Medieval History Seminar

bhist1231  2024-2025  Bruxelles Saint-Louis

Medieval History Seminar
6.00 credits
30.0 h
Q1 and Q2
Teacher(s)
Language
French
Prerequisites

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.
Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

This seminar aims to develop the students' skills (research, reflection, critical thinking) through a long-term research work of real scientific relevance.
 
Content
This is a research seminar on primary sources. Each student will be requested to address a specific aspect of a common theme, within the research fields of the professor and relating to medieval history. Each student is invited to compare his/her results with those of the other students and to enrich his/her own work as the course and work develop. The theme and the type of sources implemented vary from one year to another. For instance: "The ‘Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles’ hundred new news at the court of the Dukes of Burgundy: faithful or biased reflection of society?"; "Relationship, sociability, material culture, religious sensitivity and socio-political structures: Nivelles in the fifteenth century. A town through its testaments." ; "Violence, honor and courage. Representations and experiences of violence through narrative sources of the late Middle Ages."; "The feodal levy in Walloon Brabant during the reign of Charles the Bold (1475)".
Teaching methods
The course takes the form of seminars, alternating joint sessions and individual work of the student on secondary literature and primary sources original documents.
The professor will develop a research issue and framework. The students will achieve bibliographical research and state of the art. The seminar also includes supervised palaeographic initiation (in the case of original documents); critical editing of documents (if applicable); use of documents and historian argumentation; discussion sessions about the problems and results; writing of an individual piece of work.
Evaluation methods
Final written paper, following the standards of scientific writing (critical apparatus, footnotes, annexes, argumentation). The assessment also takes into account the students' participation in the discussions and an intermediate presentation of the results in an oral presentation.
The use of generative AI, such as ChatGPT, for the production of any written piece is strictly prohibited within this seminar.
Other information
The bibliographic handout of the “Heuristics of the Middle Ages” course (part of “Heuristics of the various periods of Histoy” course) will be available.
Besides the libraries of the University, the students are invited to attend different major documentary deposits nearby (such as the National Archives of Belgium and the Royal Library of Belgium) or within a reasonable distance.
Attendance to the seminar sessions is mandatory.
Bibliography
La réalisation de la bibliographie, à partir d'amorces fournies par l'enseignant, fait partie intégrante du travail de l'étudiant-e.
Faculty or entity


Programmes / formations proposant cette unité d'enseignement (UE)

Title of the programme
Sigle
Credits
Prerequisites
Learning outcomes
Bachelor in History

Bachelor in History (French - English)