Key Concepts in Anthropology

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module provides an overview of the big questions that anthropologists have contributed to and the different theoretical paradigms and concepts that they have developed or adopted. The aim is to provide you with a rapid overview of the discipline. It begins with two weeks examining the concepts of Society and Culture and their varied conceptualisations, followed by weeks that take in turn the key characteristics and assumptions of

• British structural functionalism

• methodological individualism and agency

• French structuralism

• British structuralism

• marxism, ideology and hegemony

• poststructuralism

• discourse and power/knowledge

• poststructuralism

• 'practice' and phenomenology.

The Anthropological Imagination

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

The module aims to convey a sense of anthropology as an exciting, 'living' subject, alive to the concerns of different communities and
populations living across the globe, and as cutting edge in terms of the research conducted by anthropologists at Sussex as they
actively engage with issues of social, cultural and global transformation. This is accomplished through a module structure which
revolves around 5 core themes considered central to the subject which capture anthropological thinking on the subjects of culture,
identity and representation:

• kinship, self and body
• economy as culture
• religion and politics
• and work on the global-local interface.

The Anthropology of Exchange, Money and Markets

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

The purpose of this module is to introduce you to how anthropologists have conceptualised, researched, and generated new understandings of the human activities that comprise economic life. Studying economic life from an anthropological view requires us to rethink such concepts as work and leisure, poverty and wealth, gifts and commodities, money and markets, and the term 'economy' itself. Therefore, economic anthropology enables us to critique some of the universalisms of mainstream economics through which capitalism has become naturalised. Traditionally, economic anthropology has been concerned with systems of exchange, non-industrial economies, and livelihood systems. In addition to covering these topics, we will examine issues of contemporary concern such as class, money, debt, shopping, factories, fair trade, globalisation, bioeconomies, and new strategies and practices of resistance.

The Anthropology of Kinship and Relatedness

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

The study of human relatedness and kinship has been central to the history of British social anthropology. This module introduces you to classic and new debates in kinship studies drawing upon material from a wide range of ethnographic contexts to examine the ways in which societies organise and conceptualise human relationships. It is concerned with the transformation of social structures and processes as well as the connections between kin organisations and power in developing and post-industrial societies. The module considers both accepted and more novel ways in thinking about human kinship: how we become related through 'substance', emotion, place and technology, for example. It covers both historical ground as well as the contemporary debates in the study of human relatedness.

The Early Modern World

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module introduces you to the early modern period by exploring some of the central themes of early modern history, and the various ways in which they have been debated by historians. It also equips you with the writing and research skills essential for a successful university career.  Focusing on the period 1500 to 1700, you will examine the debates surrounding social polarisation, cultural differentiation, cultures of Protestantism, the context of the English civil war, issues of gender, and the meanings of monarchy and republicanism.

The Making of the Modern World

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

This module will introduce a period of momentous social, political and cultural change in British and European history by focusing on some of the key debates that have preoccupied its historians.

Historical controversies over events such as the British Union, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution will be examined and used to introduce various historiographical approaches. You will consider central themes such as gender, popular culture, concepts of the state (from absolutism to democracy), sociostructural and demographic change, and empire and nationalism, which will give you a range of perspectives on the past and issues of continuity and change.

Ethnographic Methods

15 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 2

This module introduces you to practical, theoretical and ethical issues surrounding ethnographic research in anthropology and the social sciences more generally. Methodological concerns around research design and implementation will be explored through a series of workshops on epistemology, methodology, and ethics.

It introduces you to a range of qualitative research methods, including the research interview, participant-observation and various participatory research methods. The module also introduces you to the analysis of qualitative data and to key issues of writing and representation. It is assessed by a group research project that you conduct by yourself. This project will give you the opportunity to design and conduct an independent piece of ethnographic research around a key anthropological theme, while allowing you to reflect on and apply the theoretical and practical insights gained over the course of the module.

