Historical Controversy

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module introduces you to the study of history through the critical reading of a key historical text. In this way you will gain an understanding of the complexity of the historical record and an appreciation for a range of problems associated with the interpretation of evidence. You will also be encouraged to think about the discipline of history and the nature of historical enquiry. Through a study of how historians have formulated and deployed their arguments, you will begin to learn to deploy ideas and to shape your own historical arguments.

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 History of Now

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

The History of Now is a module that connects history with current events, trends and movements. How can we look historically at the world today, and how relevant is history in a modern society? In search either of roots and causes, of continuities and differences, or just of lessons learned but then forgotten, history maintains a central role in the way we understand contemporary developments. It is these connections that the module explores.

Each year the focus will be on debates that dominate domestic or international public opinion. In recent years, the module has covered such themes as the economic recession, the war on terror, celebrity culture, and immigration. The number of topics and approaches taught will mean that you will come in to contact with a variety of periods, sources, and schools of thought. By the end of the module you will thus have developed both a firm historical perspective on current affairs, and an awareness of historical methods.

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.

Historical Controversy II

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

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.

History Short Period: American History 1877-2000

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module probes the social, political and economic development of the United States since the end of Reconstruction. It is organised on a broadly chronological basis with primary stress on key topics such as the emergence of racial segregation in the South, the construction of a modern, industrial society, the emergence of the United States as a Great Power, progressive reform, the economic crisis of the 1930s, the American experience in World War II and the ensuing Cold War, the civil rights and New Left movements of the 1960s, and the concomitant rise of conservativism. Notable themes include the growth of federal power, the steady erosion of localism, the development of a corporate-dominated consumer society, the limitations of modern liberalism and the political influence of American religion. The module introduces you to landmark political change such as the failure of Populism and the changing Republican party constituency in the South as well as important legal rulings such as Brown v Board of Education and Roe v Wade. A close analysis of the New Deal, a transformational moment in twentieth-century US history, frames an extended assessment of the rise and fall of the so-called New Deal order. In addition the module familiarises you with critical historiographical debates over the role of American labour, the impact of war on American society and culture, and the growth of the imperial presidency. Although the focus is primarily on domestic events and structural trends, the United States' growing engagement with the wider world receives full attention.

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.

Short Period: The Middle East and North Africa since 1908

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

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: 1861: The Coming of the American Civil War

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

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: 1956: The Battle of Algiers

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

The starting point will be 30 September 1956 when four Algerian women placed bombs in the European quarter of Algiers - a key moment in the Battle of Algiers. The module will commence with the precise context for this action, namely the unfolding war in Algeria between the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the left-wing Republican Front government. It will examine the motivations for this violence and the particular involvement of the Algerian women in the anti-colonial struggle.

The course will then move on to consider the wider international context for the Algerian crisis. In this way 30 September 1956 will be related to:

• the rise of pan-Arab nationalism encapsulated within Nasser's Egypt
• British and French imperialisms expressed through the Suez Crisis
• the Cold War confrontation in the Middle East and North Africa
• the role of Israel in the Middle East
• US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa and the tensions this produced between the old colonial powers and the USA
• the foundation of the EEC
• splits within the left and the rise of the new left that criticised the USSR
• the rise of the non-aligned movement
• Americanisation and the Western European 'economic miracle'. 

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.

History Special Dissertation

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

History Thematic Course: Fascisms

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module aims to address the history of European fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust from a variety of perspectives. Its main subject of inquiry will be the political, ideological and social history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The module will also survey other forms of interwar fascism in Western Europe such as the French and Italian versions. Ideological, legal and political developments will be investigated. Special thematic emphasis will be placed upon the relationship between Nazism and culture; Nazism and gender; Nazism and everyday life; as well as fascism and antisemitism. Part of the second term will be devoted to exploring the effects of fascism after 1945, including the way its legacy shaped postwar European politics and culture during the Cold War. Since the module will have to concentrate on academic debates and primary sources, the students are strongly encouraged to get an overview of the basic historical facts beforehand (e.g. from Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism. 1914-1945, Madison 1995).

History Thematic Course: The Enlightenment

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

Both the friends and the foes of ‘modernity’ tend to find most of its intellectual, cultural, political, and institutional origins in the Enlightenment. The aim of this module is to provide students with an appreciation of why the period from the late seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century is considered to be of such importance for our self-understanding. The module is primarily concerned with the Enlightenment’s modes of thought - how people struggled to formulate new ideas of the natural world and its exploration, of animals and their rights, of individuality and conscience, of the role of emotion in morals and art, of religious versus secular life, of privacy versus the public sphere, of the role of women, of individual rights and the common good, of ‘society’ as an object of science and control, of the contrast between European and non-European society, of race and racism. However, such ideas can be understood only in their social, political, and cultural contexts, and the module will pay due attention to the actual function of Enlightenment, both as a pan-European phenomenon and in its national and more local environments.

The module gives the student opportunity for wide and varied reading that will include politics, philosophy, theology, aesthetics, science, arts, and samples of the banned and suppressed literature of the period.

History Thematic Course: The Sixties

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module explores the nature and significance of social, political, economic and cultural change during the 1960s. Marked by changing attitudes to authority, rises in material standards of living, the transformation of personal relationships and the emergence of new political movements and cultural formations, the decade in many ways set the political and cultural agenda for the rest of the century. In order to assess the significance of the period, the module takes a comparative approach to the analysis of historical change during the 1960s, whereby similar themes and concepts are looked at in a variety of national and international situations, addressing areas such as: gender politics; sexuality and sexual identity; youth and countercultures; anti-war and civil rights movements; music, media and politics.

