ATS4215 History archives workshop

Students taking the unit will develop and apply advanced history research skills. The unit coordinator will introduce students to one or several major history archives (online unless the archive is physically available at Monash or another Melbourne site, or at Prato), and to a history subject area for which the archive/s hold a diverse and significant cache of primary source material. Each year a member of History staff will coordinate the unit and select archive/s and subject area/s in which they have a research expertise. Students will learn how to access, search, document and index archive sources, and they will learn to apply digital tools for organising data in electronic formats. They will consider methodological issues and approaches in using and interpreting different kinds of primary sources, such as public records, personal letters, diaries and other manuscripts, visual artefacts or oral history. Students will read and assess secondary literature in the proposed subject area and will devise and undertake a research project using archive material.