Global History 1500-2000: Trade, Science, Environment and Empire

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Global history has emerged as an innovative and powerful approach to understanding the past and its implications for the present and future. Global history is a history of connections. It addresses the contexts and the structures through which societies and communities interacted with one another. The overarching theme of global history is the emergence of an ever more integrated global society, but the field looks to explain and understand particular circumtances as well as universal experiences.

The topics of global history transcend any particular national or local history. You study a theme for between two and three weeks, and lectures support the thematic concerns of the modules. The course looks at several topics in detail:

• communication and war
• race, slavery and anti-slavery
• colonial encounters and environments
• civil and human rights
• global order and disorder
• empire, science, trade and environment.

Alongside these themes the course addresses particular questions such as the emergence of the 'great divergence': the widening gap in the 19th century between living standards in the Atlantic basin and those in the rest of the world and the global expansion of European empires.

Ideas in History

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module begins with the revival of classical ideas about politics during the Renaissance and Reformation, goes on to consider the debate between ancients and moderns in the 17th and 18th centuries, and finally looks at the nature of modern political thought as it developed from the middle of the 19th century to the present. The aim of the module is to give you an ability to place modern ideas about politics in their historical context, through the study of central figures and themes whose writings continue to be cited in political argument.

The authors considered include: Machiavelli, Milton, Hobbes, Locke, Harrington, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Hume, Rousseau, Smith, Bentham, Hegel, Constant, Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Lenin, Gramsci, Schmitt, Arendt, Chomsky, and Rawls.

The topics of the module include:

• virtue and security
• the origins of democracy
• absolutism and empire
• perpetual peace
• reason of state and amoral politics
• the debate about commerce, luxury and markets
• the size of the state and its form of government
• the nature of liberty and the means of maintaining it
• totalitarianism and slavery in politics
• modern democracy, philosophy and the modern state
• civil liberty, war and empire.

Anthropology Fieldtrips

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module introduces you to anthropological research in the field through a series of short UK and European based fieldtrips. Each topic is first introduced through a preparatory seminar during which relevant theoretical literature and approaches are discussed. You then meet with tutors at the chosen field-sites in order to conduct your own ethnographic observations and research. Topics may include:

• a consideration of human rights at the International Criminal Courts at the Hague
• a study of urban regeneration and gentrification in East London
• the ethnography of non-place and consumption in a shopping centre.

Culture and Performance

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

The module focuses on the anthropological master trope of "culture" and on the political dimensions of representing culture or "cultures". We consider how anthropological understandings of "culture", as well as anthropologists' modes of analysing and representing it in anthropological work, developed over the 20th century, partially in conversation with other disciplines. We also examine how "culture" operates as a key idea in the public domain, used by politicians, community and human rights activists, artists, scientists, museum curators and others in relation to a wide range of issues and debates when distinctions between "ourselves" and "others" are at stake. Finally, we look at some activities within the cultural domain (such as music, dance, theatre, verbal artistry) which have a performative dimension, and consider how anthropologists have approached these activities to address questions about structure and agency, embodiment, experience, art and aesthetics, creativity, power and protest.

History Short Period: Britain in the 20th Century

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module concentrates on British history since 1914. You will be introduced to the major themes in the social, cultural and, to a lesser extent, economic and political history of twentieth century Britain. You will critically examine the most important contributions and debates within the historiography of each topic. You will also be introduced to some of the historical sources available for this period. The module covers a number of topics chronologically including War, Work, Leisure, Youth Culture and Immigration.

The module will equip you with the knowledge and skills necessary for a historical understanding of Britain across the twentieth century.

History Short Period: Europe in the 20th Century

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module addresses the main political, economic and cultural issues that continue to shape the history of Europe since World War II. Cold War confrontation and division will inform much of the module structure, with particular attention to broad thematic topics such as: the politics of memory regarding the war and the Holocaust; economic and political integration in both Cold War orbits; the crusade for, and resistance against, Americanisation and Sovietisation across a divided Europe; the end of Empire; the crisis and collapse of European communism; and the prospects and perils confronting post-Cold War Europe.

