Content

This historical workshop offers a theoretical introduction to the historical research process and the connected "métier d'historien" (from Marc Bloch).

This course starts from the question what history actually is: science, story or method? In any case, history can arise from a meticulously constructed research procces with methodological requirements.The course therefore deals with the rules for a scientific justified story about the past. The historian thus has to come to a justified historical question and a suitable selection of sources and studies. Historical critique helps to substantiate a thorough historical argumentation and synthesis. However, this research process does pose some methodological challenges and problems: to what extent can the historian reach knowledge about the past, to what extent is (s)he able to map out continuity and change and to what extent is (s)he able to indicate society or the individual as the cause? These methodological questions have always steered the development of the historical discipline and therefore have differentiated the discipline from other fields of inquiry, while an interdisciplinary character offers clear surplus value for historical research. Finally, this course questions the role of the historian in society. The course thus not only offers insight into what historians do, but also how and why they do it, and also why and how the student studies history.

Course material

Textbook (compulsory): V. Soen, Geschiedenis is een werkwoord. Een inleiding tot historisch onderzoek, Leuven, Leuven University Press, second (reworked) edition in 2021.

Slides (Toledo)

Format: more information

Students are expected to follow lectures actively and to process the course material afterwards by means of the textbook.