History Post Graduate Courses

HIST 4001 Rural Transformation: Town & Countryside in Transition

Module Description

This unit explores profound transformations in the fabric of South African society brought about by the interplay of rural and urban society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The themes considered include the causes and consequences of migrant labour, changing dynamics of generation and gender, the politics and practice of resistance, evolving forms of sexuality, issues of racial and ethnic identity, the contestation of chieftainship and the intersection of malevolence, misfortune and witchcraft.

Lecturer

Prof PN Delius

HIST 4008 Medieval and Renaissance Italy, from City Communes to Renaissance States

Module Description

Italy has often been described as 'the case that does not fit'. The distinctiveness of Italian history during the medieval and post-medieval centuries owes a great deal to the continuing importance of cities as centres of political power. But it also relates to the precociousness of Italian economic, cultural and intellectual development. Because of this distinctiveness, the department offers a separate case-study of the Italian experience in the making of the modern world. The unit will pay particular attention to problems and theories of state building. This will involve consideration of the nature of the early modern state and an exploration of the changing relationship between town and countryside. Thereafter, students will have the opportunity to pursue their own interests within a wide range of themes. Possibilities include the structure of corporate politics in the early communes; the vitality of household and lineage; the legitimizing role of ritual; and developments in Italian political thought. Research projects are available for candidates who are prepared to acquire appropriate language skills.

Lecturer

Dr ME Bratchel

HIST 4014 Themes in African-American History in the United States

Module Description

The unit offers an intensive examination of pivotal historical scholarship on African-American history. It focuses on recent analyses of several major themes and processes in the history of African-Americans, notably the African slave experiences in the Middle Passage, the economics of slavery in the American South, slave culture, Civil War and Reconstruction, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement.

Lecturer

Dr SP Lekgoathi

HIST 4018 Oral & Documentary History: Theory and Practice

Module Description

This unit, offered at both Honours and Masters level, looks at contemporary trends in the theory and practice of history. The first half deals with the possibility of objective truth, the boundaries between fiction and historical writing, social history, gender theory, and the implications of post-colonial and post-modern theories for historical research and writing. The second half of the unit concentrates on the theoretical debates and practical skills of oral history. It will allow students to specialise, should they wish to do so, by writing two of the required three term papers on oral history. One of the papers will involve a practical exercise (for example: interpreting oral transcripts or documents, or conducting an oral history interview). The unit will provide ideal training for any postgraduate students in the humanities who will be conducting a primary research-based project or who intends going into any field related to heritage.

Lecturer

Prof C Glaser

HIST 4019 Regency Britain c.1800 - 1837

Module Description

Two necessary foci in the unit are the effects of war and of industrialization. Changing patterns of political radicalism also need attention. However, given the nature of the sources, archival and primary printed, close attention has to be given to political and literary journalism, government administration and policy-making (or lack of it), colonial expansion and notions of Britishness. There are numerous other possible areas of interest, though, including patronage and clientage, declining royal influence and the general connections between literature, politics and social history. There is, indeed, an embarrassment of choice.

Lecturer

Dr CI Hamilton

GRAD 4039 Public Culture

Module Description

The Public Culture unit (offered at Honours and Masters level as well as for a Post Graduate Diploma) is an introduction to the central debates and theoretical issues that are pertinent to the burgeoning Heritage sector. Students are encouraged to explore and consider the ramifications of the new South African Heritage legislation passed in 1999. The unit covers the birth of the museum as an institution, the politics of exhibitions, different ways in which site narratives are composed, the functions of landscape in commemoration, politics around the representations of indigenous people (principally the Khoisan), and debates concerning the representation of atrocity, racism and suffering (apartheid, the holocaust, AIDS etc). Over the last two years there has been a growing focus on heritage in greater Johannesburg/Jozi, which includes Soweto and Alexandra. Expectation, in the near future, is to engage in research related to the revival of the Newtown precinct.

Lecturer

Prof C Kros

HIST 7009 Re-directed Readings

Module Description

Please contact the department for information.

ANTH 4018 South African Theory and Ethnography

Module Description

The unit focuses on a set of major contributions in South African social anthropology, each of which addresses from a different perspective the central theme of social dynamics framed by culture. The idea is to expose students to seminal works by some of our most distinguished authors in the discipline. The unit takes the form of a reading group, functioning as an intellectual parallel to postgraduate field research. At each seminar, one or more students will be asked to lead the rest in discussing a given piece of work, and the respective student(s) will also produce a critical essay on the work and its place and significance in anthropological thought. The unit will examine classic approaches and key issues, such as traditions of leadership, kinship, gender, migration, witchcraft and healing and performance that have been at the heart of anthropological writing about our region. Students will be encouraged to view their own work in the context of the best in ethnographic practice.

