HISTORICAL WRITING WORKSHOP

The workshop is for the Bachelor’s degree students in History. It aims to prepare students to historical writing, with a specific focus on how to write a dissertation.
As the other workshops, this one does not have a final exam, but the achievement of a qualification (idoneità), which corresponds to 3 credits.
According to the workshop spirit, the lessons will not be frontal, but interactive. For this reason, the teacher strongly recommends attendance. Please, sign in the workshop by emailing the teacher at gaia.bruno@unive.it

-learning the scientific nature of historical writing
-learning the difference between scientific-historical writing and other types of writing with an historical content
-learning how to set up a dissertation, from the text to its apparatus (bibliography, notes, index)

Knowledge of the Italian language.

The workshop analyses the main features of historical writing with a double objective: making students aware of the peculiarity of historical texts, in comparison with other types of writing, and teaching how to write an historical text, with a particular focus on writing a dissertation. Lessons will be structured as follow. A first, introductive part will be dedicated to the definition of history as a science, starting from the debate on the basis of science, developed in Germany at the end of the Nineteenth century. In the second part of the workshop, different types of historical text will be presented, in order to underline the differences with other, currently used, forms of writing with an historical content (i.e. newspaper articles, historical novels, social media writing). The third section will be devoted to the acquisition of skills on how to write a dissertation by analysing and summarizing secondary sources; by learning how to structure a text; by developing the dissertation's technical apparatus (bibliography, index, notes)

Mandatory reading: Umberto Eco, Come si fa una tesi di laurea: le materie umanistiche, Milano, La nave di Teseo, 2021 [6 ed.]
Other readings (selected parts) will be uploaded by the teacher on Moodle and will be used during the lessons.

The workshop does not have a final exam, but the achievement of a qualification, which is possible to obtain with a final verification written and oral. The written part consists in the production of a text (4-5 pages) based on the principles learned during the workshop. The oral part of the verification will be the discussion of this text.

During the workshop, a part of the lessons will be used to explain contents and the other part will involve actively the students. For this reason, they will be asked to read small parts of selected readings as support materials for the lessons and to participate in the workshop activities. The proposed exercises are useful to gradually train the newly acquired skills; this is the reason why they will be self-evaluated by students.

In order to sign in the workshop, your should:
1. email the teacher at gaia.bruno@unive.it
2. register on Moodle
3. put the workshop on your study plan

In order to obtain the qualification, you should:
1. register for the verification at the end of the course
2. take the final verification, written and oral

written and oral