Historical Criticism

Teacher(s)

Van Ypersele Laurence;

Language

French

Main themes

This course provides training in an approach directly derived from the historical criticism established at the end of the 19th century, with all the improvements and nuances introduced during the 20th and 21st centuries.
After introducing basic notions such as "historical truth", "document" and "memoirs", the course presents the various systematic stages of external and internal criticism, and the confrontation of information. These stages lead to a synthesis based on the axes of causality and meaning.
This teaching contributes to training in citizenship and social responsibility. It provides reflective tools to verify and validate the relevance of information received on a daily basis.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	Understanding and analyzing resources: Examine sources critically. Prioritize sources according to reliability and relevance. Browse, search, filter, evaluate and manage digital data, information and content.
2	Understand and produce scientific texts: Collect and select relevant information using rigorous and systematic methods. Synthesize essential elements of knowledge to problematize a research question.
3	Make sense of a text, event or work: Interpret an event, work, image or text in its historical, social and cultural context.

Content

The course consists of 30 hours of lectures and 10 hours of exercises on text files.
The lecture will present the different stages of historical criticism. It will emphasize the importance of the problematic and of documentary research to conduct sound scientific research. We will then review the different types of sources, including digital sources, their contribution to knowledge of the past and their limitations. We will then systematically approach the stages of external criticism, internal criticism and confrontation of testimonies. Finally, we'll look at
synthesis, based on the issues of causality and meaning.

Teaching methods

Lecture + Practical

Evaluation methods

Assessment will take the form of a written exam, the first part of which will concern and the second part, the ability to apply these theoretical frameworks to analyze documents and discourses not seen in the course.

Online resources

The moodle site is dedicated to both parts of the course.

Faculty or entity

> FIAL