§-History Extension syllabus
NSW · NESA← History Extension
History Extension syllabus, dot point by dot point
Every dot point in the NSW History Extension syllabus, with a focused answer for each. Click any dot point for a worked explainer, past exam questions and links to related points.
Constructing History
Module overview →What are the aims and purposes of history, and how have historians disagreed about what history is actually for?
Students investigate the aims and purposes of history and how these have been understood differently by historians across time and cultures
How do you use a case study and the three areas of historiographical debate to answer the key questions in the HSC exam?
Students apply the key questions and three areas of historiographical debate to a chosen case study to analyse how and why interpretations of a historical issue have changed
How did feminist and gender history challenge who and what history was about, and how did it move from recovering women to analysing gender as a category of historical analysis?
Students examine feminist and gender history, its recovery of women's experience and its development of gender as a category of analysis in the work of Scott, Davis and Rowbotham
How did Herodotus and Thucydides invent the practice of history, and why do their contrasting methods still define what historians do?
Students analyse the foundational methods of Herodotus and Thucydides and how their contrasting approaches to inquiry, evidence and narrative shaped the discipline
How has history been constructed, recorded and presented in different times, and what methods and forms have historians used?
Students analyse how history has been constructed, recorded and presented over time, including the methods, sources and forms historians have used
How do Indigenous and non-Western traditions construct and transmit the past, and how have they challenged the assumption that academic Western history is the only legitimate form?
Students examine Indigenous and non-Western ways of constructing history, oral and ancestral traditions, deep time, and the challenge they pose to the Western documentary model
How does the Marxist tradition explain historical change through class and material conditions, and how did history from below recover the experience of ordinary people?
Students analyse Marxist historiography, its materialist theory of change and class conflict, and the British history from below of Thompson, Hobsbawm and Hill
Can history be objective and truthful, or is all history shaped by the historian's perspective, and how have historians answered this?
Students evaluate debates about objectivity, truth, bias and relativism in history, including empiricist, relativist and postmodern positions
How do oral history and memory studies construct the past from living testimony, and what does it mean that memory is shaped, fallible and political rather than a neutral record?
Students examine oral history and memory studies, their methods of testimony and interview, and the debates about reliability, collective memory and the relationship between memory and history
What is the postmodern challenge to history, and how did the linguistic turn of White, Foucault and Jenkins question whether historical writing can reach the past at all?
Students examine postmodernism and the linguistic turn in historiography, the arguments of Hayden White, Michel Foucault and Keith Jenkins, and the empiricist reaction against them
How do public and digital history present the past to mass audiences, and how do museums, film, commemoration and the digital age change who constructs history and how?
Students examine public and digital history, the presentation of the past through museums, memorials, film and digital media, and the way new forms reshape authority, access and method
How did Leopold von Ranke and the empiricist tradition turn history into a professional discipline, and what assumptions about evidence and objectivity did this method carry?
Students analyse the empiricist or scientific model of history founded by Ranke, its method of archival source criticism, and the claims about objectivity and truth that it embeds
How did the Annales school transform what counts as historical evidence and time, and why does its idea of total history matter for the question of how history is constructed?
Students examine the Annales school, its founders Bloch and Febvre and its leading figure Braudel, and its concepts of total history, mentalities and the longue duree
What were the Australian History Wars, and how do they show historiographical method, evidence and politics colliding in a public dispute over the colonial frontier?
Students examine the Australian History Wars as a case of contested historiography, the dispute between Reynolds, Ryan and Windschuttle over frontier violence, and the politics of national history
Who counts as a historian, and how has the identity and authority of the historian changed from the ancient world to the present?
Students examine who historians are, the contexts in which they have worked, and how the identity, authority and purpose of the historian have changed over time
Why have approaches to history changed over time, and what forces drive shifts in how the past is written?
Students explain why approaches to history have changed over time, including the influence of context, ideology, new evidence and intellectual movements
The History Project
Module overview →How do the annotated bibliography and process log evidence genuine historiographical research, and what makes them analytical rather than merely descriptive records?
Students compile the annotated bibliography and process log of the History Project, documenting and evaluating sources historiographically and recording the development of the investigation
How do you choose a History Project topic and frame a focus question that allows a genuine historiographical investigation?
Students select an area of changing historical interpretation and frame a focus question that enables an individual historiographical investigation
What are the components of the History Project, and how do the historical process and the essay demonstrate historiographical understanding?
Students plan, research and present the History Project, comprising the historical process elements and a sustained essay responding to the focus question