Syllabus
Introduction to history (doc. Spurný)
This course introduces students to the field, provides them with practical skills, and presents the key issues the historian faces in contemporary society.
During the course, students will learn about the primary source, how to critically analyze it, they will learn about the nuances between the scientific literature and popularizing science books and how the scientific historical text should be independently conceived. Students will also become familiarized with the basic institutions crucial for providing the historian with background – archives and libraries (both theoretically and practically through field trips). Additionally, students will learn about the formative historical debates and about the central interpretative questions, though only selectively, in view of their quantity, (based on the student’s own interests).
The winter semester will primarily involve active participation within the frame of debate and performance of partial tasks. We will continue the pursuit of both these objectives in the summer semester, with the addition of continuous elaboration of seminar paper. This "first theses" will also (together with the literature read by particular students) be the base of a final discussion with the teacher.