Honours in the Department of History
Coordinators
- Honours in 2011
Associate Professor Kirsten McKenzie
+61 2 9351 6668 - Honours in 2012
Dr Nicholas Eckstein
+61 2 9351 2155
The coordinator approves students’ entry into the program, maintains student records, liaises with supervisors and the staff teaching seminars, and chairs the committee that oversees the marking of theses. Students having any difficulties with the program at any time should see the coordinator.
The honours year gives students a taste of history as a vocation. In seminar work, students grapple with problems in the theory and practice of history; the thesis gives them the experience of formulating a significant historical problem and writing a substantial piece of original research.
Students who take honours at the University of Sydney study in one of Australia’s leading history departments. They work closely with dedicated teachers and active researchers whose interests span a wide variety of fields and methodological approaches.
The department is proud of its honours program, graduates of which have gone on to a rich variety of rewarding careers. For some people, the honours year is a critical step on the path to further study; some of your teachers will be University of Sydney honours graduates. For others, the fourth year is the culmination of their formal education, an experience that helps them refine their skills in research, analysis and writing; extend their intellectual range; and develop the body of personal and professional skills needed to see a major project though to completion.
What Prerequisites Do I Need?
Please note: The Department of History only accepts applications for the Honours program from students intending to begin studying Honours in the first semester of the academic year. Mid-year entry to the program is not permitted.
To be eligible to undertake Fourth Year Honours you must have completed 48 senior credit points of History (i.e. 8 senior units of study), including HSTY2691, and have an average grade of credit or above in those 8 units of study. Up to 18 credit points (i.e. 3 units) may be cross-listed units.
If you do not have all the prerequisites but are close, please contact the honours coordinator to discuss your options.
How Do I Apply?
All students wishing to apply for Honours must to apply via the Courses online website. Instructions can be found here.
If you are interested in applying, you are encouraged to discuss your application with the departmental Honours coordinator before submitting your application.
In the first semester of enrolment, students simply enrol in two 'shell' units, HSTY4011 and HSTY4012 (History Honours A and History Honours B). These codes bear no relation to the actual seminars taken. The Faculty only needs to know that you are doing two 12-credit point units of history honours, which seminars you take is between you and the History Department. (This is why the seminars have no unit codes.) In the second semester, you enrol in another two 'shell' units, HSTY4013 and HSTY4014 (History Honours C and History Honours D), which represent the thesis.
| Registration with the History Department |
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Students must also apply directly to the Department of History. Each student’s program of seminars and thesis topic must be approved by the honours coordinator. The completed form should be handed to the coordinator (by Monday 28 November 2011). It is possible to change your seminar choices before March next year (demand on seminars permitting). Applications for seminar places and supervision made after this date will be processed in the order in which they are received. The later you apply the more difficult it will be for us to give you your preferred choice of seminar and supervisor.
Download Registration Form
The Fourth Year Honours Program for 2012
The fourth-year honours program in history consists of two seminars, which students take in the first semester, and a thesis of 15000-20,000 words, which in 2012 is due on Tuesday 9 October.
Honours is a single, unified program. While you will receive marks for all pieces of assessment, your academic transcript will record only your final, overall Honours mark. The thesis is worth 60% of the final mark, and each seminar is worth 20%.
Seminars for Honours Students in History
There are two broad categories of seminar in 2012.
Field Seminars are grounded in a particular context - be it geography, place or time. They are designed to explore current or emerging debates or research foci in the areas in question.
Approach Seminars cross a diverse array of contexts in order to emphasis a particular approach to history writing and to understand the way in which this approach has developed in the scholarly literature.
Both kinds of seminar provide important and complementary skills that will equip you to deal with problems in the theory and practice of history. We recommend (but do not require) that you pick one seminar from each category.
Honours is designed as an intensive teaching experience. To facilitate this, seminar numbers are capped at a maximum of 15 students. When you complete your History Department application form, be sure to list at least one alternate seminar in case your first choices are over-subscribed. You may list more alternates if you wish.