History Short Period: South Asia Since 1880

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module examines the history of South Asia since 1880. It concentrates on the impact of colonialism on the Indian subcontinent and on the formation of the modern South Asian States of India and Pakistan. You will also learn about the culture of colonialism, the nature of the colonial state and the emergence of nationalism. Gandhi and his non-violent struggle for Indian independence emerges as one of the defining moments of Indian nationalism. The module comprises both lectures and seminars.

Politics and Power

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module draws on political anthropology and social theory to explore what is for many anthropologists the central concept in the discipline: forms of power. In Western societies the term 'politics' tends to connote a quite narrow range of activities and institutions, typically those focused around parties, government and the state. We shall be using the term 'political' in a much wider sense, and linking it to the operations of power. Power is not a thing, but an aspect of a vast range of relationships from the most local to the global. There can be no neat boundaries around this field of study. Instead our intention is to explore the way the analysis of power has widened and deepened over the last fifty years, and to suggest continuity with economic and cultural processes that you are studying in other modules.

Religion and Ritual

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module is concerned with the explanation of religious and ritual phenomena. It explores the key theoretical issues by examining ethnographic material that deals with - among other things - initiation, myth, witchcraft, symbolism and religious experience. There is also some treatment of more 'secular' rituals such as carnival and Christmas. The focus is as much on how people believe as on what they believe; on why they perform rituals as much as what these rituals look like. It explores both classic texts and more recent accounts, to give you a sense of where particular arguments have come from and where they are going.

Time and Place 1851: Science, Empire and Exhibitionism

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Time and Place1926: The General Strike

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

At one minute to midnight on 3 May 1926, the British Trades Union Congress called a general strike in support of coal miners, who were refusing to accept their employers' demands for a longer working day and reduced wages. What followed was one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the British labour movement. Up to two million men, along with one million miners, downed their tools with more poised to follow before the general strike was called off on 12 May. The miners continued their fight for a further seven months before they finally returned to work. This was a defining moment in an era of economic, social and political strife. It had a huge impact on working-class identity for decades to come, and remains one of the most significant examples of industrial action Britain has ever seen.

During the module you will explore the experience of the General Strike in depth, looking at its causes and its consequences, and the impact it had on the lives of those involved. Using oral history, autobiography, contemporary writings and social surveys, this will lead to a broader examination of working-class life in interwar Britain, dealing with themes such as:

• Working life (industry and labour, industrial relations, unemployment and poverty)
• Family life (neighbourhood and community, gender roles, children's experiences)
• The State (welfare, housing, policing)
• Working-class identities (culture, leisure and collective mythologies)
• Political struggle (trade unions, the rise of the Labour Party and its opponents, Conservative hegemony, political extremism).

Time and Place: 1688: The Glorious Revolution

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

In November 1688 the Dutch prince William III of Orange invaded England, and James II, King of England, Ireland, and Scotland, fled London. By February 1689, William and his wife Mary were offered the English crown.

The constitutional settlement following the Glorious Revolution shaped the formation of the British state for centuries to come, and the ensuing military strife contributed to Britain’s rise as an international power. At the same time, the revolution created conditions for the development for a thriving commercial society and a vibrant civil society.

This module will examine the political and religious strains that gave rise to these momentous events. You will see how they were perceived at the time, and how they are interpreted by present-day historians. You will also examine the revolution’s consequences.

Time and Place: 1838: The Coronation of Queen Victoria

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 brought to the throne the first woman in over one hundred years. Almost at once the initial popular interest in her desirable qualities - her youth, her femininity, her purity - began to sour as she was revealed to be a staunch partizan of the unpopular Whig government, and then chose for her Consort a German, the soon-­to­-be Prince Albert.

This module will examine two major themes. Firstly, it will use the early years of Victoria's reign to explore the painful birth of 'Victorian' England, ­ caught between the aristocratic assumptions of the eighteenth-century and the more middle-class principles of the nineteenth. Secondly, it will tie together these threads by returning to the Coronation of 1838 and examining its place in the long development of royal ritual, in order to assess how far the 'invented traditions' of British monarchy have contributed to the stability of the nation.

