool kits of other academic disciplines, and what nonetheless generally sets historical research and strategies of historical explanation apart from those other disciplines;
  • with our current class sizes of 8-12, we need some mechanism for building intellectual community among students with a wide range of interests and intellectual predispositions;
  • in light of the profession's likely increasing emphasis on breadth, comparison, and transnational experience, we should find effective ways of introducing our students to the enormous diversity in historical practice, and to the virtues of interacting with scholarship and historical problems beyond their zones of familiarity; and
  • with respect to 302, close attention to the analytical building blocks of historical research should produce more mature and sophisticated independent historical work in the second year.

  • One of the Duke archival collections that might serve as the basis for a week's assignment in 302
    One of the Duke archival collections that might serve as the basis for a week's assignment in 302

    Basic Contours of New 302: Introduction to Research Methods

    * Series of Problem-Based Research Exercises, with creation of a department file of such exercises and a prototype syllabus to furnish consistency over the years

    * Experience with answering questions through secondary and a variety of primary sources (including archival holdings, official documents, and published works)

    * Experience with formulating research questions, either as a result of constructive reading of secondary sources, or engagement with rich primary sources

    *Experience connecting such questions to both research methodologies and extant and accessible sources

    *Consideration of how to weigh alternative interpretations of conflicting or ambigious evidence, and how to develop strategies of corroboration;

    * Introduction to Web-based primary source archives

    * Flexibility in several (but not all) assignments so that students can tailor work to their own interests; requirement of collaboration in some assignments

    * Likely culmination in full-fledged prospectus for a semester-long research project, which in most cases would lead into one of two second year research projects

    Key Goals of Seminar:

  • Give students chance to experiment outside areas of expertise
  • Ensure solid foundation of research skills and familiarity with both new and old tools of historical investigation
  • Develop/deepen key habits of mind for sophisticated historical research
  • A Fuller Description of 302
    This segment of our larger February 2004 Report provides an overview of the new core course in research methods, including some illustrative assignments for this course.




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