Department of History
University of Bergen
Sydnesplassen 7
N-5007 Bergen, Norway
Phone +47.55212321 or
Phone +47.55212300
Fax +47.55901445
oldervoll@hi.uib.no
| Erasmus Summer School
New Methods in History Bergen, Norway, September 13-21, 1996 Click here to get a look at what is going on |
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Department of History |
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In parallel with Professor Hareven's course Herdis Kolle and Arne Solli will teach a course in household methods.
Professor Tamara Hareven, Delaware:
Family History and the Life Course
This course will introduce students to the major themes in the historical and interdisciplinary study of the family and the life course. Through reading and discussion of major representative scholarly writings in this area, the course will examine the development of this field and the major theoretical and methodological issues. Readings and discussion will address major themes such as household, family membership and organization, kinship, marriage, family formation and divorce. Discussions will also address major debates concerning the family's interaction with the process of industrialization, and urbanization and with other societal institution.
Examining the life course paradigm, the readings and discussion will address major historical research on the life course in relation to the family to societal institutions, and to culture. Participants will have the opportunity to carry out qualitative analysis of original interview transcripts, examining various aspects of the life course and the family.
Professor Hareven will teach half of the day. During the rest of the day Herdis Kolle and Arne Solli will teach household computer based methods.
This course aims to introduce students to the value of oral history as a tool for helping us understand the past. It involves both classroom discussion and supervised fieldwork.
In the classroom we will utilize a seminar format to explore the use of oral evidence in illuminating the experience of slaves, industrial laborers, and other (historically speaking) "inarticulate" groups. Students will consider the following questions: How reliable is oral history? What is the difference between oral history, oral tradition and folklore? Can oral testimonies be considered records of what actually happened in the past? Or are they subjective reflections of the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the individuals and communities that narrate them? What can we learn from oral history that cannot be found in other, more traditional historical documents?
Students also will be introduced to specific oral history techniques. This will involve sessions on equipment, the mechanics of the oral history interview, the uses of oral testimony in historical writing, and the editing process. Much of this coursework will center around an extensive set of interviews with American trade union activists, but students are encouraged to bring to the class their own fieldwork experiences and tape- recorded interviews. There will be regular workshop sessions in which students can experiment with various methods and practice conducting interviews. Working in teams, they will conduct at least one oral interview in Bergen, transcribe a portion of it, and edit it for class discussion.
Professor Anton Kales, Berkeley and
Professor Jürgen Müller, Passau:
New Historicism and Semiohistory:
Representation of Urban Space in Cinema 1895-1995
Every film is a document of its time. Even if a film does not explicitly deal with historical events, history is encoded in numerous ways in the film s narrative and vidual organization as well as in its commentary on gender, class, cultural values and social traditions. It is the project of the course to teach techniques and strategies (indebted to such recent methods as new historicism and semiohistory) that allow us to read films as sign system secretly but inevitably shaped by history. At the same time we shall direct our attention to a film s power to construct time and space, history and social meaning. Considering that in this century political and social history is recorded not only in written form but also in moving images, a vast array of historical source material opens up that historians have only recently begun to study.
In order to test this new methodology we plan to explore the changing representations of urban space in cinema. Ranging from earlier depictions of urban life in Lumiere s films to contemporary postmodern depictions of cities, the course will touch on such topics as the relationship between architectural and filmic perception in the cinema, the impact of film on the analysis of cities, and the historical changes in the conceptualization of sites and places.
The Course will demonstrate that the tradition split in film studies between formalist and historical analysis, between attention to film aesthetic detail and an awareness of larger discourses can be overcome by a method that is dynamic because it crosses disciplinary boundaries between film, architecture, urbanism and history.
