History BA

Compulsory

• Africa and the World

  Since 1918, Europe has experienced war, genocide, economic depression, ideological conflict and the loss of its colonial Empires, as well as wide-ranging and unprecedented social, economic, political and cultural change. This module examines this history, exploring the events that enveloped the continent, considering Europe’s interactions with the wider world, and examining the experiences of Europeans who lived through these changes. 

• From Bolshevism to Brexit. People and Power in Europe

  Since 1918, Europe has experienced war, genocide, economic depression, ideological conflict and the loss of its colonial Empires, as well as wide-ranging and unprecedented social, economic, political and cultural change. This module examines this history, exploring the events that enveloped the continent, considering Europe’s interactions with the wider world, and examining the experiences of Europeans who lived through these changes. 

• Migration and the Settler World, 1600-1914

  The module explores the successive waves of overseas migration from Britain and Ireland to create settler societies around the globe between the early Stuart era and the First World War. The geographical coverage concentrates on the thirteen British colonies in North America before 1776, the Caribbean, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Together these parts of the world were the recipients of millions of British and Irish

• Modern South Asian History

  This module introduces the colonial and post-colonial histories of one of the most populous regions in the world, South Asia. We focus on key political, social, religious, and cultural movements and events in the regions that became modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and emphasise the plurality of South Asian historical experiences.

• Race, Britain and Empire

  The module explores how the idea of “race” evolved and changed over the course of the modern era and how and why it came to shape British colonialism and imperialism from the seventeenth through to the twentieth centuries. We compare and contrast how scholars have written about "race", and, using primary sources, how in different places and times contemporaries have used ideas about race as an instrument of oppression and a source of resistance.

• Global London

Compulsory

• Historians and their Craft

  This module prepares students for the Dissertation by introducing them to some methodological and theoretical issues that historians encounter in the practice of history. Students are introduced to ways in which historians have engaged with other disciplines. They reflect upon public history and why history matters in today’s society by tracing developments in historical method and examining different approaches to history.

• The First World War: Causes, Course, Consequences

  This module aims to introduce the main areas of debate surrounding the origins, course and consequences of the First World War and to introduce the range of different interpretative and historiographical tools used by historians in categorizing and understanding the First World War.

Optional

• Australia and The Modern World 2
  The module focuses on Australia’s connections with the wider world from the European maritime voyages to the Pacific in the eighteenth century up to contemporary times. Major themes dealing with varied aspects of Australia’s role in the modern world have been selected for study.
• Colonialism and Decolonization in Africa

  Africa is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the modern world. More often than not, its history is presented as a long series of human disasters, conflict, and disorder. However, Africa’s modern history is also one of resistance, and dynamic and creative responses to changing circumstances. This module examines Africa’s multifaceted history since about 1800.

• Ethnography in South Asia

  This module explores classic anthropological themes -- such as community, class, kinship, gender, and globalisation -- through an indepth focus on a particular ethnographic region: South Asia and its diasporas.

• Ethnography of a Selected Region

  In this module you will grasp the interplay between ethnographic observations during fieldwork and theory building during the write up process. You will examine key cultural issues for the region, covering topics such as religion, nationalism, economics, and the interplay of politics and memory.

• From Gibraltar to Suez: Britain and the Mediterranean, 1704-1956

  This module assesses Britain’s strategic relationship with the broadly- defined Mediterranean region, including the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe, over a period of roughly 250 years. In particular, it examines British efforts to exert power and influence there from their first serious encroachment with the taking of Gibraltar in 1704, through to the Suez Crisis in 1956. 

• History of the Women’s Movement in the West, c. 1790-1930

  In this module students will explore the rise and progress of the ‘first wave’ women’s movement in Britain, America and Europe, from c.1790 – 1920 and develop an understanding of the ideological foundations of the women’s movement and campaign for suffrage. It will identify the relationship between the British, American and European campaigns for suffrage, and examine the campaigning strategies and networks developed by women activists.

• Issues in American Politics

  This module familiarises students with contemporary issues on the American political agenda and demonstrates how politicians adapt policy stances and organisational and electoral strategies to accommodate change in political debate. Students are encouraged to adopt a more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to learning about American politics by examining social, moral, cultural and economic issues through a partisan political perspective.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• National Security Intelligence

  This module furnishes students with an overview to the field of national security intelligence. It also examines in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.

