Course Handbook - Faculty of History

you believe that the chosen subject was one that could not be dealt with satisfactorily
within the limits of the essay, then your mark should reflect this judgement. Extrapolation
from undergraduate work should focus on an undergraduate essay rather than a
dissertation; in this case you would, of course, expect a more polished presentation
(including footnotes), more sophisticated handling of the historical and historiographical
issues, together with the independent research which would not normally feature in an
undergraduate essay and which should lead to the candidate making a small but
independent contribution to the subject. You should also consider the style of writing, the
organisation of the argument and (where applicable) the narrative, and the capacity to
summarise findings.
In some cases the essay will be formulated in direct relation and reaction to the topics
covered in the Option classes. It may be that within a particular Option a particular debate
is so central to the understanding of a theme that greater emphasis will be placed in an
essay on the reconsideration of existing accounts. It is not expected that the range of
sources will necessarily be comprehensive in relation to the topic but familiarity with key
pieces of evidence is expected. Students should consult sources in the original language
and must accordingly cite them thus in footnotes and bibliography but may also, in
preparing their essays, make as much use of translations of sources as they need.
Bibliography and Historiographical and Bibliographical Essay
The total mark, 100%, for this element of the Part I examination will be divided as follows:
60% for the Historiographical and Bibliographical Essay and 40% for the Bibliography.
The bibliography is a preliminary bibliography for the dissertation (Part II of the
examination) and should consist of between 75 and 150 items of primary and secondary
material. It should be marked on the following criteria: fullness, accuracy and presentation
according to proper scholarly conventions, allowing of course for the limit on the number
of items. The essay (between 2,000 and 3,000 words) is intended to be an accompaniment
to the bibliography. It has two distinct purposes. One is to place the dissertation subject
in the broad historical field in which it lies, offering a critical survey of the existing
historiography. The other is to explain and justify the contents of the bibliography
(including why some items which might have been included have been omitted) and to
indicate how the student proposes to go about the dissertation using the items listed in the
bibliography. The examiner should consider whether the candidate has made as full and
intelligent a survey of the historiographical issues as is possible within the confines of the
overall word limit and has found a subject which these issues show needs to be explored
and has situated it satisfactorily within existing debates. You should also judge whether
the candidate has identified a body of sources which are likely to enable the subject to
be undertaken and has shown his/her awareness of how they may be used for such a
project. With respect to this last issue, you should bear in mind that the candidate will not
yet have started the research proper on the dissertation and that the actual sources, and their
exact uses, will be clearer at this stage for some dissertation subjects than for others. In
those subjects that entail extensive use of different types of unpublished record, it may not
be possible to be precise at this stage about exactly what will be found where. Similarly,
when a dissertation will entail gutting a series of sources in search of particular themes, the
candidate will have identified the major sources and the use to which they will be put but
will probably not yet be in a position to say exactly how each source is to be used. In these
cases, you are assessing whether the candidate has got as far as can reasonably be
expected at this stage and has put forward an intelligent and apparently workable scheme
of research. The balance in the essay between the discussion of the existing literature and
ideas on the one hand and the indication of how the research will be conducted on the other
will depend to quite a large extent on how large and complex the historiographical issues
are and how definitive the candidate can be at this stage as to how the research will
proceed. However, the candidate should not normally give more than two-thirds of the
essay to one or other of these two elements.
34