University of St Andrews

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 60

ECTS credits : 30

Level : SCQF level 10

Semester: Full Year

Availability restrictions: Available only to students in the second year of the Honours Programme.

Planned timetable: See http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/infoug/ugtimetable

The world was shrinking in the eighteenth century. Overseas travel increased exponentially and societies and cultures were transformed on a global scale. This course examines how overseas exploration affected science and society in eighteenth-century Europe, focusing primarily on France and its empire. The history of collecting is central: travel and trade meant that an unprecedented quantity of outlandish objects and new information circulated the globe. This course uses textual, visual and material sources to examine the histories of French exploration and empire-building, popular curiosity and collecting, and the making of the modern museum. We will link these themes to broader narratives concerning the significant cultural, social and scientific changes that took place more generally in Enlightenment Europe: education and religion; economic and industrial development, empire and the making of modern science, to name just a few.

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: 1 x 3-hour seminar, plus 1 office hour.

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: 2 x 2-hour Written Examinations = 40%, Coursework = 60%


Re-assessment: New Coursework: 1 x source exercise (2,500 words) and 1 x 5,000-word essay = 100%

Personnel

Module coordinator: Dr S Easterby-Smith
Module teaching staff: Dr S Easterby-Smith
Module coordinator email ses22@st-andrews.ac.uk