The murder of Stephen Lawrence (Master LEA students, and others)

In the history of multiculturalism, racism and anti-racism in Britain, the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 was a watershed. Many things changed because of this crime. This 45 minute documentary explains: indispensable viewing for all students of Britain

Click here 

La Chanson populaire comme objet d'étude de l'histoire culturelle

Mon intervention de la semaine dernière au séminaire Eriac

Les chansons populaires des différentes époques n’illustrent pas l’histoire sociale et culturelle : elles en font pleinement partie. Elles s’intègrent à une activité de masse qui peut nous apprendre beaucoup sur les représentations populaires de l’époque, sur les opinions, les peurs et les fantasmes des publics.

Dans cette intervention, John Mullen explore l’histoire de l’étude des chansons populaires et présente ses propres recherches en histoire culturelle de la chanson populaire, notamment sur la période de la Première guerre mondiale. L’intervention est suivie d’une séance de questions-réponses.

Cliquez ci-dessous

https://www.academia.edu/16824065/_MP3_La_Chanson_populaire_comme_objet_d%C3%A9tude_de_lhistoire_culturelle

Agrégation, surtout interne

So, if I were a French person preparing the agrégation interne, I would be listening for at least an hour a day ( in the bus or in the car), podcasts from the BBC, on a wide variety of subjects: history, statistics, cinema, business, science and so on. I particularly recommend

In  Our Time
Thinking Allowed
Desert Island Discs
More or Less
Making History
Today
Women's Hour

Agrégation /M2 translation

Les sujets pour le DST de ce matin attendent, dans le bureau A501. Deux étudiantes de M2 s'étaient engagés à les chercher et à rapporter les copies après. Bon courage à tous.

PS qui a les copies?!

Translation classes: agrégation and M2

On 14th October you will be left alone to do a classroom test (since I have been asked to do a lecture for the M1 students that day). Two students have agreed to pick up the passages to be translated at the office of the English department secretary before the class and return all your translations to the same office after the class. Please leave a good margin and write on every second line. I will correct these as quickly as I can. In any case, on the 21st we will start by going through the passage from the test, before moving onto the passage from Merle which is the next in your booklet. This means you have some time to work on the following passage, from Un été chez Voltaire.

Seminar : Historiography and the First World War

Questions on Offenstadt chaps five and six


1 Explain * in your own words* what Durkheim meant by a "social fact". Think of two examples of your own.

2 Explain * in your own words* some of the contributions made by the Annales group in France.

3 What is Alltaggeschichte?

4 What are the main characteristics of
A) Gender history and
B) the new " global history"?

Oh! What a lovely war - YouTube

IN the 1960s, Joan Littlewood  and her Theatre workshop famously turned World War One into... an Edwardian musical comedy. here on YouTube is an amateur production of "Oh What a Lovely War!" All the songs are really from the First World War.



Oh! What a lovely war - YouTube

Les écrits historiques britanniques et la Première Guerre Mondiale | John Mullen - Academia.edu

Voici un article que j'ai écrit il y a quelques mois, sur les écrits historiques britanniques et la Première Guerre mondiale:



(2) [PDF texte intégral] Les écrits historiques britanniques et la Première Guerre Mondiale | John Mullen - Academia.edu

Agrégation interne: compréhension et restitution

So make sure you practise listening a lot. It is also indispensable to record yourself  summarizing passages, and listen back. You will find that you can yourself identify a number of faults. Then do the same exercise again, until the only mistakes you are making are ones that you really do not know of. 

One other point, I suggested to one student, who was a native speaker of English, that it was not necessary for him to come to these classes. I now realize this is not true: the rules of the exercise take some time to learn even if you understand the entire passage at once. 

LEA master "Britain's Racist Election" - YouTube

We will be looking over the next few weeks at mutliculturalism and diversity in Britain. This facinating documentary shows how immigrants who arrived a few decades ago found the country not always welcoming.



"Britain's Racist Election" - YouTube

Marx, l'historiographie et le progrès dans l'histoire

La question de savoir s'il existe des lois de l'histoire humaine est discutée depuis près de 200 ans. Vous trouverez ici le powerpoint et l'enregistrement d'une conférence que j'ai faite l'année dernière sur Marx et cette question. Le titre pourrait être "Comment Marx est devenu marxiste?". Il s'agit d'une tentative de synthétiser ce qu'a écrit Marx sur l'Histoire.

http://johncmullen.blogspot.fr/2013/02/les-manuscrits-de-1844-de-karl-marx.html

Préparation agrégation interne: compréhension-restitution

Please note that the above class will take place on Wednesday from 1.30pm to 3pm. Some documents appear to say otherwise.

