Syllabus OverviewHistory

Immerse Education aims to challenge participants with interesting academic concepts in an environment where tutors are welcoming and supportive. Our philosophy is that students should thrive in their academic endeavours, not merely survive.

This syllabus has been carefully designed by Immerse Education tutors with the mission to provide all participants with a taster of what it’s like to study a chosen course at an advanced level. During your summer programme with Immerse, participants will explore a wide range of themes and concepts that are not typically explored at school level, enabling students to explore their passion for a subject beyond the confines of a school curriculum.

Our tutors take great care in designing and delivering a syllabus that is academically challenging to all participants while simultanously building each individual’s confidence in their own ability. Tutors are therefore able to tailor their teaching according to the interests and abilities of the students in their class.

This syllabus overview is designed to give a sense of the topics you will be engaging with in Cambridge this summer. These topics are carefully chosen to reflect current areas of academic research, the individual specialisms of our tutors and content that students may encounter should they decide to pursue their subject at a higher level.

Sean StevensProgramme Director

Immerse Education’s Academic Sessions

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The Level of Academic Difficulty

As all of our programmes are designed to provide a unique introduction to advanced material, the syllabus will be academically challenging at times.

This is something to be excited about and all of our tutors will encourage and support participants throughout the programme. Immerse Education aims to develop every participant regardless of ability, and our tutors will adapt their teaching to individual needs.

The Modular System Explained

The modular system of teaching practiced during the Immerse programme enables participants to explore a variety of different topics. The aim is to provide exposure to different topics within the same discipline, each of which is challenging and interesting.

Each syllabus contains a number of different topics and most days of the programme will introduce a new topic which will build upon knowledge gained so far.

Preparatory Materials

Not all programmes have preparatory material, but if yours does, it will be at the end of this Syllabus Overview document. This is to be completed before attending Immerse Education as it ensures that all participants begin their summer programme with the same foundation of knowledge and understanding, ready to explore ideas at a deeper level. Tutors will discuss the preparatory materials during the first academic session.

The preparatory material should take no more than 10 hours to complete.

Tutors and the Syllabus

Throughout the academic sessions, participants will be taught by a dedicated and passionate subject tutor. As a tutor of undergraduate students, our tutors have a wealth of experience in guiding students to academic success.

The Immerse tutors are experts in their field and are on hand to support students’ learning by imparting their enthusiasm for exploring academic concepts in depth.

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Top tips for succeeding

Have fun.

The Immerse syllabus is meant to be challenging but don’t forget, there is a joy to learning and we want you to find it!

Get involved.

Immerse isn’t just about being taught, it is about challenging yourself. Voice your opinion, then question it! Engage in debates in class, carry on those debates outside of class. Try a new activity that you haven’t tried before! Immerse offers participants a whole range of exciting opportunities – seize the opportunity and get involved.

Ask lots of questions

If you don’t understand something, ask! If you do and want to explore something more, ask! You have access to some of the top minds in the entire world, so feel free to pick their brains while you have the chance.

Complete the ‘learning how to learn’ course

This free course gives you easy access to the invaluable learning techniques used by experts in art, music, literature, math, science, sports, and many other disciplines. You’ll learn about the how the brain uses two very different learning modes and how it encapsulates (“chunks”) information. You’ll also cover illusions of learning, memory techniques, dealing with procrastination, and best practices shown by research to be most effective in helping you master tough subjects.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

“It was an amazing experience, worth every single minute. You

meet so many different people, and leave with wonderful memories

that you will never forget.”

- Rebecca, 2017

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TOPIC 1:

The Study of History and Using Historical Sources-This day of the course will introduce you to the study of history at university level. It will introduce the concept of historiography – how history is, and has been, written about by scholars. As part of this we will consider the different sub-disciplines of history and the various approaches they entail. We will also think about the use of different types of historical sources to those usually encountered before university level, and in particular the theory behind the use of material and visual culture as historical sources. Finally, we will discuss how to engage with historical sources including writing in response to unseen sources.

TOPIC 2:

Renaissance-This module of the course will begin our study of the early modern period in earnest by addressing the intellectual, artistic, and cultural developments referred to as the Renaissance. It will acknowledge the flourishing of new ideas associated with humanism, developments in artistic styles, and changing forms of artistic production, but it will complicate older narratives of an emergence from the intellectual darkness of the medieval period, of a Renaissance emanating solely from Italy, and of the rise of the self. It will necessarily involve an engagement with History of Art, including close examination of a range of images and objects. It will also delve into the History of Political Thought by addressing the ideas of civic humanism and famous political thinkers of the Renaissance era, such as Machiavelli.

Topics

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TOPIC 3:

The Reformations-In 1517 Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, supposedly dramatically pinned to the Church door in Wittenberg, in which he attacked what he saw as the corruption of the Catholic Church and proclaimed the principle of justification by faith alone, sparked a period of religious upheaval with considerable social, cultural, and political consequences. Luther was far from the only reformer, and his ideas were themselves soon challenged by others such as Calvin. The Catholic Church, too, embarked on a period of Counter-Reformation and global missions. Meanwhile, alongside these ‘magisterial’ reformations came other ‘radical’ groups. This module of the course will explore the context and impact of these ideas, incorporating a wide range of visual and material sources and considering some of the main scholarly debates.

