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Assessment, 2026-2027

The assessment for this 30 CATS first-year module is as follows:

First-Year History Options

For details of examination and assessment, along with information about deadlines and extensions, please see the 'Assessment' pages of the Undergraduate Handbook /fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/assess-courseworkLink opens in a new window. Please refer to Tabula for your deadlines.

Visiting / Exchange students may have separate assignments and deadlines listed in the departmental handbook.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any queries about these assessment methods. Please also refer to the descriptions below.

Marking criteria

For information about the marking conventions used when assessing your work, please see the 'Marking' section of the Assessment pages in the undergraduate student handbook /fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/assess-courseworkLink opens in a new window.

It follows the University 20 point scale. The specific history department marking descriptors are available here: /fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/assess-coursework/#markingscaleLink opens in a new window

Contact Hours

Contact hours for this 30 CATS first-year module are as follows:

• Module duration: Twenty-two weeks
• Lectures: Twenty one-hour lectures
• Seminars: Twenty one-hour seminars
• Tutorials: Three hours of essay feedback and long essay preparation

Feedback

Written feedback (via Tabula) and optional individual tutorials (via Teams, in office hours or by appointment) will be provided to all students taking this module.

Assessment instructions

Assignment 1: Skills exercise (10%)

For this assignment, you will need to provide an analysis of a primary source based on any aspect of early modern deviant culture or deviant individuals of your choice. As this assignment comes early in the academic year, I suggest focusing on a group that interests you from across the whole module and doing some secondary reading around the topic. You will be expected to write 1,000 words and to provide a summary paragraph explaining the steps that you took to locate the source and how you selected it to answer a specific research question.

Why a primary source commentary?

In this module, we discuss primary sources in every seminar, so this assignment builds on the skills and the type of analysis you routinely conduct in class. It will give you the opportunity to engage deeply with a source, or group of sources, and to get feedback and advice on approaches to incorporate primary material into your analysis. It will also help you prepare for future essays, including your final year dissertation, where close engagement with primary material is a basic requirement.

What question shall I use?

You do not need a question, but you should still produce an analysis with a clear point. It may be helpful to think of this as an argument for how and why this source could be (or has been) useful to historians, or for how it helps us to understand a particular theme related to this module. Your title should be a full reference to the primary source(s) being discussed e.g. Nicholas Sander, 'Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, 1585', in Early Modern Catholicism: an anthology of primary sources, ed. by Robert S. Miola (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 405-408. There is a , but if you are still unsure, please contact your seminar tutor.

What makes a good commentary?

You will need to do some research around the author and source itself, rather than just taking its contents at face value. It is expected that you will consult at least 5 other items of high-quality secondary literature to provide context and perspective on the source.

You should use secondary literature to help back up the claims you are making about the source, for example: the creator’s motivation, how popular it was, why it was written, or the historical event it is referring to. You may also want to use secondary literature to discuss broader methodological issues with using this type of source. EG: if we are using a portrait, art historians point out that these are not necessarily realistic depictions, and discuss various conventions or tropes popular at the time.

There is an excellent collection of essays by Laura Sangha and Jonathan Willis (eds.),  (London: Routledge, 2016). This is aimed at students and goes through seven categories of primary material, e.g. legal records, diaries, literary works, visual sources etc. It also addresses what types of sources can be used to help explore major themes.

How should this assignment be structured

This is a skills-based assignment and it is essential that you also provide an overview of the steps you took to identify and select the source. Use the introduction to establish the key things we, as a reader, need to know about this source to interpret it. It may be useful to think about the classic questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How? Establish what type of source this is and its genre: is it a letter, a book, a painting? What is the most important context for understanding not only what this source says or does on the surface, but understanding its meaning(s) at the time, and how it has been interpreted by scholars today?

You should then select some key points which will help make the case for why this source is valuable. This might be to do with how special or representative it is, or what it tells us about a key historical event, or a particular cultural attitude, etc. In order to demonstrate the source’s importance, you will need to provide examples from the source and contextualise these examples using the secondary literature.

The essay should conclude in one paragraph, by drawing together the key takeaways to identify the most significant benefits and limitations to using the source.

High-quality answers will think critically about the source. They will not just assert that a source is biased, but explain how we can identify the creator’s perspective, the evidence available for why they had that perspective, (or why the source is the way it is,) and how that can help us better understand the source, the historical subject of study (i.e. the module themes), and the scholarship. High-quality answers will not only use secondary literature to contextualise the source, but to discuss how the source might relate to wider historiographical debates relevant to this module.

Some things to consider:

• How the source is constructed: this might be the language or wording used, the keywords, phrases or concepts invoked. They might be the symbols or figures depicted, the composition, or the materials and techniques used in making an object. Think about how and why these are important, what meanings they might have.
• Source Context: Is this part of a larger series of texts, images, or objects? Does this larger corpus have significance? How does the piece relate to other sources in this corpus? Was it representative? innovative? unusual? Influential?
• Creator’s Context: Who wrote this and what do we know about them – is it important? What do we know about the aims of the author(s)? If this is all a mystery, can we still deduce something about who produced this?
• Audience: Do we know, or can we make an argument for who this was aimed at, or intended for? Did it reach unintended audiences? Do we know, or can we present evidence for, how it may have been received or interpreted at the time?
• Historical Context. When was it created and is this significant? How does the source relate to the period as a whole, and what is its broader historical significance?
• Historiography: In assessing the significance of the source, it is worth considering this in relation to the wider historiography. Does the piece raise historiographical or methodological questions? Does it relate to a historiographical debate? What are the key debates to which this relates? How have historians interpreted it or sources like it?