Among topics to be considered will be the rise of the middle class, the role of women in early Victorian England, the conflicts of religion, the politics of reform and the struggle for the constitution, the rise of respectable society, the impact of technology, and the rise of the popular press.

Time and Place: 1916: The Somme

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

There were nearly 60,000 British casualties on the first day of the Somme. The final tally was nearly 420,000 British casualties. This represents a significant proportion of total British war casualties. Nearly all of those that fought are now dead and the war is rapidly passing from living memory.

This course will ask: what were the experiences of those who fought? how did experience and expectation vary by class and age? is it true that the ‘flower of British youth’ perished in Flanders fields? what long term impact did the carnage have on the attitudes of the British people? how is the war represented in art and literature and in what ways have these representations been used to portray particular views of war?

The war is often seen as a great watershed - between the Victorian nineteenth century and the modern twentieth century - but historians increasingly question the extent to which changes brought about by the war were anything more than transitory. Nevertheless, the lives of many who were non-combatants did change profoundly. About 800,000 women entered the workplace to replace men who were called up.

This course asks: how did war work affect women’s lives and expectations? in a wider context, did the needs of ‘total war’ and desire to secure victory at all costs transform the political aspirations of working people?

Time and Place: 1929: The Weimar Republic

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

In 1929 the stock market crashed and further de-stabilised the already fragile Weimar Republic.  This year also marks the publication of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, one of the great works of modernist literature. 

This module looks at the history, politics, art and philosophy of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933).  In addition to reading excerpts from Berlin Alexanderplatz and Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, you will also study the innovative cinema of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Bertolt Brecht and Leni Riefenstahl, developments in German Expressionist painting during this period, and Bauhaus architecture.  You will read some seminal political and philosophical works of the period in the writings of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger.  You will take a multi-disciplinary approach to some of the most important political and artistic experiments in the twentieth century, and will acquire invaluable background knowledge about the collapse of Weimar and the rise of National Socialism. 

Time and Place: 1938: Kristallnacht

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

During the night of the 9th of November 1938, SS and SA forces launched an assault on German Jews; on their property, their synagogues, and their businesses. This so-called ‘Kristallnacht’ can be understood as a violent rehearsal for the Holocaust which Nazi Germany implemented three years later. It also marks the end of over a century of a prolific and (mostly) peaceful co-existence between Jews and Christian non-Jews.

This module concerns the relationship between Jews and Christian no-Jews since the early 19th century. It focuses on the complex processes of political emancipation, of social integration, and of cultural adaptation through which Jews became an integral part of the German political, social and cultural life. At the same time, these processes changed Jewish religious, economic, social and cultural life.

This module will concentrate on the period from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the Holocaust, emphasizing Jewish life in imperial and Weimar Germany as well as under Nazism. Issues of Jewish identity will be discussed along with aspects of modern anti-Semitism. You will gain an understanding of this history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations in all its richness, alongside its problematic aspects leading up to 1938 and the Holocaust.

Time and Place: 1942: Holocaust

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module looks at the attempt by the Nazis to create a ‘Master Race’ by exterminating the Jews of Europe and by targeting other groups including gay people, Gypsies and people with disabilities. You will study the legacy of anti-Semitism and racism towards Gypsies, along with other forms of discrimination inherited by the Nazis and used by them to create their own racist policies.
You will consider issues such as: how was the so-called ‘Final Solution to the Jewish problem’ put into effect? why is 1942 a key year in the development of the Final Solution? what part was played by the perpetrators across occupied Europe? is it accurate to characterise most people as bystanders? what sort of people were rescuers? what were the experiences of the victims and what were the possibilities of resistance?
The issues will give rise to many questions about why the Holocaust happened. The module will examine how it was possible to  carry out this plan of mass murder so effectively, and to do so in such a short time, when the plan relied on the active involvement of many people, and the passive acceptance of even more.

Time and Place: 1963: Sexual Revolution in Britain

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

According to the poet Philip Larkin, sexual intermodule began in 1963, and the ‘swinging sixties’ have been characterised as a decade when sexual relationships were subject to fundamental change.