Past & Present: The Concentration Camp and History

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

The concentration camp embodies the power structures of the modern world to such an extent that several historians have referred to the 20th century as 'the century of the camp'. From the first colonial examples in the late 19th century to the establishment of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the camp has played a central role in some of the most defining episodes in modern history. Probably the most notorious and well-documented concentration camp systems were those established by the Nazis and the Soviet Gualgs, but forms of internment were also implemented in the Irish and Spanish civil wars, and represented an established practice in Eastern Germany. This module will follow a largely chronological and transnational layout and examine the inception and function of specific camp systems within their broader historical context. It will compare different cases in order to assess possible similarities, differences and continuities and comprehend the dynamics that make the camp such a powerful instrument of control.

Past and Present: Childhood and History

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

Past and Present: Nature and History

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

The module attempts to understand the ecological effects of colonial rule in south asia and the links between ecological change, colonial policy and indigenous response. It examines the cultural understandings of landscape, the valuing of the environment by indigenous peoples and studies the way in which environmental change constrains and shapes social and cultural protest. The module enables students to engage with an emerging body of literature in a new academic field of environmental history. Its intellectual aims are to promote an interdisciplinary study of the relations between culture, science and nature through time. Students will learn to use sources from a range of disciplines mainly anthropology, geography and history and will develop a clearer understanding of contemporary issues; the fate of indigenous peoples, the developmental policies of colonial and post colonial countries and the future of the modern world.

Past and Present: Revolution and History

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

The significance of the events of 1989-91 for the understanding of revolution has been evaluated in various ways. They have been termed the ‘anti-revolutionary revolutions’ that have finally revealed the emancipatory project at the heart of the enlightenment conception of revolution to be ‘irrevocably dead’. Others have regarded them as ‘rectifying revolutions’ signalling a return to a European tradition in which 1917 is buried in the name of 1789.

This module will focus on three ‘Great Revolutions’ that structured the history of the modern world (France, Russia and China). Drawing on a wide range of sources, the study of these revolutions will enable you to make comparative links to Eurpean and non-European revolutions of earlier and later periods and to engage with the theoretical literature. Topics will include ‘the idea of revolution’, ‘progress and the politics of backwardness’, ‘revolutionary ideology and organisation’, ‘revolutions in power’ and ‘the end of revolution’.

Attention will also be given to the changing and conflicting meanings of revolution, in particular to the question of its scope; for example, should the concept of revolution include failed revolutions (Russia 1905, Germany 1918), right-wing revolutions (National Socialism, Fascist Falange), revolutions from above (Stalin’s ‘Great Break’ 1929-32, Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’) and religious revolutions (Iran 1979). The module should enable you to gain a deeper understanding of the role of revolution in shaping both modern history and theories of history.

Past and Present: Science and History

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

This module considers how the idea of “science” came to be an important historical category. In other words, when and how did science come to have the cultural authority which allowed scientists to offer explanations of phenomena once regarded as the domain of philosophy or religion? How did scientific explanations come to be seen as convincing by society at large? Our main concern is with the wider impact of scientific ideas and practices; no prior knowledge of science is necessary and the scientific content of the module is minimal and easy to understand.

To analyse these questions, we will examine a series of transformations that are sometime called the Second Scientific Revolution, the ways in which the modern sciences were created beginning in the mid-eighteenth century and following the story through into the twentieth century. One after another, different scientific disciplines acquired new ways of classifying and organising the world, new categories and new names for those categories.

The module begins with the eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus, who created the modern system of scientific names for animals and plants. Linnaeus’ names helped change the living world into a series of commodities that could be traded, transplanted and exploited. His achievements inspired many other efforts at renaming, such as the Frenchman Antoine Lavoisier’s creation of the modern names for the chemical elements. Gradually through the late-eighteenth century and early-nineteenth century one science after another renamed itself and its objects of study, transforming humanity’s relationship with the natural world, not least by denying the need for nature to have had a divine creator. Inspired by the physical sciences, the human sciences tried to create their own new categories, reinventing and reimagining such powerful and personal categories as race, madness and sex.

The module concludes by looking at the politics of classifications such as “homosexual”, “mad” and “white” as a way of understanding classification and its consequences.

Preliminary reading: Bowker, G. C. and S. L. Star (2000). Sorting Things Out: Classification and its consequences (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press).

Special Subject Capitalism and Ethnicity

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: Britain and the Second World War

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

This module concentrates on the impact of the Second World War on social, cultural, economic and political relations in Britain 1938-45. The extent to which the war had a profound impact on British society is the subject of vigorous debate among historians in secondary literature. A complicated historiography exists for many of the topics included in this module, and the reasons for this changing interpretation of the past will be explored. The topics covered by this module include: 1930s appeasement, civil defence and preparation for war, civilian evacuation, the blitz, the fall of Chamberlain and the Churchill coalition government, Dunkirk evacuation, war economy, rationing, agriculture, women in factories and auxiliary services, combatants' experience, D-Day landings, American service personnel in Britain, Beveridge report and the post-war welfare state, the General Election of 1945. The emphasis of History Special Subjects is to examine a particular period in detail using primary sources and subsequent monographs and articles. Primary sources include: Parliamentary Papers; government publications, contemporary social investigation and comment; contemporaneous essays and monographs; oral historical accounts; memoirs and diaries, films, paintings, poems, photographs etc. Subsequent analysis, in the form of books and articles are secondary sources.

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: Palestine in Transition: World War 1 and Beyond

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: Post-Punk Britain 1975-present

30 credits
Autumn & spring teaching, Year 3

Special Subject: Reforming Islam in the 20th Century: Modernism, Revivalism, Extremism, Terrorism

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