Lecturer

Dr SP Lekgoathi

HIST 7011 European Urban History 1789 - 1945

Module Description

It has been in the cities, above all the capitals, that much of modern European history has been centred. The concentration of the unit will be on the following capitals; London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and St Petersburg, because of their importance, their variety and the availability of sources, primary as well as secondary. The unit will investigate its subject in the round involving the inevitable trilogy of social, economic and political history, but also bringing in the vital cultural and architectural aspects.

Lecturer

Dr CI Hamilton

HIST 4011 Rural Development

Module Description

In this unit theories of rural development and comparative perspectives will be used to illuminate processes of rural transformation in South Africa. We will also root the discussion of the possibilities and prospects of rural development in a rich appreciation of deep-seated patterns of change at work in the countryside. The unit will highlight a number of themes, including migrant labour, rural resistance, state intervention, forms of accumulation, labour regimes, land reform, gender, generation, stratification, chieftainship, local government and the role of markets.

Lecturer

Prof P Delius, Dr S Schirmer

HIST 4013 The Making of Urban South Africa

Module Description

The unit explores the social, political and economic history of urbanization in South Africa from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries. Its central focus is the Witwatersrand, but it also examines parallel and especially divergent processes in Cape Town, Durban, East London, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria. A central spine to the unit is provided by a set of related questions: what impelled people to the towns? How and why did they become fully urban? What new cultures and identities emerged in the multi-racial and multi-ethnic urban melting pot? What new communities and political urbanization emerged? How do we understand ungovernability in the 1940s and 1980s? What new laws and policies were formulated (eg segregation, apartheid and post apartheid reform) to regulate and repress these processes and forces? How and why did all of the latter happen? How central were the cities to understanding the more general processes of historical change in South Africa and the sub-continent?

Lecturer

Prof PL Bonner

HIST 4009 Representations and re-representations in History

Module Description

This unit is intended to develop students? awareness of how distributions of power in society can affect historical portrayals in History textbooks, curricula and a variety of popular representations of history. The unit includes the scrutiny of written and visual texts and a comparative analysis of History curricula. Students are encouraged to develop their own presentations of history or to make contributions to curriculum design.

Lecturer

Prof C Kros

HIST 4016 War & European Society in the 20th Century

Module Description

The unit examines the relationship over the last two centuries between war and societies at war, concerning itself with the kind of wars fought, the ways nations geared themselves up to fight, morally and physically and with the numerous different effects of war on the nations which participated. There is a textbook, Arthur Marwick's War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century (1974), albeit only in so far as it offers a model of war and society in the first chapter, one that can be accepted with reservations or rejected with contempt as seems suitable. The unit normally begins by concentrating upon the operational side, most likely during the two total wars of the twentieth century, and then moves on to deal with first how soldiers and second the people on the home front dealt with the effects of 'the sharp end'. Subsequently, various topics arise, such as total war and the economy, intelligence and operations, art and literature and war and the effects of total war upon greater democratic participation. There are, indeed, many possible topics that can be studied as part of the unit. The eventual choice is shaped to a large extent by the interests of the students taking the unit.

Lecturer

Dr CI Hamilton

SOSS 4011 HIV/AIDS in Context

Module Description

This is an inter-disciplinary unit that examines the sociological, historical and anthropological questions relevant to HIV/AIDS as a global pandemic. The aim of the unit) is to equip learners with the skills and the insights to better understand the complexity of the epidemic in order to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the efforts to combat its devastating effects. It provides a general overview of the facts, debates and controversies surrounding the current HIV/AIDS crisis, with a specific focus on developing countries, including South Africa.

The themes covered include:

• Basic biological facts about the virus, prevention and treatment.
• Social epidemiology - an examination of global and South African statistics
• History and ideology of sexually transmitted diseases (STD's) in Africa
• Stigma, societal attitudes and issues of death & dying
• Social inequalities, health and HIV/AIDS
• HIV/AIDS policy - the role of the South African state
• The Treatment Action Campaign (ATC) as a health-social movement
• The debates surrounding circumcision as a public health intervention
• Medical anthropology of AIDS

Lecturer

Profs P Bonner (History) L Gilbert (Sociology), R Thornton (Anthropology)