Taking 1963 as a starting point, this module will examine the shifting nature of sexual and emotional intimacy across 20th century Britain. You will examine how appropriate it is to characterise certain decades as periods of sexual revolution and others as periods of sexual conservatism, and how to account for such a historical change.

You will pay close attention to long-term demographic shifts and attempt to account for the rising popularity of marriage until the late 1960s, and its declining popularity during the 1970s. You will examine the social implications of birth control availability, the significance of historically-specific shifts in the age of first marriage, courtship etiquette, changing sexual practices and cultural constructions of ‘love’.

Time and Place: 1968: Rivers of Blood

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Time and Place: 1984: Thatcher's Britain (Observing the 1980s)

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

George Orwell's 1949 novel 1984 describes a totalitarian government bent on total manipulation. For many on the left, Margaret Thatcher's government represented elements of an 'Orwellian state', in which the social democratic consensus established after the end of World War Two was replaced by a free enterprise economy and a centralised state. For those on the political right, the 1980s Thatcher governments championed the re-assertion of individualism, British nationalism and a retreat from the so-called 'nanny state' in which the fight against the 'enemy within' was as important as the fight against the enemy without. In cultural terms, most writers point to the 1980s as being marked by creative pessimism, with 'anti-Thatcherism' the dominant cultural theme.

This module will examine key events of the 1980s and reflect upon whether Margaret Thatcher's most famous quote, 'There is no such thing as society', is a suitable epitaph for the 1980s. Topic studied include: 1982 Falklands War; the 1984 miners' strike; the re-emergence of mass unemployment, peaking in 1986 at over 3.5 million; privatisation of industry and challenge to trade union power and the violent mass protest against the Community Charge (1990). Rather than producing a top down political history of the period, this module is interested in exploring the wide variety of evidence available to the contemporary historian. It is built around the Observing the Eighties project which includes oral histories from the British Library and holdings of the Mass Observation Project and ephemera from the University of Sussex.

Visual Anthropology

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module will familiarise you with theories and applications of visual anthropology. You will have the opportunity to study complex legacies of visual representation in anthropology as well as contemporary, activist visual work. Crossovers between anthropological and other relevant visual epistemologies in the social sciences will be explored. You will also undertake visual research projects.

History Special Dissertation

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Anthropology of Fertility, Reproduction and Health

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

The module uses social and cultural perspectives to examine academic and policy work in the area of reproduction, sexuality and health. It draws on the insights of medical anthropology, especially in relation to the body, gender and power, to critically reflect on reproduction, sexuality and health issues across the global North and South. A particular concern is with the existence and experience of sexual and reproductive inequalities in diverse social and cultural settings. Contrary to popular belief, reproduction is a process which is as much about men as it is about women, and is studied in the context of, for example, male fertility/infertility, masculinity, fatherhood and male sexual health. The module builds upon the theoretical perspectives introduced in the second year on kinship, procreation, social reproduction, sexuality, personhood, reproductive technologies, human rights and applied anthropology.

Anthropology of the Body

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module explores the body from an anthropological perspective, and considers how different societies and cultures conceptualise and experience the human body. In recent years, anthropologists and other academics have become increasingly interested in the body, including authors such as Foucault and Bourdieu. Some draw upon Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach with its emphasis on the senses, while others attempted to resolve the tensions between experience and agency. The module asks how the body represents a challenge for anthropological research, and explores recent ethnographic contributions to this field. We consider the body as a site on which social and cultural processes are inscribed, where power relations converge and are articulated, and as a site where agency is performed. Materials are drawn from both non-Western and Western societies.

Conflict, Violence and Peace: Critical perspectives

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

In recent years, there has been increased focus on conflict, violence and peace-building in the media, popular literature and aid programmes raising important questions about how these processes are understood and represented and what implications this has for the local and international response and in turn the transformation of conflict and violence. This module will offer critical perspectives on mainstream approaches to the study of conflict, violence and peace drawing on both anthropology and development studies.