I think we are in the CETAS on the fifth floor in A building. My office is A 503.

JM

Learning about Ireland : Garda Síochána - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Garda Síochána - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Denis Healey

Denis Healy, an important Labour politician, died this week at the age of 98. He was never Prime Minister, but he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1970s and was very well known indeed.

Here is his obituary in The Guardian newspaper. Of course, it is traditional to write mostly positive things about leading figures when they die, and one must remember that the author of this obituary is generally in agreement with Healey's view of what the Labour party should be (considerably to the right of the present Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn). Still, the article explains a number of things, and the role of Healey in some of the main political debates of the 1960s and 1970s. If you understand every reference, you are very well informed indeed on recent British history.

Translation classes: Sentences and main clauses in English and in French

Students seem very reluctant to add verbs to a sentence when translating into English, if there is no verb in French. Last week we saw several sentences, or principal clauses without verbs in French and I insisted every time that a verb be added. This week's translation began "L'exode: elle est partie sur les routes..." The first two words, before a colon, represent, once more, a clause without a verb. But only one student added a verb!! Here is a short extract from an introductory book "How to write in English" by Jean Max Thomson:

A new biography of Queen Elizabeth the second

A new biography of Queen Elizabth, reviewed by an academic who doesn't really agree with the biographer.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/30/elizabeth-ii-douglas-hurd-review-bootlicking-obsequiousness

Seminar on the First World War and historiography

Nicolas Offenstadt “Historiographie”

Questions on Chapters three and four, which will start our discussion next week.

1. Who has suggested that  history is in some ways  a science?  What did they say?
2. What were some of the main steps in making history into a profession?
3. What difference can it make who a history book is written for?
4. How far is a historian a story-teller?

Internet reading:

Read this article (in French) which is a book review of a work in English. http://quaderna.org/richard-j-evans-in-defence-of-history-londres-granta-2000/

Come with questions if there are parts which are hard to understand.

Personal questions

a Do you have a favourite kind of history book?

b If historians can be storytellers, what kind of stories should they tell if they want to interest you?

LEA Master Powerpoint on Ireland

You will find here the powerpoint which I used in class, on Ireland's history and economy. If your connection is very slow, try here.

Incidentally, in our next class we will be working from the articles in the booklet, so don't forget to bring it with you.

Etudiants qui préparent l'agrégation interne

Etudiants agrégation interne.

We will be having our first class in listening comprehension next Wednesday, the 7th of October, in the early afternoon. I will be asking you what ways you use to practise listening to English, and making some recommendations. And we will of course be doing some trial runs on listening extracts.

Advanced translation :marking scheme

This is the marking scheme I'm using. As I'm sure you can appreciate, it would be too long to write in the margins of your script "I'm afraid you have made a mistake here concerning the aspect HAVE + EN", so I just write "ASP". The work sent by mail gets much more information about errors, because it's partly automatized. This marking scheme can give you an idea about which kinds of mistake tend to be more dangerous. Note however that this is not how the actual exam is marked: a marking scheme is developed around all the mistakes which are likely to be made in translating that particular passage.

Marking scheme (these are of course, negative points)

NS       Non-sens                                            12

TGF Très Grave Faute de syntaxe                  12

CNJ: conjugaison                                           9

PRET/PF Erreur preterite/present perfect        9

SING singular/plural error                              8

COUNT Count/non count error                      8

CS: contre-sens                                              8

GFS grave faute de syntaxe                            6

GEN Genitive error                                        6

OMU: omission unité de traduction                6

AJU: ajout fautif unité de traduction              6

DEIX: Déixis                                                  6

MOD wrong modal or missing modal             5

CON Contraction error                                               4

BAR Barbarisme, mot ou locution inexistante           4

CAL: calque                                                   4

CONSTR: construction verbale, adv, prep…  4

LEX: insuffisance lexicale sauf mot rare       4

SRTR: surtraduction significative                   4

SSTR: sous-traduction significative                4

TEMPS: erreur de temps bal                           4

ASP erreur d’aspect                                 4

ART Erreur d’article défini/indéfini etc          4

PHON: phonétique/phonologie                      4

FS: faux sens                                                  3

O: omission de mot                                        3

AJM: ajout fautif de mot                                            3

LR insuffiSance lexicale mot rare                  2

REG Registre trop familier ou trop soutenu    2

CLUM Clumsy                                             2

QUOT: quotation marks (“” vs «»)                2

SP: orthographe 1 ou 2 selon rareté du mot    1 ou 2

MAJ Erreur de majuscules                             1

PUNC: ponctuation (sauf “”)                         1

Positive points

Unité de traduction très bonne                     +4

Unité de traduction excellente                      +8