Field seminars
Histories of Australia
Mr Richard White
The field of Australian history is better thought of as a paddock, less well-tilled than other fields but less dependent on traditional patterns of farming. This seminar seeks to provide a broad grounding in Australian historiography, ranging across the radical nationalist tradition, identity politics, the cultural turn, the transnational moment and the new political history as well as various forms of popular history. At the same time it attempts a social and cultural history of historical effort in Australia, questions the assumptions of national history and considers the institutional structures that promote it.
Forms of assessment will be negotiated in the first meeting of the seminar within the parameters of 6-8000 words of written work and seminar participation.
Modern China
Prof Helen Dunstan
The historiography of modern China is developing and changing fast. This is partly because changes within China have greatly improved the conditions for historical research, including oral history. Equally important, however, have been willingness to look at the familiar in new ways, ask new questions, maintain open conversations with other disciplines, and consider heretical ideas. In this seminar, discussion will focus on pathbreaking studies from the last two decades, from a prize-winning re-exploration of a famous confrontation between popular religion and imperialist might to some of the latest searing re-interpretations of the Maoist era. Individual project work will offer the opportunity either to become familiar with the historiography of a specific topic or to experiment with primary sources. No knowledge of Chinese is required.
Modern European History
Prof Robert Aldrich
The fin-de-siècle – roughly from 1890 to 1914 – was one of the most vibrant periods in modern European history. Picasso was painting the first works of Cubist art, and Freud was developing the theory of psychoanalysis. Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison for sodomy, and Alfred Dreyfus was tried for treason. Anarchists exploded bombs around Europe. European powers scrambled for Africa. On or about December 1910, Virginia Woolf remarked, human character changed. What did she mean? What was so 'belle' about the Belle Époque? This unit examines some of the themes in European cultural, social, political and colonial history in this period, with particular attention to the history and historiography of the urban crucibles of Paris, London and Vienna.
Early Modern Europe
Dr John Gagné
'Early modernity' is perhaps the historical period least recognized by name outside of academic circles. When was early modernity? What does the name mean? If we take it to be roughly the three centuries between 1400 and 1700, then it denotes the period in which the constituent elements of Western modernity were formulated, debated, and consolidated. How can historians retrace the steps of that process? What united the Italian renaissance, the religious reformations, and the articulation of a new science? This seminar investigates fundamental historical and historiographical themes in this age of creativity, faith, and skepticism. Weekly topics include: periodization; antiquarianism and humanism; belief and its reformers and critics; culture and art; bodies and anatomies; science, gender and environment; social history and narratives; media and publics.
Americas
Dr Michael A. McDonnell
Who created 'America'? Traditional histories of the United States usually focus on the European settler societies planted along the eastern seaboard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to explain the origin and rise of the new nation. More recently, historians have drawn on the insights of the new 'Atlantic history' to put these developments into a richer trans-national context, while others have utilised innovative methodologies to access the histories of non-Europeans during this period. This seminar will explore these new approaches and give students the opportunity to examine the multi-faceted ways in which indigenous and 'subaltern' peoples around the Atlantic basin confronted, challenged, and ultimately shaped the contours of empires in the early modern period, and the rise of the United States itself.
Victorianisms
Dr Frances Clarke
The Victorians were obsessed with measuring, quantifying, and classifying the world around them. In their search for natural laws and fixed truths, they invented new ways of understanding the boundary between male and female, self and other, healthy and ill, even life and death. At the same time, they evinced a fascination with those aspects of humankind that refused categorization–gawking at freakshows, collecting curiosities, and inventing hybrid creatures. This course places these twin urges side-by-side–analyzing a range of now redundant cultural practices, from phrenology and the water-cure movement to freakshows and spirit photography–in order to distinguish whether there was such a thing as a Victorian worldview.
Approach seminars
Biography
Assoc Prof Mark McKenna and Prof Peter Read
Biography, or 'life writing', is today one of the most popular forms of historical writing. This seminar focuses primarily on Australian biography and the particular challenges the form presents to historians. After a brief coverage of the history of biography, we will look at a range of biographies published in the last four decades: indigenous, military, literary, political and sport. These works will be discussed with a view to identifying changes in the genre over time and teasing out some of the more complex and interesting questions concerning life writing and historical method.