Conflict, Violence and Peace: Critical perspectives

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

In recent years, there has been increased focus on conflict, violence and peace-building in the media, popular literature and aid programmes raising important questions about how these processes are understood and represented and what implications this has for the local and international response and in turn the transformation of conflict and violence. This module will offer critical perspectives on mainstream approaches to the study of conflict, violence and peace drawing on both anthropology and development studies.

Current Themes in the Anthropology of Latin America

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

The aim of this module is to provide a framework for understanding current anthropological issues in the Latin American region, as well as how Latin American anthropology (both anthropology on Latin America and anthropology by Latin Americans) has contributed to the development of the wider anthropological discipline. Some of the themes covered will engage with anthropological understandings of indigeneity, race, gender, colonialism, nation states and environmentalism. The module will be mostly focused on the Amazonian and Andean regions but will also link to other parts of Latin America. Each week will be centred on ethnographic pieces that offer interesting reflections for contemporary issues as well as anthropological theory.

Environmental Anthropology

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module considers the cross-cultural study of relations between people and their environment. Like the focus of many environmental movements, much recent work in ecological anthropology has been crisis-driven. Whilst covering this literature, the focus of this module will be broader, taking a wider perspective, including the context in which the research itself is being done. Current work on the human dimensions of deforestation, or global climate change, for example, can be informed and strengthened by an understanding of the century-old intellectual lineage of the underlying issues.

The module will therefore cover the evolution of environmental anthropology, using ethnographic exemplars that relate to contemporary environmental issues, whilst at the same time probing debates such as:

• the Nature-Culture trap, and beyond

• Ecology and Social Organisation

• the Politics of Natural Resources and the Environment (including environmental anthropological contributions to mining, resource conflict etc.)

• knowing (and the limits to knowing) and researching the environment

Medicine and Culture

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

Drawing from ethnographic and cross-cultural research, the module will explore the relationships between medicine, culture, and society. After an introduction to some of the classical social anthropological approaches to affliction and healing, we will read a series of medical anthropology ethnographies selected for their different theoretical and analytical approaches to understanding medicine and culture. We will consider interpretative, symbolic, psychoanalytic, 'ethnopsychiatric', and cultural phenomenological approaches for understanding such phenomena as sorcery, possession, exorcism, shamanism, and charismatic healing. We conclude by examining recent approaches to medicine that can be characterised as cultural criticism.

Race, Ethnicity and Identity

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module focuses on theories of race, ethnicity and identity. It applies diverse theoretical approaches to race, ethnicity and identity to historical and contemporary ethnographic contexts. As well as examining the way in which racial and ethnic identities have been constructed across time and space, the module interrogates these constructions with specific reference to:

• the development of anthropology

• slavery and colonialialism

• scientific racism

• postcolonial political regimes

• postcolonial feminism

• conflict and genocide

• identity-based mass violence

• diaspora, transnationalism and the Black Atlantic

• contemporary understandings of race and racism in its myriad forms

• multicultural lives and hybridity.

Special Subject Capitalism and Ethnicity

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: Democracy and War

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: Domesticity and its Discontents: Women in Post-War Britain

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: Modernism

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: The American Civil War in Historical Memory

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

The ongoing Sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War in the United States highlights the continuing capacity of that sanguinary conflict to generate controversy in the present. This module provides you with a detailed examination of the war's impact on generations of Americans since 1865. It focuses specifically on the construction of southern white, African American and official unionist memories of the Civil War. These three key strains of historical memory evolved in the late nineteenth century under the press of postbellum reconciliation between North and South and the concomitant growth of a segregated society. They took a variety forms, notably the potent and profoundly racist 'Lost Cause' memory of the Confederate cause which underpinned the Jim Crow South for more than half a century, a marginalised African-American 'counter-memory' which sought to keep alive remembrance of emancipation and black military service in the armed forces of the United States, and an official national memory which depicted the Civil War as a tragic brothers' war which nevertheless had the effect of unifying and strengthening the United States in preparation for its emergence on the world stage as a Great Power.