Dr. Michael Goerke, Firenze
Dr. Gerald Sprengnagel, Salzburg
Historical Cartography: Analysis of Migration and Social Segregation
The course will deal with spatial representation of historical data: first it gives a general introduction to methods and tools for drawing maps in historical research by encompassing the whole process of map- making from the digitizing of geographical information, through the linkage with statistical data, to the final map-design and high- resolution printout. In a second part, these techniques are applied to migration and segregation analysis: here the course scrutinizes the patterns of inter- regional migration and the question of local segregation in 19th century towns. Therefore data will be provided from the 1869 census of Wiener Neustadt (Lower Austria) with information on about 20,000 persons in 5,000 households, and administrative statistics of the Habsburg Monarchy (Lower Austria, Bohemia and Moravia) where information on migration and socio- economic structure at district level is available.
Participants should be familiar with MS Windows; the use of mapping tools will be introduced during the course.
Professor Manfred Thaller, Bergen/Göttingen:
Images and Manuscripts as Objects of Digital Systems.
In recent years it became very easy to reproduce pictorial sources as well as manuscript material on computer screens in qualities rivaling professional photography. At the same time the possibility to distribute such collections easily and cheaply via sets of CD- ROMs as well, as over the computer networks arose. Using both techniques, it is currently possible within relatively small projects to create digital editions or digital archives of up to 50.000 or 100.000 digital objects (pages of manuscript, photographs etc.) without overly large effort.
This full day course is designed to give participants both, a good overview over the existing technologies in that area as well as some practical experience.
Than practical experience is to acquired by the participation in a "teaching project", which will lead the participants through all stages of the creation of a small digital archive up to and including the steps necessary to write it unto CD- ROMs and make it available via the networks. The emphasis of this practical project will be decided in accordance with the preferences of the participants.
The theoretical part of the course is intended to give participants a sound background in all the questions related to the design of such projects. The following fields will be covered
The certificate for this class is acquired by (a) active participation in the demonstration project and (b) by passing a written test on the theoretical principles discussed.
Professor Jan Oldervoll and
Frode Ulvund, Bergen:
The world wide web: A medium for communication between historians
The Internet was experience a mass influx of new users during the last few years. This is first of all due to the introduction of the world wide web and browsers like Netscape. This has made it much easier to navigate the Internet and get information. But this has another side to it. To make it possible to get information, somebody must provide information. In most cases, information provided by historians are the most useful for historians. Teaching historians to provide information on the web is important.
During this course the students will learn the basics of creating web pages. This incudes formatting text and pictures. We will also look at the possibility of using the web for communications like virtual seminars. We will use real source material as our testing ground, working in cooperation with the household group.
Who can participate?
The Summer School is open for all students having studied history for approximately two years. The number of students will be limited to 15 students in each course.
Travel grants will be available for students from the following universities:
1000 NOK = 1600 ATS, 250NLG and 100 BPL.
Lodging
We have reserved rooms in two guesthouses very close to university as well as to the center of the town. The price will be NOK 200 a night, breakfast included.
Food
All university cafeterias are open, and are serving both lunch and dinner.
Travel
From UK the a nice way of getting to Bergen is by going on the ship from Newcastle to Bergen. Color Viking is a large, cruise-style ship, very comfortable. It is leaving Newcastle on Tuesday 10 September at 1830, coming to Bergen on Wednesday at 2115. The ship is leaving Bergen on Monday at 1100, arriving Newcastle at Tuesday at 1100. The price is as low as NOK 305 one way for students.
From the continent one possibility is to go by the boat from Hanstholm on the north tip of Jutland to Bergen. The ship Bergen is leaving Hanstholm on Thursday 12 at 1630 arriving Bergen on Friday 13 at 0900, just in time for the school. The boat is leaving Bergen on Monday at 16.30 arriving Hansholm on Tuesday at 0900. The price for students are approx . NOK 400 both ways. Driving to Hansholm is probably by far the cheapest way of getting to Bergen. We should like to ad that both ships are large, oceangoing ships, built for Atlantic winter storms. Summer trips are very, very comfortable.
Addresses:
Of course Bergen has an international airport with direct connections to several UK cities. If you are coming from the continent you can go via Copenhagen or Oslo. You should arrive on Thursday.