Violence in History
Dr Nick Eckstein
This unit examines many of the cultural forms that violence has taken in human history. One of the most easily essentialised issues the historian can confront, violence is also very difficult to confront dispassionately. The unit examines how sexuality, gender, class, ethnicity and other factors influence the way violence is constructed and inscribed on human consciousness. Topics include: ritual killing; sacrifice and honour; violence as ritual communication; punishment, discipline and social control; and cinematic representations of violence.
Place and Meaning in the Past
Dr Lyn Olson
Although traditionally associated with time, History can also be rewardingly approached through place, and place-oriented History has its own methodology. The places of which the historical meaning was investigated the last time the seminar was taught were: Greater Angkor, Philippopolis in the Balkans, Temple Mount / Dome of the Rock, findspots of 5th-6th-century Mediterranean pottery in the British Isles, a piazza in Florence, Delhi, a slaveholding household in Baltimore, Tiananmen Square, Robben Island in South Africa, Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse / Reichstag, the World Trade Center and houses in Sydney's Rocks (field trip). Other suggestions are welcome. The seminar offers both geographical breadth and chronological depth to round out your historical experience.
The Problem of The Text
Dr Julie Smith
It is axiomatic that historians of all periods and perspectives must engage with texts. What is more, each text and period presents its own particular challenges in the development of appropriate and proficient reading skills. Seminars will initially focus on readings that explore textual encounters from a variety of theoretical and cultural perspectives (including intellectual, gender, religious, colonial, social histories). Texts are not simply written, and may not necessarily be found in archives or libraries hence approaches will incorporate the study of a variety of non-written texts (such as bodies and material culture). The skills developed in this seminar are fundamental to historical practice, and allow for a variety of interests and fields of study, and include pragmatic skills (that is, reading difficult hands and unfamiliar or damaged materials). Students choose one of these approaches when developing their own seminar research projects.
Intellectual History Honours
Assoc Prof Andrew Fitzmaurice
We cannot do anything without first conceiving of it and this means we have an idea of what we do. Ideas shape the scope of human action. They define what is legitimate and is not. They motivate and they explain. But ideas do not live an independent life, separate from human experience. They are deeply embedded in the social world. They shape that world and are shaped by it.
This seminar will examine the history of ideas paying close attention to the contexts through which they are shaped. It will explore ways in which ideas can be used to understand history and in this sense it will introduce the history of ideas as an historical methodology. But the seminar will also pursue these aims through looking at the history of particular ideas, for example ideas of freedom and rights, and in this way it will range broadly through historical time, examining ideas in Classical, Medieval, Renaissance and Modern contexts.
The Thesis
- Examples of Honours theses
This link takes you to the Sydney eScholarship Repository, where electronic copies of History honours theses will be available, beginning with those completed in 2006
Ethics Clearance
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences administers an Honours Ethics Committee that processes all Disciplinary Honours-level ethics applications on behalf of the University Ethics Office.
What type of research needs ethics approval?
As a general principle, any research involving human subjects requires ethics approval, including projects involving the following kinds of methodologies (note: the list is not exhaustive): questionnaires; surveys or interviews (including oral history); telephone interviewing; recording by audio- or video-tape; observations of behaviour (including ethnographic fieldwork).
Please note that a key part of the approval process involves ensuring that the University complies with its duty of care to students. Safety protocols must be prepared for all students conducting any research off-campus, whether in Australia or overseas.
For further information and application procedures please see the Faculty's Ethics requirements.
Thesis Supervision
There is a single supervisor for a fourth-year student in the preparation of his or her Honours thesis, although students are encouraged to draw on the experience and expertise of other members of the department as appropriate. In exceptional circumstances, however, the Chair or the Honours Coordinator may authorize co-supervision. These cases would include, in particular, circumstances in which all of the specialists in a particular area of study are unavailable for part of the year. In such a situation, two members of staff would supervise a thesis, one in each semester. This arrangement must be agreeable to the student and the department. All students seeking co-supervision must complete a co-supervision application form.