The module will focus on the impersonal social and economic forces at work in the construction of these distinctive and frequently intertwined memories as well as the inherently political activities of different groups involved in the memory-making process. These groups include southern white women who founded the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the veterans themselves who contributed significantly to sectional reconciliation, novelists, poets and historians of all kinds, filmmakers and dramatists, and politicians with a wide range of vested interests. The module will introduce you to a broad range of illustrative 'texts' in order to familiarise you with the diverse manifestations of Civil War memory -- not only writings by Ulysses S. Grant, Carl Sandburg, and Douglas Southall Freeman but also monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, movies like Gone With the Wind and Glory, and commemorative events including the ill-fated centennial of the 1960s which was moulded by both the Cold War and the modern civil rights movement.

In many respects the module functions as a detailed case study in historical memory, a concept of growing interest to historians and one that has already generated a rich secondary literature. You will be encouraged to engage closely with this broader literature in order to make cross-national comparisons and to apply at least a modicum of theory to the primary and secondary texts at their disposal.

Special Subject: The Century of the Gene

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

At the beginning of the 20th century no-one knew anything about genetics (the word itself had yet to be coined), yet by the century's end, you could buy cheap, do-it-yourself genetic tests on the internet. You will investigate the ways in which advances in scientific knowledge have affected our sense of ourselves, so that the very phrase 'human nature' has increasingly come to mean something fixed by our genes. The language of genetics has had a powerful effect on political dismodule; the eugenic ideal of creating a superior type of human was supposed to have died with Hitler, yet seems to live on in routine genetic testing and screening, and in the fantasy of 'designer babies'. The idea of a genetic blueprint, and of being able to read, and perhaps to edit and re-write, the DNA 'code', has shaped popular culture, from television and cinema to novels and computer games.

You will examine a broad and diverse range of primary sources, from accessible scientific texts to science fiction (novels, TV and movies) to examples of how the mass media report science, in order to track the often imaginative uses of ideas like cloning, mutation and genetic engineering. No knowledge of biology is needed for this module. The goal is for you to understand the ways in which non-expert publics have understood genetics. Biology's grip on the public imagination helped it become the defining science of the 20th century. Genetics redefined the public sphere in 20th century because of the promise, or threat, that it would reshape humans and the world we live in.

Special Subject: The Civil Rights Movement

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

You will assess the triumphs and tragedies of the movement for racial equality in the United States during the decades that followed the Second World War. You will begin by looking at the broader societal forces that created the context for the movement, including the decline of the agricultural economy of the American South, the migration of millions of African Americans from rural to urban communities, and the impact of the Second World War. You will analyse the movement from the perspective not only of its leaders but also grassroots activists and evaluate the intellectual and institutional forces that shaped movement activism, especially the role of Christianity. In assessing the civil rights conflicts of the post-war decades, you will also study the ideology and tactics of white racists who opposed reform.

You will learn how the domestic struggle for civil rights was based in a broader global framework and assess how international events impacted on American race relations. One of the narrative threads woven throughout the module is the influence, both positive and negative, of the Cold War on the black freedom struggle. In the short term, the rise of domestic anti-communism had an adverse effect on civil rights protest since white supremacists used popular fears of political subversion to accuse movement activists of being 'un-American'. Nonetheless, in the longer term Cold War politics impelled positive change. You will also study the influence of other international forces such as the decolonisation of African and Asian nations and the emergence of the United Nations.

Through your study of the civil rights movement, you will address a number of issues that relate to your broader critical understanding of history. In addition to sharpening your ability to engage with historiographical debate, you will tackle such issues as political agency, the strengths and limitations of state power, and the commemoration of controversial events in collective historical memory. You will also be encouraged to hone your skills in the interpretation of a wide range of primary sources, including speeches, publicity material and newsreel footage. You will have access to the extensive electronic primary sources available through the university library, including the Chicago Defender and African American Newspapers Collection.

Special Subject: The European Experience of the First World War

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

The Anthropology of Africa

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module introduces you to contemporary anthropological approaches in culture and society in Africa. The guiding thread is an exploration of the relationship between macro and micro levels of analysis in understanding of African society through a selection of thematic lenses (economy, politics, religion, health, gender, conflict, power etc.).