Specialized heuristics and exercises on questions of history : antiquity [ LHIST1431 ]

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The student is progressively introduced to working tools, synthesizing works and important monographs, as well as the typology of sources for the period considered. These exercises are designed to complement the corresponding heuristics course. During group exercise sessions, various sources related to the period concerned are successively presented and analysed, on the basis of a preliminary, personal work by students.

By the end of the course, the students should be capable of carrrying out documentary research for the ancient period, situating it in the context of the problems analysed as finely as possible and grasping the link between the problem and recourse to documentation. By the end of the exercises, the student should be capable of successfully carrying out in-depth study of documents related to ancient history (nature of the source, contents, critical problems, interest).

Oral Examination .

Exercises : based on written reports

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Studying sources used in ancient history and, especially, written sources : literary, epigraphical and papyrological.

Analysis of the value and limits of this documentation.

In the second, more practical, part we present the major collections where these sources have been published and students are introduced to manipulating the principal working tools the historian of antiquity has at his disposal. The exercise part is designed as a complement to the heuristics of antiquity. We study extracts from ancient historians, inscriptions and papyruses (sometimes in translation), the goal being to give students a concrete idea of the principal sources of information used in ancient history as well as the problems they pose.

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Support : Student Notes

Teaching : the professor and, should need arise, assistants assigned by the Department.