TOPIC 4:

Science and Discovery-The early modern period was one of discovery. Famously, in 1492 Christopher Columbus encountered the Americas. This led to encounters with, and the collection of, new cultures, new plants, and new objects. Our period saw the works of figures such as Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, as well as the foundation of royal societies. Some historians have gone so far as to proclaim this as a ‘Scientific Revolution’. While we shall see that any simplistic narratives of the birth of modern science have been convincingly undermined, the study of the natural world did find new settings and take on a new significance in our period. This aspect of the course will incorporate ideas from the History and Philosophy of Science.

TOPIC 5:

Gender and Witch-hunting-A lively area of research and debate among historians of the early modern period in recent decades, and among historians more broadly, has been that of gender – how gendered identities were constructed, whether there were masculine and feminine spaces and how space could structure gendered power relations, how gendered roles were expressed, defined, or blurred, and how these roles might change under different circumstances. This topic will involve discussion of theory, specific examples, and various aspects of material culture including clothing and domestic objects. In this module of the course we will also look at an often closely related aspect of the period, that of witch-hunting. The early modern period saw persecutions of ‘witches’ across Europe, and the majority of those persecuted were female, though with regional variations. We will explore the debate among scholars as to whether this was evidence of patriarchal misogyny, or whether there were other explanations for this phenomenon.

TOPIC 6:

Global Encounters-The discovery of the New World clearly opened up new global encounters with non-European, non-Christian peoples. Yet these were not the only ‘others’ encountered by Europeans in this period. The religious missions of the Counter-Reformation brought interactions with far-flung places such as China. In Spain, in particular, Christians came into contact with the Moors and their culture. There was also the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, which captured Constantinople in 1453 and continued to advance westwards, even laying siege to Vienna. Yet encounters with the Ottomans were not all hostile in nature; there were diplomatic exchanges and Ottoman goods were treated as luxuries. An interesting lens through which to view these global interactions is that of food and drugs such as sugar, tobacco, and coffee, which were traded across the early modern globe and which came with associated customs of consumption and material cultures.

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TOPIC 7:

State Formation, Revolts, and Courts-Some older historiography has seen the early modern period as witnessing the ‘rise of the nation state’ – the beginnings of centralised governments, aligned with national units, and under the control of ‘absolutist’ rulers. While this has been rightly challenged, with historians particularly highlighting the continued importance of patronage networks and localised authority, our period did see an increase in the bureaucracy of governance, the development of more permanent and more lavish courts, and an accompanying rhetoric of absolute rule by figures such as Louis XIV – the ‘Sun King’ at Versailles. Whether courts were, in fact, systems for taming the nobility or cages in which monarchs became trapped themselves, and whether there was anything more than a façade of absolute rule, are matters for debate. Resistance to central authority was also rife, with frequent popular revolts, and even more threatening major risings such as the Fronde in France or the English Civil War. In this topic we shall discuss the troubled and disrupted process of state formation across a range of territories, frequently drawing on primary sources including the writings of Louis XIV himself.

TOPIC 8:

Court Festivals-Court festivals involving lavish, highly choreographed, highly symbolic combinations of entertainments were a prominent feature of the early modern period in Europe. Triumphal entries, processions, tournaments, banquets, firework displays, and so on were held to mark significant occasions such as a ruler’s Christening, wedding, or funeral, the coming of peace or the forging of an alliance. They were recorded in a number of ways ranging from material culture, such as elaborate suits of armour, through pamphlet literature to magnificent and often costly festival books, and experienced and participated in on a multi-sensory level, albeit perhaps differently so, by their entire audience: the common people, nobility, and ambassadors alike. Festivals provided a crucial means by which the nobility could not only represent but also assert and construct their power and legitimacy to rule, they were also moments of encounter as different peoples gathered, and were represented at, such occasions. Dr Morris is a leading expert in the field of early modern festivals research, and this topic will introduce a range of cultural historical approaches, touching on historical anthropology and sociology.

TOPIC 9:

Working with Source and How Historians Ask Questions-On this penultimate day of the course, as well as further group discussion on working with historical sources, each student will receive individual feedback on the source-based essays which they have written. Dr Morris will also give a brief insight into the process of his own research, focusing on how historians ask new questions of the past and draw on the range of approaches to history which you have learned.

TOPIC 10:

Presentations and Conclusions-This final day of the course will review what you have learned: about the early modern period, and about the practice of history itself. It will focus on discussion and debate of broad themes, and the presentation of your ideas. There will also be a final opportunity to ask any questions you might have about studying history at university.

Preparatory Materials: -Your tutor has provided the following materials to help you prepare for your programme with Immerse. Please take some time to consider the following and complete any tasks before the programmes begins.

PDFs of the following will be supplied:

Karl Popper, ‘Has History any Meaning?’, in Open Society and its Enemies (1945), vol. II, pp. 259-80, and

Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘The Idea of Early Modern History’, in M. Bentley, ed., Companion to Historiography (1997), pp. 268-79 .

Please then write half a page of your reaction to, and observations on,each piece to bring to the first class. In particular, you may want to think about the broad questions suggested.

What is the role of the historian in the making of history?

Is there anything unique about history which separates it from other subjects of study?

Is there such a thing as historical ‘truth’ or objectivity?

What is the purpose of historical study?

Does it make sense to think about historical periods at all, or about the ‘early modern’ in particular?

Your tutor has also suggested some additional reading for the topics covered in this course which will be referred to in group discussions. This material will be made available to students at the start of the course. It would be beneficial, but is not mandatory, to look at this material alongside the classes.

“Immerse was an enriching and challenging course which assisted me to develop and refine goals for the future. I went in with a dream and left the programme thinking it could become a reality.”

- Annabel, 2017

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