This course is specifically geared towards assisting students with the research and writing of their theses and with placing their work in an historiographical context. It seeks to guide students in the development of appropriate research strategies; to explore critically the historiographical issues and conceptual paradigms which inform this research; to explore the processes, art and craft of writing history; and to introduce students to history as a profession and the pathways by which careers in history are made.

Attention will be given to the varieties of historical research and writing - to the practice of history as expressed in different fields of research and different modes of writing. Consideration will also be given to the ways in which the boundaries of the discipline have been shifted through intellectual changes affecting research and argument in the humanities and social sciences generally.