Academic Staff Research Fields and Availability (2012)
- Professor Robert Aldrich
Modern European and colonial history, especially France; gay history - Professor Warwick H. Anderson
History of tropical medicine and international health; medical history and anthropology; biomedical sciences and racial thought; disease ecology - Professor Alison Bashford
History of medicine, history and gender, late modern European and British history - Dr Kit Candlin
Empire and imperialism, Atlantic World, Early Modern and modern Europe, the UK and United States - Dr Emma Christopher
Atlantic history; transatlantic slave trade; convict transportation - Dr Frances Clarke
Nineteenth century United States history, women’s and gender history, memorialization of warfare - Dr James Curran
Australian political and diplomatic history - Professor Ann Curthoys
Australian history, Aboriginal-European relations, historical theory - Dr Michael Davis
Indigenous/European histories and encounters; the relationships between Indigenous and other knowledge systems; Indigenous knowledge, ecology and place; ethical research and protocols for Indigenous studies. - Professor Helen Dunstan
Premodern Chinese history, economic thought and economic policy - Dr Marco Duranti
History of Modern Europe, particularly Western Europe in the twentieth century; Transnational history; History of human rights, humanitarianism, development and genocide; History and memory - Dr Nicholas Eckstein
Early Modern European history, late medieval and renaissance Italy, popular religion, urban history - Associate Professor Andrew Fitzmaurice
Early Modern European history, intellectual history, colonization and expansion - Dr John Gagné
Early modern European history, France & Italy, history of the book, medicine, bodies & gender - Associate Professor Chris Hilliard
Modern British history, history and literature, New Zealand history - Dr Julia Horne
Nineteenth and twentieth century history with emphases on Australia, history of university life, students, travel and landscape - Associate Professor Judith Keene
Twentieth century European History, film and history - Professor Iain McCalman
Eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth British and European history; popular culture and low life; uses of media for history - Dr Cindy McCreery
Modern European History, British and Irish History, maritime history, visual representations - Dr Michael McDonnell
History of the Atlantic World, Colonial and Revolutionary United States history, Native Americans - Dr Kirsten McKenzie
Australian history, colonialism, gender history, comparative colonial history
On leave all year; unable to supervise - Dr Lyn Olson
Medieval history, religious history - Professor Cassandra Pybus
Australian history; American history; Transatlantic history - Professor Peter Read
Aboriginal Australia; place; oral history - Associate Professor Stephen Robertson
Twentieth-century United States History, history of sexuality, legal history - Associate Professor Penny Russell
Australian history, women’s history, gender history, colonialism and biography and autobiography - Professor Glenda Sluga
Modern European History, nationalism and gender history; international history - Dr Julie Ann Smith
Medieval history, religious history and women’s history - Mr Richard White
Australian history; history of travel and tourism - Professor Shane White
United States history; African American history; the history of New York City
On leave all year; unable to supervise
Marking Scale for Fourth Year Honours
The department and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences regard the honours year as a single, unified program. Consequently, while honours students receive marks on the assignments they write in their seminars, they receive only one overall grade for honours on their academic transcript. At the first semester, students will receive an ‘R’ mark (indicating satisfactory performance) on their academic record. Their final, overall honours mark will be for the Honours D course code.
The marking scale for honours is as follows:
Above 90%: Eligible for medal
80%-100%: First Class
75%-79%: Second Class, Division One
70%-74%: Second Class, Division Two
65%-69%: Third Class
64% and below: Honours not awarded
As you can see, honours coursework and theses are marked on a different scale from undergraduate work. Eighty percent, the threshold for first-class honours, is equivalent to a High Distinction at undergraduate level. A mark of 79 in fourth-year thus indicates a higher achievement than a 79 in a third-year course.
The following criteria may help to explain the marking scale:
80-100: First Class (I)
90+
Work demonstrating the highest levels of accomplishment and intellectual autonomy that can be expected from an undergraduate student. An overall Honours mark of 90 or higher is a requirement for the award of a University Medal, though Medals are not automatically awarded to students with overall results of 90 or more.
