Course Handbook - Faculty of History

3 PART I: STRUCTURE AND CLASSES
3.1 Subject Classes and Compulsory or Recommended Classes
Part I of the course consists of compulsory Subject Classes for your Option, and Auxiliary
Classes, which are divided between compulsory classes and recommended classes.
The first subject class for all Options is on Thursday 14 October at 2:00pm. For all
options, you will be handed a reading list at the induction meeting in order to prepare you
for the first class. For further details of these classes, see your Option outline in Section 4.
Your Option outline also gives details of the compulsory and recommended classes for
each Option, including recommendations as to language learning. Full details of all the
Auxiliary Classes are to be found in Section 5. In summary, the Auxiliary classes on
Sources, Methods and Bibliography (see Section 5.1), on Palaeography (Section 5.2) and
Chronology (Section 5.3) are compulsory. Codicology is essential for those taking Option
1, and may be of interest to those in other Options, especially those planning to work with
manuscript sources (see Section 5.5). Diplomatic focuses on the period covered by Option
2 but may also be of interest to Options 1 and 3 (see Section 5.4).
Please note that attendance at the lectures and classes for the courses you are taking is
obligatory. Students who fail to attend these are likely to find themselves in severe
difficulties in Part I of the examination. Those who miss any of the compulsory classes are
asked to report this to the Administrative Secretary, MPhil Office.
For details of the work you need to submit for Part I, see Section 6.1.
3.2 Optional Classes, other available teaching and seminars
Other Optional Classes
You are more than welcome to attend the ancillary classes provided for the other Options,
and the timetable has been constructed with this in mind. In particular, you may wish to
attend the other specialist palaeography classes. See section 5.2.
Undergraduate Lectures
The University Reporter Lecture List (available from the Cambridge University Press
bookshop, in most stationers and bookshops in Cambridge and online via
http//www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/) contains the full list of lectures and seminars,
including a version of the timetable. You are free to attend almost all of the lectures listed
in the Reporter, and, although most of them are primarily for undergraduates, you may
well find them useful and interesting. You should also look for lectures of interest in other
Faculties, for example English and Modern Languages, which you are also, in almost all
cases, free to attend. You should introduce yourself to the lecturer concerned to check that
they are happy for you to attend.
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