Monday 26 September 2011

Finished Family Fortunes

I've finished the first major activity of my MA: reading Family Fortunes. The book traces the development of an ideology prevalent among the emerging middle classes and influenced by evangelical Christianity that there were two spheres: the domestic sphere inhabited by women and the public world inhabited by men. The authors explore the roots and development of this ideology, how it was manifested and its various contradictions, focusing on the city of Birmingham and villages in Essex and Suffolk .

I read the first 160 pages properly but have to admit that I skimmed the rest. While I respect the amount of work - particularly archival - that the authors put into researching and writing the book, a page-turner it is not. I fell asleep twice reading the first 160 pages. Luckily, from what I can pick up on the course forum, I'm not the only one found it a bit if a turgid read. My fear now is the first TMA is focused on the book; albeit - fortunately - on its reception (and significance) rather than the book itself.

The thing that I found most useful from reading the book was (ignoring the turgid prose) the structure of how they presented their findings, which generally went:
* Make a general claim (referenced through general works);
* Illustrate with statistics or material from reference works, novels, contemporary sources and/or;
* illustrate with own findings.
This was reassuring as it is what I'm used to in the social sciences (claim - evidence/illustrate), although the nature of the evidence is different. The next stage for me, once this dreaded TMA is out of the way, is to look more into gathering and analysing this kind of evidence. Tomorrow I'll start to read the commentaries and plan my essay


Wednesday 21 September 2011

I've started the MA


This morning, the portal for my MA came online and I was able to begin studying, although the course itself is not scheduled to begin until October 1. The portal is well set out and provides a study planner that takes me up to December and my first essay, links to resources etc.


The first unit is based around the book Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 by Davidoff and Hall. I have to read it and three articles reflecting on it and then write 2.5k assessing its most significant contribution to debates in the area. I'm about 70 pages in (out of 450) and am beginning to slowly get my head around it, but I'm guessing that it will make more sense once I've read the commentaries and critiques. I can see myself having to re-read bits of it for the essay.

At the outset I am a tad apprehensive as it is a new challenge and I'm not sure yet what the MA is looking for, the approach required etc. I'm still finding my feet, but this is to be expected at the end of day one! My plan is to try and finish the book itself within a week, then spend the week after reading the commentaries and coming up with an argument for my essay - maybe running my ideas past the tutor, assuming I can and he/she doesn't think that I'm being giddy.

Ironically, I've also just discovered that part of my MA course materials have been written by my A Level tutor for ICS :-)

Tuesday 6 September 2011

MA History Materials Have Arrived!!!!




I arrived home from work this evening to find a large package waiting for me containing my course materials for the MA. Inside were two ring binders and all the readings and materials (minus the stuff that is online), all neatly wrapped with a paper seal around each unit.
Receiving the pack added a degree of reality to the MA (a bit like holding a baby). I've been looking forward to doing the MA for seemingly ages now and knew that the pack would be here soon, but seeing it there added a new air of concreteness to it.

As I said, each unit is sealed although I peaked inside a few (while not breaking the seals), while the assessments are online. My plan is to try and get online to the forums etc at least twice a week, more if I can and begin looking through the online materials next week once (hopefully) work has settled down a bit.