In many fields of the humanities and social sciences, a mark in this range indicates substantial and innovative research; wide and deep reading in the scholarly literature; sophisticated, perceptive, and original interpretations of data, documentary evidence, fieldwork, literary texts, or works of art; and a very high level of independent thought and argument.
In work written in a language other than English, a mark in this range indicates an excellent level of grammatical accuracy, syntactical sophistication, and nuance in use of vocabulary and register.
85-89
Work that demonstrates a very high level of proficiency in the methodologies, subject matter, and modes of expression and argumentation appropriate to the field or fields studied. Work in this range shows strong promise for doctoral study.
In many fields of the humanities and social sciences, a mark in this range indicates substantial original research; wide and deep reading in the scholarly literature; a very high level of skill in interpreting data, documentary evidence, fieldwork, literary texts, or works of art; and a high level of independent thought.
In work written in a language other than English, a mark in this range indicates a very high level of grammatical accuracy with only some mistakes, as well as syntactical sophistication, and nuance in use of vocabulary and register.
80-84
Work that demonstrates a high level of proficiency in the methodologies, subject matter, and modes of expression and argumentation appropriate to the field or fields studied, and shows potential for doctoral study.
In many fields of the humanities and social sciences, a mark in this range can indicate thorough research; a firm grasp of the relevant scholarly literature; and a high level of skill in interpreting data, documentary evidence, fieldwork, literary texts, or works of art.
In work written in a language other than English, a mark in this range indicates a very high level of grammatical accuracy with few mistakes and only very rare basic errors, with vocabulary and syntax varied and expression highly coherent and well structured.
75-79: Second Class, First Division (II.1)
Work that demonstrates a generally sound knowledge of the methodologies, subject matter, and modes of expression and argumentation appropriate to the field or fields studied.
In many fields of the humanities and social sciences, a mark in this range can indicate solid research; a firm grasp of the relevant scholarly literature; and competent interpretations of data, documentary evidence, fieldwork, literary texts, or works of art. However, work in this range may also show evidence of a higher level of independent thought combined with some significant lapses in research or expression.
In work written in a language other than English, a mark in this range indicates a high standard of grammatical accuracy with few mistakes and only very rare basic errors, with vocabulary and syntax varied and expression highly coherent and well structured.
70-74: Second Class, Second Division (II.2)
Work that demonstrates an adequate but limited performance in the methodologies, subjects, and/or languages studied.
In many fields of the humanities and social sciences, a mark in this range can indicate an adequate general knowledge of the subject from the reading of both primary material and secondary literature, straightforward argumentation, and clear expression. A mark in this range may also reflect a superior performance in one or more of these areas combined with serious lapses in others.
In work written in a language other than English, a mark in this range indicates a good standard of grammatical accuracy, albeit with some mistakes, including occasional basic ones; the work shows a good grasp of complex sentence structures and an appropriately varied vocabulary.
65-69: Third Class (III)
Work only barely above the standard of pass-degree work in the field studied. A mark in this range indicates a basic but limited understanding of the methodologies and subject matter of the field or fields studied, and skills in argument and expression that are only just adequate for Honours-level study and research.
Below 65%
Honours not awarded.
Late Work
Requests for extension of time for late work must be made in writing (email) to the honours coordinator at the earliest possible date and before the relevant submission dates. Extensions will be granted only for serious illness or misadventure. For theses, the bar for an extension is much higher than it is for undergraduate assessments. A thesis is a long-distance event, not a sprint, and an illness that prevents you from pulling all-nighters in the last week is highly unlikely to be grounds for an extension.
Late work should be handed in at the SOPHI office and may not be marked if submitted without an extension. A record will be kept of work which is late without extension and presented to the final history honours meeting, which will take notice of this in its final assessment and ranking of students.
Scholarships
The University of Sydney offers scholarships for Honours. These are awarded on the basis of academic merit and personal attributes such as leadership and creativity.
Students currently enrolled at the University of Sydney or other universities intending to undertake an additional Honours year at the University of Sydney are eligible to apply.
Application forms can be obtained from the Scholarships Unit, Mackie Building K01, University of Sydney NSW 2006.
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