Module Guide

Customs and Culture in Britain and Europe, c.1500-2000

Credit Rating

There are 30 Scotcat points available for this module.

Module Pre-requisites

You may take this module if you have accumulated a minimum of 200 credits.

Module Content

Calendar customs and community ritual are the focus of this class. We examine a fantastic variety of ritualistic activity - much of it in carnival - to analyse the meanings being conveyed. We look at common threads and theoretical issues concerning understanding of them. We study outwith a chronological framework, concerned more with reading the text (what is ritual telling us) than with setting the context (the economic and social structures which historians are often engrossed in studying). This course will challenge presumptions about the nature of the historian's craft, and introduce students to the use of modern cultural theory.

The course will have three layers:

First, theories of ritual and community custom (from social and symbolic anthropology, from folklore, from social science, from traditional social history, from structuralism and poststructuralism, and from narrative studies).

Second, the study of types of ritual activity (such as guising, drama, animal-related activity, gunpowder-related activity, and so on).

Third, the study of the major themes in community ritual (such as misrule, inversion by gender, social class, age etc, and protest and revolution).

The rituals to be studied will be mostly British and European, but using examples drawn from the USA and elsewhere. The types of custom concerned include Guy Fawkes, Christmas, Hogmanay, the Sienna Palio, bull-running at Pamplona and elsewhere, harvest-home, and of course carnival (including football matches at Mardi Gras).

Module Aims

• To introduce students to the study of ritual in community as a window into cultural history
• To demonstrate the availability of theories from a variety of disciplines in the study of ritual and community
• To introduce students to a variety of types of source on ritual (including the web and court cases)
• To develop student skills in exploring the myths of ritual, in deconstruction and narrative analysis
• To permit the use of novel types of theory and source together in written work

Intended Learning Outcomes

• To equip students with a knowledge of the techniques of modern cultural theory as used in cultural history. To undermine fear of theory.
• To leave students excited and keen to develop their new skills in other work.
• To provide a firm grounding in methods for analysing community customs over long periods of history.

Teaching

I will be teaching this class through lectures, seminars and one-to-one tutorials. I will be using video, and will be asking students to use the web for part of the class.

Core Reading

To get an idea of the types of things to study have a look at:-

Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (1997, Oxford). Paperback. Price - £9.99 or thereby

E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (1991).

Callum G. Brown, Up-helly-aa: Custom, culture and community in Shetland (Manchester, 1998).

David Cressy , 'Gender trouble and cross dressing in early-modern England', Journal of British Studies, vol. 35 (1996), pp. 438-65.

And have a look at 'Workers Revolt: the Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin', in Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, (New York, 1985). It is available online (www.geocities.com/pashathecat/History/Cat_Massacre.html ).

On the theory, have a look at chapter 2 in Callum G. Brown, Postmodernism for Historians (London, 2005).

Assessment

The assessed components for this module are:

• One essay worth 20% of the final mark
• An oral presentation worth 15% of the final mark
• A project worth 15% of the final mark
• A two-hour degree examination worth 50% of the final mark

Specimen Essay Titles

• Define misrule.
• Analyse the functions of the mask in calendar customs.
• Examine the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon community ritual.
• What purpose was the social inversion in ritual?