How should I present it?

Aside from the title (see query regarding question above) and providing an outline of the research process for identifying and selecting the source in question, this assignment should be presented in the same way as any other written essay - written in continuous prose and divided into paragraphs. Citations should be used throughout, including for the primary source under discussion. Those using an image or a material source should pay attention to how the guide linked below instructs you to reference these in the essay’s main text, as it is slightly different to how you footnote textual/documentary sources.

All primary and secondary works cited, should be listed alphabetically by author in a bibliography at the end. If you have chosen to focus on a visual image or an object, please include a copy of the image either in the main body of the essay or as an Appendix. This should have a caption denoting which number image it is (e.g. Figure 1), and a full reference to the object or image. If you are unsure how to format this see the short guide for referencing primary sources.

If in doubt – ask your tutor!

Guidance and support. We will devote space to discuss this assignment before the assessment and on how to access relevant primary source databases. You are encouraged to meet with your seminar tutor by appointment in office hours to discuss your ideas, and/or to email with queries.

Marking Criteria. The departmental essay marking criteria will be applied to this assignment, focusing on argument; knowledge, understanding, presentation; and academic practice. It follows the History department assessment criteria and the University 20 point scale and is available here: /fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/assessments-marking/ Link opens in a new window

Assignment 2: 2,000-word focused essay (30%)

This is a more 'traditional' essay, enabling you to enhance your research and academic writing skills.

This essay gives you the chance to showcase your research skills by enabling you to answer a more specalised essay on a deviant group or aspect of deviant culture of your choice.

Where do I find the question? A list of questions for this assignment is available here:

You should choose a group or topic that you enjoy learning about/would like to know more and should be interest-led. You may use one of the questions on the list as a basis, but you will be encouraged to devise your own question in discussion with your tutor during office hours. All questions must be approved to ensure that you are meeting the objectives of the course.

What should I include? Aim to combine elements of historiography [how historians have approached this subject] with primary source analysis. Aim to cite a range of secondary readings in relation to the groups you are discussing. Don't just rely on texts available electronically - make use of the library. Whilst it is hard to put an exact number of the amount of texts you will need for an essay of this length, as it will depend on the length of the texts you are reading (e.g. a whole book is very different from an article), aiming for 12-15 works on your bibliography would be a reasonable target (this can be a mixture of primary and secondary materials).

How do I find sources? Make use of scholarly works and texts and works provided on your reading lists in the first instance and from exploring the library catalogue. Note: there are many materials and webpages available on the Internet, but if they are not an academic book or journal article, it is unlikely that they will have been peer-reviewed and not recognised as accurate scholarly outputs. You are welcome to email either the module convenor or your tutor for further recommendations if you are struggling to find sources.

Naomi is also happy to advise on how information used in the lectures can be cited - avoid citing the lectures themselves.

What marking criteria will be used? The departmental essay marking criteria will be applied to this assignment. It follows the University 20 point scale and is available here: /fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/assess-coursework/#markingscaleLink opens in a new window

Feedback. Written feedback (via Tabula) and optional individual tutorials (via Teams, in office hours or by appointment) will be provided to all students taking this module.

Assignment 3: 3,000-word comparative essay (50%)

This is similar to a 'traditional' essay, but has a comparative focus, which means you will therefore be expected to similarities and differences in the experiences of at least two deviant groups (and, ideally, at least two places in Europe) to answer this question. It is best to keep the question and focus as narrow as possible to ensure that you can make meaningful comparisons, so avoid the temptation of taking on too many groups of deviants to answer the question.

Where do I find the question? Please choose a question from this question page:

They are deliberately general to enable you to compare the treatment of more than one group. You can also devise your own question by talking to me or your seminar tutor. Do not come up with your own question without prior approval.

What else should I include? Please combine elements of historiography [how historians have approached this subject] with primary source analysis. Aim to cite a range of secondary readings in relation to the groups you are discussing. Don't just rely on texts available electronically - make use of the library. Avoid citing blog posts and other work available through search engines online (unless the scholar in question is a known authority on a topic), as this will not be subject to the academic standards or integrity we would expect for work of this level.

Feedback

Written feedback (via Tabula) and optional individual tutorials (via Teams, in office hours or by appointment) will be provided to all students taking this module.

20-point Marking ScaleLink opens in a new window

Participation / Engagement Mark (10%)

This aspect of the module's assessment will be based on your contributions to seminars over the whole year. The mark is decided by your seminar tutor in the Summer Term, who will assess your contributions in weekly seminars across the module.

The best preparation you can do for this assignment is do the seminar reading, turn up to seminars, and contribute to the discussion in class (this can be small group as well as whole-class discussion). Participation might also include following any instructions you are provided by your seminar tutors, e.g. contributing to a module forum.

This assessment is NOT simply about the quantity of your contributions to this module (i.e. how often you spoke or answered questions in seminars), but about the quality of your engagement (e.g. clarity of expression, asking questions of your peers or of the material you have read/engaged with in preparation for the class, being respectful and inclusive of others, such as allowing others to speak and engaging with their opinions, your reading and preparation for seminars).

What marking criteria will be used? The departmental 'seminar contribution' marking criteria will be applied to this assignment. It follows the University 20 point scale and is available here: /fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/assess-coursework/#seminarcontribution