• Plato’s Republic

  This module involves a close reading of the foundatonal text in political thought: Plato's Republic.

• The State and Revolution

  This module provides students with an understanding of the historical emergence of two of the central concepts of modern political thought: the state and revolution, or the constitution of political order and the process of fundamental political transformation. We study the development of these concepts in some of the major events of political modernity, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

• The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, 1941-1992

  This module aims to examine the tactics and strategies employed by African Americans during the period 1941 to 1992, thereby helping students to gain a critical understanding of the roles of various groups within African American society in the pursuit of civil rights. 

• Gender, Sexuality and Feminism

  This module will introduce students to core ideas in feminism via the key concepts of gender and sexuality. It will develop students’ understandings of social structures, human cultures, and economic inequalities and political relationships. The course will offer theoretical tools and historical insights into gendered, feminised, and sexualised socio-cultural worlds.

Compulsory

• Advanced Research Skills for History
• History Dissertation

  The final year dissertation provides undergraduates with the opportunity to provide evidence of abilities not usually measured by the written papers and assessments through their degree - notably the ability to work independently in a subject area of the student’s choice.

Optional

• Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• Borders, Nations and Belonging in Modern Europe

  From Brexit to the wall between the USA and Mexico, borders are an important part of contemporary political debate. But where do our ideas about borders come from? Why do borders represent such powerful symbols? And who makes decisions about who can and cannot cross? This module explores these questions (and others) through the history of borders in modern Europe.

• Crisis and Critique

  The main aim of the module is to provide students with an understanding of some of the major socio-political crises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ways in which they have been understood by political theorists.

• Fascist Italy, 1919-1945: Revolution, Conflict and Collapse

  This module explores the rise and fall of Fascist Italy through political, socio-cultural, economic and military perspectives, among others.

• Long Walk to Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid in South Africa

  Encouraging students to consider the extent to which the current situation in South Africa is a product of the colonial era, postcolonial circumstance, or Africa’s deeper past. It will familiarise students with the main developments in Africanist and South Africanist historiography and encourage students to study South African history from both an Afro-centric and European perspective.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• Parliamentary Studies

  This module aims to provide students with a detailed understanding of the UK Parliament by examining its structure, internal processes, and different committees, and to give students an understanding how to transfer the skills they have acquired when thinking about social, historical and political issues to practical ongoing issues that parliament is encountering in its committees or in legislation it is devising.

• Psychogeography

  In this module you will study the relationship between the individual and their environment, both in situ and in movement, to reconsider habitual understandings of how we live in and move through our environment. 

• Religion and Power in South Asian History

  What is the relationship between religious identity and social, political, military, or economic power? In this module, we examine the role that religious practice and belief has played in South Asian societies from the early modern through the contemporary era. We introduce the intersecting histories of major South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and Buddhism, among others. 

• Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic World
• The Arab-Israeli Conflict

  We survey the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering three overarching themes: 1) Origins of the Conflict; 2) Evolution of the Conflict; and 3) Peace and its Limits. The module covers the origins of both national movements, the development of the conflict under British rule, the major Arab-Israeli wars, peace agreements, and it ends with recent events. 

• The British Maritime World, 1660-1815

  The module focuses on the British Maritime World in a period that witnessed significant advances in oceanic exploration, trade and shipping and increased naval protection and supremacy. Students will cover both a broad overview of selected important topics and closer focus on varied types of primary source material.

• The Creation of the Western Alliance, 1945-1955

  Students will examine from an international history perspective the process by which the NATO alliance was formed in the years following the Second World War. They will analyse and evaluate the historical evidence underpinning competing theories concerning the growth of confrontation between Britain, Western Europe, and the United States on the one hand and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the other.

• The Second World War

  This module explores the military, political and socio-economic events and developments of the Second World War. Students will focus on the historiography and cultural significance of the war up to the present day and will adopt an “international history” approach by building its analysis around the interaction of states and peoples in this global conflict.

• Violence and Conflict in Eastern Africa

  In this module students will explore the role of violence and conflict in the course of eastern Africa’s modern history. Students will gain an in depth understanding of the ways in which violence and conflict have influenced economy, society and polity in the modern era, through a consideration of broad themes, such as age, ethnicity, and resources, as well as specific case studies taken from across the region.

• War and Humanitarianism

  This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.