HR960-7-SP-CO:
The Uses of Space in Early Modern History
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies (School of)
Colchester Campus
Spring
Postgraduate: Level 7
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
20
04 October 2018
Requisites for this module
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This MA module encourages students to consider the significance of the study of space for the understanding of early modern history. It aims to show that investigation of the organisation and use of space is integral to the understanding of key historical developments from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Space was far from a passive backdrop to historical events that had structural origins elsewhere. The organisation and use of material space was shaped by and in turn had effects back on the political, religious, economic, social and cultural changes associated with the Reformation, the English Revolution and the rise of agrarian capitalism. Students will explore how status, gender, age and religious identity shaped spatial experience. They will be introduced to approaches to the study of space from a range of disciplines including anthropology, sociology and geography. Themes to be considered include early modern representations and perceptions of space; the role of the organisation of the physical environment in the construction of social and religious identity; the shifting boundaries of ‘natural’ landscape and cultivated land and of public and private spaces. Students will be introduced to a range of relevant sources, including travel writing, diaries, probate inventories, court records, house plans and other forms of material evidence, and the module will train them in the reading, analysis and critical assessment of those sources.
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General Reading List:
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a theory of practice (Cambridge, 1977)
Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge, 1988)
Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (eds), Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005)
Amanda Flather, Gender and Space in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2007)
Eric Hirsch and Michael O'Hanlon (eds), The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space (Oxford, 1995)
Matthew Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism (Oxford, 1996)
Beat Kümin and Cornelie Usborne, 'At home and in the workplace: A historical introduction to the spatial turn', in: History & Theory 52 (2013), 305-16 [introduction to a FORUM collection on Forum: At Home and in the Workplace: Domestic and Occupational Space in Western Europe from the Middle Ages]
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1991; first publ. 1974)
Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge, 1994)
1 x 2 hour seminar per week
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
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Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Amanda Flather, email: flatak@essex.ac.uk.
Dr Amanda Flather
Graduate Administrator, Department of History, Telephone: 01206 872190
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No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
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